VERSES VAIN.

[1]Thomas of Ercildoune.

[2]A knavish publisher.

[3]Cf. "Suggestions for Academic Reorganization."

[4]A hill on the Teviot in Roxburghshire.

ALMAE MATRES.(St. Andrews, 1862.Oxford, 1865.)St. Andrews by the Northern sea,A haunted town it is to me!A little city, worn and grey,The grey North Ocean girds it round.And o'er the rocks, and up the bay,The long sea-rollers surge and sound.And still the thin and biting sprayDrives down the melancholy street,And still endure, and still decay,Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.Ghost-like and shadowy they standClear mirrored in the wet sea-sand.O, ruined chapel, long agoWe loitered idly where the tallFresh budded mountain ashes blowWithin thy desecrated wall:The tough roots broke the tomb below,The April birds sang clamorous,We did not dream, we could not knowHow soon the Fates would sunder us!O, broken minster, looking forthBeyond the bay, above the town,O, 'winter of the kindly North,O, college of the scarlet gown,And shining sands beside the sea,And stretch of links beyond the sand,Once more I watch you, and to meIt is as if I touched his hand!And therefore art thou yet more dear,O, little city, grey and sere,Though shrunken from thine ancient prideAnd lonely by thy lonely sea,Than these fair halls on Isis' side,Where Youth an hour came back to meA land of waters green and clear,Of willows and of poplars tall,And, in the spring time of the year,The white may breaking over all,And Pleasure quick to come at call.And summer rides by marsh and wold,And Autumn with her crimson pallAbout the towers of Magdalen[1]rolled;And strange enchantments from the past,And memories of the friends of old,And strong Tradition, binding fastThe "flying terms" with bands of gold,—All these hath Oxford: all are dear,But dearer far the little town,The drifting surf, the wintry year,The college of the scarlet gown,St. Andrews by the Northern sea,That is a haunted town to me!

NIGHTINGALE WEATHER.'Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non?Serai-je nonnette? je crois que non.Derrière chez mon pèreIl est un bois taillis,Le rossignol y chanteEt le jour et la nuitIl chante pour les fillesQui n'ont pas d'ami;Il ne chante pas pour moi,J'en ai un, Dieu merci.'—OLD FRENCH.I 'll never be a nun, I trow,While apple bloom is white as snow.But far more fair to see;I 'll never wear nun's black and whiteWhile nightingales make sweet the nightWithin the apple tree.Ah, listen! 'tis the nightingale,And in the wood he makes his wail,Within the apple tree;He singeth of the sore distressOf many ladies loverless;Thank God, no song for me.For when the broad May moon is low,A gold fruit seen where blossoms blowIn the boughs of the apple tree,A step I know is at the gate;Ah love, but it is long to waitUntil night's noon bring thee!Between lark's song and nightingale'sA silent space, while dawning pales,The birds leave still and freeFor words and kisses musical,For silence and for sighs that fallIn the dawn, 'twixt him and me.

COLINETTE.FOR A SKETCH BY MR. G. LESLIE, A.R.A.France your country, as we know;Room enough for guessing yet,What lips now or long ago,Kissed and named you—Colinette.In what fields from sea to sea,By what stream your home was set,Loire or Seine was glad of thee,Marne or Rhone, O Colinette?Did you stand with "maidens ten,Fairer maids were never seen,"When the young king and his menPassed among the orchards green?Nay, old ballads have a noteMournful, we would fain forget;No such sad old air should floatRound your young brows, Colinette.Say, did Ronsard sing to you,Shepherdess, to lull his pain,When the court went wandering throughRose pleasances of Touraine?Ronsard and his famous RoseLong are dust the breezes fret;You, within the garden close,You are blooming, Colinette.Have I seen you proud and gay,With a patched and perfumed beau,Dancing through the summer day,Misty summer of Watteau?Nay, so sweet a maid as youNever walked a minuetWith the splendid courtly crew;Nay, forgive me, Colinette.Not from Greuze's canvassesDo you cast a glance, a smile;You are not as one of these,Yours is beauty without guile.Round your maiden brows and hairMaidenhood and Childhood met,Crown and kiss you, sweet and fair,New art's blossom, Colinette.

FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.Returning from what other seasDost thou renew thy murmuring,Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of theseTo tell, the shores where float and clingMy love, my hope, my memories?Say does my lady wake to noteThe gold light into silver die?Or do thy waves make lullaby,While dreams of hers, like angels, floatThrough star-sown spaces of the sky?Ah, would such angels came to meThat dreams of mine might speak with hers,Nor wake the slumber of the seaWith words as low as winds that beAwake among the gossamers!

A DREAMWhy will you haunt my sleep?You know it may not be,The grave is wide and deep,That sunders you and me;In bitter dreams we reapThe sorrow we have sown,And I would I were asleep,Forgotten and alone!We knew and did not know,We saw and did not see,The nets that long agoFate wove for you and me;The cruel nets that keepThe birds that sob and moan,And I would we were asleep,Forgotten and alone!

TWILIGHT ON TWEED.Three crests against the saffron sky,Beyond the purple plain,The dear remembered melodyOf Tweed once more again.Wan water from the border hills,Dear voice from the old years,Thy distant music lulls and stills,And moves to quiet tears.Like a loved ghost thy fabled floodFleets through the dusky land;Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,My feet returning stand.A mist of memory broods and floats,The border waters flow;The air is full of ballad notes,Borne out of long ago.Old songs that sung themselves to me,Sweet through a boy's day dream,While trout below the blossom'd treePlashed in the golden stream.* * * * * * * *¨* * * * * * *Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,Fair and thrice fair you be;You tell me that the voice is stillThat should have welcomed me.1870.

A SUNSET OF WATTEAULUI.The silk sail fills, the soft winds wake,Arise and tempt the seas;Our ocean is the Palace lake,Our waves the ripples that we makeAmong the mirrored trees.ELLE.Nay, sweet the shore, and sweet the song,And dear the languid dream;The music mingled all day longWith paces of the dancing throng,And murmur of the stream.An hour ago, an hour ago,We rested in the shade;And now, why should we seek to knowWhat way the wilful waters flow?There is no fairer glade.LUI.Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail,And seek him everywhere;Perchance in sunset's golden paleHe listens to the nightingale,Amid the perfumed air.Come, he has fled; you are not you,And I no more am I;Delight is changeful as the hueOf heaven, that is no longer blueIn yonder sunset sky.ELLE.Nay, if we seek we shall not find,If we knock none openeth;Nay, see, the sunset fades behindThe mountains, and the cold night windBlows from the house of Death.

ROMANCE.My Love dwelt in a Northern land.A grey tower in a forest greenWas his, and far on either handThe long wash of the waves was seen,And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,The woven forest boughs between!And through the clear faint Northern nightThe sunset slowly died away,And herds of strange deer, silver-white,Stole forth among the branches grey;About the coming of the light,They fled like ghosts before the day!I know not if the forest greenStill girdles round that castle grey;I know not if the boughs betweenThe white deer vanish ere the day;Above my Love the grass is green,My heart is colder than the clay!

A SUNSET ON YARROW.The wind and the day had lived together,They died together, and far awaySpoke farewell in the sultry weather,Out of the sunset, over the heather,The dying wind and the dying day.Far in the south, the summer levinFlushed, a flame in the grey soft air:We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;You saw within, but to me 'twas givenTo see your face, as an angel's, there.Never again, ah surely never,Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,The low good-night of the hill and the river,The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,Twain grown one in the solitude.

A PORTRAIT OF 1783.Your hair and chin are like the hairAnd chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear;You were unfashionably fairAnd sad you were when girls are gay,You read a book aboutLe vraiMérite de l'homme, alone in May.Whatcanit be,Le vrai mérite de l'homme?Not gold,Not titles that are bought and sold,Not wit that flashes and is cold,But Virtue merely!Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau(And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know),You bade the crowd of foplings go,You glanced severely,Dreaming beneath the spreading shadeOf "that vast hat the Graces made";[2]So Rouget sang—while yet he playedWith courtly rhyme,And hymned great Doisi's red perruque,And Nice's eyes, and Zulmé's look,And dead canaries, ere he shookThe sultry timeWith strains like thunder. Loud and lowMethinks I hear the murmur grow,The tramp of men that come and goWith fire and sword.They war against the quick and dead,Their flying feet are dashed with red,As theirs the vintaging that treadBefore the Lord.O head unfashionably fair,What end was thine, for all thy care?We only see thee dreaming there:We cannot seeThe breaking of thy vision, whenThe Rights of Man were lords of men,When virtue won her own againIn '93.

THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS.[The myth in the "Birds" of Aristophanes, which represents Birds as olderthan the Gods, may have been a genuine Greek tradition. The followinglines show how prevalent is the myth among widely severed races. TheMexican Bird-gods I omit; who can rhyme to Huitzilopochtli?]The Birds Sing:We would have you to wit, that on eggs thoughwe sit, and are spiked on the spit, and are bakedin the pan,Birds are older by far than your ancestors are, and madelove and made war ere the making of Man!For when all things were dark, not a glimmer nor spark,and the world like a barque without rudder or sailFloated on through the night, 't was a Bird struck alight, 't was a flash from the bright feather'd Tonatiu's[3]tail!Then the Hawk[4]with some dry wood flew up in thesky, and afar, safe and high, the Hawk lit Sun andMoon,And the Birds of the air they rejoiced everywhere, andthey recked not of care that should come on themsoon.For the Hawk, so they tell, was then known as Pundjel,[5]and a-musing he fell at the close of the day;Then he went on the quest, as we thought, of a nest,with some bark of the best, and a clawful of clay,[6]And with these did he frame two birds lacking a name,without feathers (his game was a puzzle to all);Next around them he fluttered a-dancing, and muttered;and, lastly, he uttered a magical call:Then the figures of clay, as they featherless lay, theyleaped up, who but they, and embracing they fell,Andthiswas the baking of Man, and his making; butnow he's forsaking his Father, Pundjel!Now these creatures of mire, they kept whining for fire,and to crown their desire who was found but theWren?To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole heflame, and for this has a name in the memory ofmen![7]And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to menbrought it through without falter or fail?Why the Hawk 't was again, and great Indra to menwould appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night,the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.[8]And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung'smead? why 't is told in the creed of the Sagamenstrong,'T was the Eagle god who brought the drink from theblue, and gave mortals the brew that's the fountainof song.[9]Next, who gave men their laws? and what reason orcause the young brave overawes when in need of asquaw,Till he thinks it a shame to wed one of his name, andhis conduct you blame if he thus breaks the law?For you still hold it wrong if alubra[10]belong to theself-samekobong[11]that is Father of you,To takeheras a bride to your ebony side; nay, yougive her a wide berth; quite right of you, too.Forherfather, you know, isyourfather, the Crow, andno blessing but woe from the wedding would spring.Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gumshade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow wasthe King.[12]Thus on Earth's little ball to the Birds you owe all, yetyour gratitude's small for the favours they've done,And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will,yes, you plunder and kill the bright birds one byone;There 's a price on their head, and the Dodo is dead,and the Moa has fled from the sight of the sun!

[1]Pronounced "Maudlin."

[2]Vous y verrez, belle Julie,Que ce chapeau tout maltraitéFut, dans un instant de folie,Par les Grâces même invente."À Julie."Essais en Prose et en Vers, par Joseph Lisle; Paris, An. V. de la République.

[2]

Vous y verrez, belle Julie,Que ce chapeau tout maltraitéFut, dans un instant de folie,Par les Grâces même invente.

"À Julie."Essais en Prose et en Vers, par Joseph Lisle; Paris, An. V. de la République.

[3]Tonatiu, the Thunder Bird; well known to the Dacotahs and Zulus.

[4]The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.

[5]Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and "culture-hero" of several Australian tribes.

[6]The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.

[7]In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros; in Normandy this part is played by the Wren.

[8]Yehl: the Raven God of the Thlinkeets.

[9]Indra stole Soma as a Hawk and as a Quail. For Odin's feat as a Bird, seeBragi's Tellingin the Younger Edda.

[10]Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, gave Australians their marriage laws.

[11]Lubra, a woman;kobong, "totem"; or, to please Mr. Max Müller, "otem."

[12]The Crow was the Hawk's rival.

HESPEROTHEN.By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth theVanity of Melancholy. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the places of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Françoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones.

HESPEROTHEN.

By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth theVanity of Melancholy. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the places of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Françoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones.

THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA.There is a land in the remotest day,Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies;The eastern shores see faint tides fade away,That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs,Make life,—the lands beneath the blue of common, skies.But in the west is a mysterious sea,(What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,With islands where a Goddess walks alone,And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan.Eastward the human cares of house and home,Cities, and ships, and unknown Gods, and loves;Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam,And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves,Wherein a God may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.The Gods are careless of the days and deathOf toilsome men, beyond the western seas;The Gods are heedless of their painful breath,And love them not, for they are not as these;But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.Yet the Phæacians well they love, who liveAt the light's limit, passing careless hours,Most like the Gods; and they have gifts to give,Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers,And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers.It is a quiet midland; in the coolOf twilight comes the God, though no man prayed,To watch the maids and young men beautifulDance, and they see him, and are not afraid,For they are near of kin to Gods, and undismayed.Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nighThe dreamy isles that the Immortals keep!But with a mist they hide them wondrously,And far the path and dim to where they sleep,—The loved, the shadowy lands along the shadowy deep.

THE DEPARTURE FROM PHÆACIA.THE PHÆACIANS.Why from the dreamy meadows,More fair than any dream,Why will you seek the shadowsBeyond the ocean stream?Through straits of storm and peril,Through firths unsailed before,Why make you for the sterile,The dark Kimmerian shore?There no bright streams are flowing,There day and night are one,No harvest time, no sowing,No sight of any sun;No sound of song or tabor,No dance shall greet you there;No noise of mortal labour,Breaks on the blind chill air.Are ours not happy places,Where Gods with mortals trod?Saw not our sires the facesOf many a present God?THE SEEKERS.Nay, now no God comes hither,In shape that men may see;They fare we know not whither,We know not what they be.Yea, though the sunset lingersFar in your fairy glades,Though yours the sweetest singers,Though yours the kindest maids,Yet here be the true shadows,Here in the doubtful light;Amid the dreamy meadowsNo shadow haunts the night.We seek a city splendid,With light beyond the sun;Or lands where dreams are ended,And works and days are done.

A BALLAD OF DEPARTURE.[1]Fair white bird, what song art thou singingIn wintry weather of lands o'er sea?Dear white bird, what way art thou winging,Where no grass grows, and no green tree ?I looked at the far off fields and grey,There grew no tree but the cypress tree,That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May,And whoso looks on it, woe is he.And whoso eats of the fruit thereofHas no more sorrow, and no more love;And who sets the same in his garden stead,In a little space he is waste and dead.We seek a city splendid,With light beyond the sun;Or lands where dreams are ended,And works and days are done.

THEY HEAR THE SIRENS FOR THE SECOND TIME.The weary sails a moment slept,The oars were silent for a space,As past Hesperian shores we swept,That were as a remembered faceSeen after lapse of hopeless years,In Hades, when the shadows meet,Dim through the mist of many tears,And strange, and though a shadow, sweet.So seemed the half-remembered shore,That slumbered, mirrored in the blue,With havens where we touched of yore,And ports that over well we knew.Then broke the calm before a breezeThat sought the secret of the west;And listless all we swept the seasTowards the Islands of the Blest.Beside a golden sanded bayWe saw the Sirens, very fairThe flowery hill whereon they lay,The flowers set upon their hair.Their old sweet song came down the wind.Remembered music waxing strong,Ah now no need of cords to bind,No need had we of Orphic song.It once had seemed a little thing,To lay our lives down at their feet,That dying we might hear them sing,And dying see their faces sweet;But now, we glanced, and passing by,No care had we to tarry long;Faint hope, and rest, and memoryWere more than any Siren's song.

CIRCE'S ISLE REVISITED.Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried;Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied;No voice from bowers o'ergrown and ruinousAs fallen rocks upon the mountain side.There was no sound of singing in the air;Faded or fled the maidens that were fair,No more for sorrow or joy were seen of us,No light of laughing eyes, or floating hair.The perfume, and the music, and the flameHad passed away; the memory of shameAlone abode, and stings of faint desire,And pulses of vague quiet went and came.Ah, Circe! in thy sad changed fairy place,Our dead Youth came and looked on us a space,With drooping wings, and eyes of faded fire,And wasted hair about a weary face.Why had we ever sought the magic isleThat seemed so happy in the days erewhile?Why did we ever leave it, where we metA world of happy wonders in one smile?Back to the westward and the waning lightWe turned, we fled; the solitude of nightWas better than the infinite regret,In fallen places of our dead delight.

THE LIMIT OF LANDS.Between the circling ocean seaAnd the poplars of PersephoneThere lies a strip of barren sand,Flecked with the sea's last spray, and strownWith waste leaves of the poplars, blownFrom gardens of the shadow land.With altars of old sacrificeThe shore is set, in mournful wiseThe mists upon the ocean brood;Between the water and the airThe clouds are born that float and fareBetween the water and the wood.Upon the grey sea never sailOf mortals passed within our hail,Where the last weak waves faint and flow;We heard within the poplar paleThe murmur of a doubtful wailOf voices loved so long ago.We scarce had care to die or live,We had no honey cake to give,No wine of sacrifice to shed;There lies no new path over sea,And now we know how faint they be,The feasts and voices of the Dead.Ah, flowers and dance! ah, sun and snow!Glad life, sad life we did foregoTo dream of quietness and rest;Ah, would the fleet sweet roses herePoured light and perfume through the drearPale year, and wan land of the west.Sad youth, that let the spring go byBecause the spring is swift to fly,Sad youth, that feared to mourn or love,Behold how sadder far is this,To know that rest is nowise bliss,And darkness is the end thereof.

THE SHADE OF HELEN.Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode inEgypt; for the Gods, having made in her semblance awoman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to bewife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks andTrojans slew each other.(Written in the Pyrenees.)Why from the quiet hollows of the hills,And extreme meeting place of light and shade,Wherein soft rains fell slowly, and becameClouds among sister clouds, where fair spent beamsAnd dying glories of the sun would dwell,'Why have they whom I know not, nor may know,Strange hands, unseen and ruthless, fashioned me,And borne me from the silent shadowy hills,Hither, to noise and glow of alien life,To harsh and clamorous swords, and sound of war?One speaks unto me words that would be sweet,Made harsh, made keen with love that knows me not,And some strange force, within me or around,Makes answer, kiss for kiss, and sigh for sigh,And somewhere there is fever in the halls,That troubles me, for no such trouble cameTo vex the cool far hollows of the hills.The foolish folk crowd round me, and they cry,That house, and wife, and lands, and all Troy town,Are little to lose, if they may hold me here,And see me flit, a pale and silent shade,Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines.At other hours another life seems mine,Where one great river runs unswollen of rain,By pyramids of unremembered kings,And homes of men obedient to the Dead.There dark and quiet faces come and goAround me, then again the shriek of arms,And all the turmoil of the Ilian men.What are they? even shadows such as I.What make they? Even this—the sport of Gods—The sport of Gods, however free they seem.Ah would the game were ended, and the light,The blinding light, and all too mighty suns,Withdrawn, and I once more with sister shades,Unloved, forgotten, mingled with the mist,Dwelt in the hollows of the shadowy hills.

PISIDICÊ.The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius,who preserved fragments of a lost epic on theexpedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an islandallied with Troy.The daughter of the Lesbian kingWithin her bower she watched the war,Far off she heard the arrows ring,The smitten harness ring afar;And, fighting from the foremost car,Saw one that smote where all must flee;More fair than the Immortals areHe seemed to fair Pisidicê!She saw, she loved him, and her heartBefore Achilles, Peleus' son,Threw all its guarded gates apart,A maiden fortress lightly won!And, ere that day of fight was done,No more of land or faith recked she,But joyed in her new life begun,—Her life of love, Pisidicê!She took a gift into her hand,As one that had a boon to crave;She stole across the ruined landWhere lay the dead without a grave,And to Achilles' hand she gaveHer gift, the secret postern's key."To-morrow let me be thy slave!"Moaned to her love Pisidicê.Ere dawn the Argives' clarion callRang down Methymna's burning street;They slew the sleeping warriors all,They drove the women to the fleet,Save one, that to Achilles' feetClung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he:"For her no doom but death is meet."And there men stoned Pisidicê.In havens of that haunted coast,Amid the myrtles of the shore,The moon sees many a maiden ghost,—Love's outcast now and evermore.The silence hears the shades deploreTheir hour of dear-bought love; buttheeThe waves lull, 'neath thine olives hoar,To dreamless rest, Pisidicê!

[1]From the Romaic.

THE ODYSSEY.As one that for a weary space has lainLulled by the song of Circe and her wineIn gardens near the pale of Proserpine,Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,And only the low lutes of love complain,And only shadows of wan lovers pine,As such an one were glad to know the brineSalt on his lips, and the large air again,—So gladly, from the songs of modern speechMen turn, and see the stars, and feel the freeShrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,And through the music of the languid hours,They hear like ocean on a western beachThe surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

TWO SONNETS OF THE SIRENS."Les Sirènes estoient tant intimes amies et fidellescompagnes de Proserpine, qu'elles estoient toujoursensemble. Esmues du juste deuil de la perte de leurchère compagne, et enuyées jusques au desespoir,elles s'arrestèrent à la mer Sicilienne, où par leurschants elles attiroient les navigans, mais l'uniquefin de la volupté de leur musique est la Mort."—Pontus de Tyard—1570.I.The Sirens once were maidens innocentThat through the water-meads with ProserpinePlucked no fire-hearted flowers, but were contentCool fritillaries and flag-flowers to twine,With lilies woven and with wet woodbine;Till forth to seek Ætnæan buds they went,And their kind lady from their choir was rentBy Hades, down the irremeable decline.And they have sought her all the wide world through,Till many years, and wisdom, and much wrong,Have filled and changed their song, and o'er the blueRings deadly sweet the magic of the song,And whoso hears must listen till he dieFar on the flowery shores of Sicily.II.So is it with this singing art of ours,That once with maids went, maidenlike, and playedWith woven dances in the poplar-shade,And all her song was but of lady's bowersAnd the returning swallows, and spring-flowers,Till forth to seek a shadow-queen she strayed,A shadowy land; and now hath overweighedHer singing chaplet with the snow and showers.And running rivers for the bitter brineShe left, and by the margin of life's seaSings, and her song is full of the sea's moan,And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine;And whoso once has listened to her, heHis whole life long is slave to her alone.

LOVE'S EASTER.SONNET.Love died hereLong ago;O'er his bier,Lying low,Poppies throw;Shed no tear;Year by year,Roses blow!Year by year,Adon—dearTo Love's Queen—Does not die!Wakes when greenMay is nigh!

TWILIGHT.SONNET.(AFTER RICHEPIN.)Light has flown!Through the greyThe wind's wayThe sea's moanSound alone!For the dayThese repayAnd atone!Scarce I know,Listening soTo the streamsOf the sea,If old dreamsSing to me!

BION.The wail of Moschus on the mountains cryingThe Muses heard, and loved it long ago;They heard the hollows of the hills replying,They heard the weeping water's overflow;They winged the sacred strain—the song undying,The song that all about the world must go,—When poets for a poet dead are sighing,The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weepingFor Adonais by the summer sea,The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleepingFar from "the forest ground called Thessaly"),—These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

SAN TERENZO.(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before thewreck of the Don Juan.)Mid April seemed like some November day,When through the glassy waters, dull as lead,Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,Slipped down the curved shores of the Spezian bay,Rounded a point,—and San Terenzo layBefore us, that gay village, yellow and red,With walls that covered Shelley's homeless head,—Hishouse, a place deserted, bleak and grey.The waves broke on the door-step; fishermenCast their long nets, and drew, and cast again.Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free,When suddenly the forest glades were stirredWith waving pinions, and a great sea birdFlew forth, like Shelley's spirit, to the sea!

NATURAL THEOLOGY.ἐπει καὶ τοῡτον ὀΐομαι ἀθανατοισινἔυχεσται· Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ' ἄνθρωποι.OD. III. 47."Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good,But He was spoiled by fighting many things;He wars upon the lions in the wood,And breaks the Thunder-bird's tremendous wings;But still we cry to Him,—We are thy brood—O Cagn, be merciful!and us He bringsTo herds of elands, and great store of food,And in the desert opens water-springs."So Qing, King Nqsha's Bushman hunter, spoke,Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,When all were weary, and soft clouds of smokeWere fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:And suddenly in each man's heart there wokeA pang, a sacred memory of prayer.

HOMER.Homer, thy song men liken to the sea,With all the notes of music in its tone,With tides that wash the dim dominionOf Hades, and light waves that laugh in gleeAround the isles enchanted; nay, to meThy verse seems as the River of source unknownThat glasses Egypt's temples overthrownIn his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.No wiser we than men of heretoforeTo find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vastHis fertile flood, that murmurs evermoreOf gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

RONSARD.Master, I see thee with the locks of grey,Crowned by the Muses with the laurel-wreath;I see the roses hiding underneath,Cassandra's gift; she was less dear than they.Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay,The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath,Hast sung thine answer to the songs that breatheThrough ages, and through ages far away.And thou hast heard the pulse of Pindar beat,Known Horace by the fount Bardusian!Their deathless line thy living strains repeat,But ah, thy voice is sad, thy roses wan,But ah, thy honey is not cloying sweet,Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.

HOMEROC UNITY.The sacred keep of Ilion is rentWith trench and shaft; foiled waters wander slowThrough plains where Simois and Scamander wentTo war with Gods and heroes long ago.Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying lowIn rich Mycenae, do the Fates relent:The bones of Agamemnon are a show,And ruined is his royal monument.The dust and awful treasures of the Dead,Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee,Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to seeThe crown that burns on thine immortal headOf indivisible supremacy!

IN ITHACA."And now am I greatly repenting that ever I leftmy life with thee, and the immortality thou didstpromise me."—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso.LucianiVera Historia.'Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o'erWith all the waves and wars, a weary while,Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,Go down the ways of gold, and evermoreHis sad heart followed after, mile on mile,Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,Calypso, and the love that was of yore.Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yetTo look across the sad and stormy space,Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,Because, within a fair forsaken placeThe life that might have been is lost to thee.

DREAMS.He spake not truth, however wise,[1]who said"That happy, and that hapless men in sleepHave equal fortune, fallen from care as deepAs countless, careless, races of the dead."Not so, for alien paths of dreams we tread,And one beholds the faces that he sighsIn vain to bring before his day lit eyes,And waking, he remembers on his bed;And one with fainting heart and feeble handFights a dim battle in a doubtful land,Where strength and courage were of no avail;And one is borne on fairy breezes farTo the bright harbours of a golden starDown fragrant fleeting waters rosy pale.

GÉRARD DE NERVAL.Of all that were thy prisons—ah, untamed,Ah, light and sacred soul!—none holds thee now;No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thouArt free and happy in the lands unnamed,Within whose gates, with weary wings and maimed,Thou still would'st bear that mystic golden boughThe Sibyl doth to singing men allow,Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed.And they would smile and wonder, seeing whereThou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,Dreamily murmuring a ballad air,Caught from the Valois peasants; dost thou findA new life gladder than the old times were,A love as fair as Sylvie, and more kind?

IDEAL.Suggested by a female head in wax, of unknown date,but supposed to be either of the best Greek age, or awork of Raphael or Leonardo. It is now in the LilleMuseum.Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,While magical his fingers o'er thee strayed,Or that great pupil of VerrocchioRedeemed thy still perfection from the shadeThat hides all fair things lost, and things unborn,Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace,And that grave tenderness of thine awhile;Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her faceIs pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn,And only on thy lips I find her smile.

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