The Project Gutenberg eBook ofGrass of Parnassus

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofGrass of ParnassusThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Grass of ParnassusAuthor: Andrew LangRelease date: October 1, 1997 [eBook #1060]Most recently updated: September 16, 2014Language: EnglishCredits: Transcribed from the 1888 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRASS OF PARNASSUS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Grass of ParnassusAuthor: Andrew LangRelease date: October 1, 1997 [eBook #1060]Most recently updated: September 16, 2014Language: EnglishCredits: Transcribed from the 1888 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price

Title: Grass of Parnassus

Author: Andrew Lang

Release date: October 1, 1997 [eBook #1060]Most recently updated: September 16, 2014

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the 1888 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRASS OF PARNASSUS ***

Transcribed from the 1888 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

RHYMES OLD AND NEW

BY ANDREW LANG

LONDONLONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16thSTREET

PRINTED BYSPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARELONDON

Primâ dicta mihi,summâ dicenda Camenâ.

The years will pass, and hearts will range,Youconquer Time, and Care, and Change.Though Time doth still delight to shedThe dust on many a younger head;Though Care, oft coming, hath the guileFrom younger lips to steal the smile;Though Change makes younger hearts wax cold,And sells new loves for loves of old,Time, Change, nor Care, hath learned the artTo fleck your hair, to chill your heart,To touch your tresses with the snow,To mar your mirth of long ago.Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure,Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure,The love which flows from sacred springs,In ‘old unhappy far-off things,’From sympathies in grief and joy,Through all the years of man and boy.

Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strungWhen even this ‘brindled’ head was youngI bring, and later rhymes I bringThat flit upon as weak a wing,But still for you, for yours, they sing!

Manyof the verses and translations in this volume were published first inBallads and Lyrics of Old France(1872). Though very sensible that they have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I print them again because people I like have liked them. The rest are of different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of having been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College Lectures. I would gladly have added to this volume what other more or less serious rhymes I have written, but circumstances over which I have no control have bound them up withBallades, and other toys of that sort.

It may be as well to repeat in prose, what has already been said in verse, that Grass of Parnassus, the pretty Autumn flower, grows in the marshes at the foot of the Muses’ Hill, and other hills, not at the top by any means.

Several of the versions from the Greek Anthology have been published in theFortnightly Review, and the sonnet on Colonel Burnaby appeared inPunch. These, with pieces from other serials, are reprinted by the courteous permission of the Editors.

The verses that were published inBallades and Lyrics, and inBallads and Verses Vain(Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York), are marked in the contents with an asterisk.

DEEDS OF MEN

PAGE

Seekers for a city

The white Pacha

Midnight,January25, 1886

Advance,Australia

Colonel Burnaby

Melville and Coghill

RHODOCLEIA

To Rhodocleia

AVE

Clevedon Church

Twilight on Tweed*

Metempsychosis*

Lost in Hades*

A Star in the Night*

A Sunset on Yarrow*

Another Way

HESPEROTHEN*

The Seekers for Phæacia

A song of Phæacia

The Departure from Phæacia

A Ballad of Departure

They Hear the Sirens for the Second Time

Circe’s Isle Revisited

The Limit of Lands

VERSES

Martial in Town

April on Tweed

Tired of Towns

Scythe Song

Pen and Ink

A Dream

The Singing Rose

A Review in Rhyme

Colinette*

A Sunset of Watteau*

Nightingale Weather*

Love and Wisdom*

Good-Bye*

An Old Prayer*

À la Belle Hélène*

Sylvie et Aurélie*

A Lost Path*

The Shade of Helen*

SONNETS

She

Herodotus in Egypt

Gérard de Nerval*

Ronsard*

Love’s Miracle*

Dreams*

Two Sonnets of the Sirens*

TRANSLATIONS

Hymn to the Winds*

Moonlight*

The Grave and the Rose*

A Vow to Heavenly Venus*

Of His Lady’s Old Age*

Shadows of His Lady*

April*

An Old Tune*

103

Old Loves*

104

A lady of High Degree*

106

Iannoula*

108

The Milk White Doe*

109

Heliodore

112

The Prophet

113

Lais

114

Clearista

115

The Fisherman’s Tomb

116

Of his Death

117

Rhodope

118

To a Girl

119

To the Ships

120

A Late Convert

121

The Limit of Life

122

To Daniel Elzevir

123

THE LAST CHANCE

The Last Chance

127

Palestar that by the lochs of Galloway,In wet green places ’twixt the depth and heightDost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away,When now the moors have doffed the heather bright,Grass of Parnassus,flower of my delight,How gladly with the unpermitted bay—Garlands not mine,and leaves that not decay—How gladly would I twine thee if I might!

The bays are out of reach!But far belowThe peaks forbidden of the Muses’ Hill,Grass of Parnassus,thy returning snowBetween September and October chillDoth speak to me of Autumns long ago,And these kind faces that are with me still.

αειδε δ’ αρα κλέα ανδρων

TOCOLONEL IAN HAMILTON

To you, who know the face of war,You, that for England wander far,You that have seen the Ghazis flyFrom English lads not sworn to die,You that have lain where, deadly chill,The mist crept o’er the Shameful Hill,You that have conquered, mile by mile,The currents of unfriendly Nile,And cheered the march, and eased the strainWhen Politics made valour vain,Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,We send our lays of Englishmen!

“Believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill visible to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed thither. . . But the number and variety of the ways! For you know,There is but one road that leads to Corinth.”Hermotimus(Mr Pater’s Version).“The Poet says,dear city of Cecrops, and wilt thou not say,dear city of Zeus?”M.Antoninus.

Hermotimus(Mr Pater’s Version).

“The Poet says,dear city of Cecrops, and wilt thou not say,dear city of Zeus?”

M.Antoninus.

ToCorinth leads one road, you say:Is there a Corinth, or a way?Each bland or blatant preacher hathHis painful or his primrose path,And not a soul of all of theseBut knows the city ’twixt the seas,Her fair unnumbered homes and allHer gleaming amethystine wall!

Blind are the guides who know the way,The guides who write, and preach, and pray,I watch their lives, and I divineThey differ not from yours and mine!

One man we knew, and only one,Whose seeking for a city’s done,For what he greatly sought he found,A city girt with fire around,A city in an empty landBetween the wastes of sky and sand,A city on a river-side,Where by the folk he loved, he died.[4a]

Alas! it is not ours to treadThat path wherein his life he led,Not ours his heart to dare and feel,Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel;Yet are we not quite city-less,Not wholly left in our distress—Is it not said by One of old,Sheep have I of another fold?Ah! faint of heart, and weak of will,For us there is a city still!

Dear city of Zeus, the Stoic says,[4b]The Voice from Rome’s imperial days,In Thee meet all things,and disperse,In Thee,for Thee,O Universe!To me all’s fruit thy seasons bring,Alike thy summer and thy spring;The winds that wail,the suns that burn,From Thee proceed,to Thee return.

Dear city of Zeus, shallwenot say,Home to which none can lose the way!Born in that city’s flaming bound,We do not find her, but are found.Within her wide and viewless wallThe Universe is girdled all.All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth,All things that travail on the earth,God’s will they work, if God there be,If not, what is my life to me?

Seek we no further, but abideWithin this city great and wide,In her and for her living, weHave no less joy than to be free;Nor death nor grief can quite appalThe folk that dwell within her wall,Nor aught but with our will befall!

Vainis the dream! However Hope may rave,He perished with the folk he could not save,And though none surely told us he is dead,And though perchance another in his stead,Another, not less brave, when all was done,Had fled unto the southward and the sun,Had urged a way by force, or won by guileTo streams remotest of the secret Nile,Had raised an army of the Desert men,And, waiting for his hour, had turned againAnd fallen on that False Prophet, yet we knowGordonis dead, and these things are not so!Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restoreHer trampled flag—for he loved Honour more—Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.He will not come again, whate’er our need,He will not come, who is happy, being freedFrom the deathly flesh and perishable things,And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings.Nay, somewhere by the sacred River’s shoreHe sleeps like those who shall return no more,No more return for all the prayers of men—Arthur and Charles—they never come again!They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem:Whate’er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream!

To-morrowis a year since Gordon died!A year ago to-night, the Desert stillCrouched on the spring, and panted for its fillOf lust and blood. Their old art statesmen plied,And paltered, and evaded, and denied;Guiltless as yet, except for feeble will,And craven heart, and calculated skillIn long delays, of their great homicide.

A year ago to-night ’twas not too late.The thought comes through our mirth, again, again;Methinks I hear the halting foot of FateApproaching and approaching us; and thenComes cackle of the House, and the Debate!Enough; he is forgotten amongst men.

ON THE OFFER OF HELP FROM THE AUSTRALIANS AFTER THE FALL OF KHARTOUM.

Sons of the giant Ocean isleIn sport our friendly foes for long,Well England loves you, and we smileWhen you outmatch us many a while,So fleet you are, so keen and strong.

You, like that fairy people setOf old in their enchanted seaFar off from men, might well forgetAn elder nation’s toil and fret,Might heed not aught but game and glee.

But what your fathers were you areIn lands the fathers never knew,’Neath skies of alien sign and starYou rally to the English war;Your hearts are English, kind and true.

And now, when first on England fallsThe shadow of a darkening fate,You hear the Mother ere she calls,You leave your ocean-girdled walls,And face her foemen in the gate.

συ δ’ εν στροφάλιγγι κονίηςκεισο μέγας μεγαλωστι, λελασμένος ιπποσυνάων

Thouthat on every field of earth and skyDidst hunt for Death, who seemed to flee and fear,How great and greatly fallen dost thou lieSlain in the Desert by some wandering spear:‘Not here, alas!’ may England say, ‘not hereNor in this quarrel was it meet to die,But in that dreadful battle drawing nighTo thunder through the Afghan passes sheer:

Like Aias by the ships shouldst thou have stood,And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight,The bulwark of thy people and their shield,When Indus or when Helmund ran with blood,Till back into the Northland and the NightThe smitten Eagles scattered from the field.’

(THE PLACE OF THE LITTLE HAND.)

Dead, with their eyes to the foe,Dead, with the foe at their feet,Under the sky laid lowTruly their slumber is sweet,Though the wind from the Camp of the Slain Men blow,And the rain on the wilderness beat.

Dead, for they chose to dieWhen that wild race was run;Dead, for they would not fly,Deeming their work undone,Nor cared to look on the face of the sky,Nor loved the light of the sun.

Honour we give them and tears,And the flag they died to save,Rent from the rain of the spears,Wet from the war and the wave,Shall waft men’s thoughts through the dust of the years,Back to their lonely grave!

(Rhodocleia was beloved by Rufinus, one of the late poets of the Greek Anthology.)

Still, Rhodocleia, brooding on the dead,Still singing of the meads of asphodel,Lands desolate of delight?Say, hast thou dreamed of, or rememberèd,The shores where shadows dwell,Nor know the sun, nor see the stars of night?

There, ’midst thy music, doth thy spirit gazeAs a girl pines for home,Looking along the way that she hath come,Sick to return, and counts the weary days!So wouldst thou fleeBack to the multitude whose days are done,Wouldst taste the fruit that lured Persephone,The sacrament of death; and die, and beNo more in the wind and sun!

Thou hast not dreamed it, but rememberèdI know thou hast been there,Hast seen the stately dwellings of the deadRise in the twilight air,And crossed the shadowy bridge the spirits tread,And climbed the golden stair!

Nay, by thy cloudy hairAnd lips that were so fair,Sad lips now mindful of some ancient smart,And melancholy eyes, the haunt of Care,I know thee who thou art!That Rhodocleia, Glory of the Rose,Of Hellas, ere her close,That Rhodocleia who, when all was doneThe golden time of Greece, and fallen her sun,Swayed her last poet’s heart.

With roses did he woo thee, and with song,With thine own rose, and with the lily sweet,The dark-eyed violet,Garlands of wind-flowers wet,And fragrant love-lamps that the whole night longBurned till the dawn was burning in the skies,Praisingthy golden eyes,And feet more silvery than Thetis’ feet!

But thou didst die and flitAmong the tribes outworn,The unavailing myriads of the past:Oft he beheld thy face in dreams of morn,And, waking, wept for it,Till his own time came at last,And then he sought thee in the dusky land!Wide are the populous places of the deadWhere souls on earth once wedMay never meet, nor each take other’s hand,Each far from the other fled!

So all in vain he sought for thee, but thouDidst never taste of the Lethæan stream,Nor that forgetful fruit,The mystic pom’granate;But from the Mighty Warden fledst; and now,The fugitive of Fate,Thou farest in our life as in a dream,Still wandering with thy lute,Like that sweet paynim lady of old song,Who sang and wandered long,For love of her Aucassin, seeking him!So with thy minstrelsyThou roamest, dreaming of the country dim,Below the veilèd sky!

There doth thy lover dwell,Singing, and seeking still to find thy faceIn that forgetful place:Thou shalt not meet him here,Not till thy singing clearThrough all the murmur of the streams of hellWins to the Maiden’s ear!May she, perchance, have pity on thee and callThine eager spirit to sit beside her feet,Passing throughout the long unechoing hallUp to the shadowy throne,Where the lost lovers of the ages meet;Till then thou art alone!

‘Our Faith and TrothAll time and space controulesAbove the highest sphere we meetUnseen,unknowne,and greet as Angels greet.’

Col.Richard Lovelace. 1649

In MemoriamH. B.

WestwardI watch the low green hills of Wales,The low sky silver grey,The turbid Channel with the wandering sailsMoans through the winter day.There is no colour but one ashen lightOn tower and lonely tree,The little church upon the windy heightIs grey as sky or sea.But there hath he that woke the sleepless LoveSlept through these fifty years,There is the grave that has been wept aboveWith more than mortal tears.And far below I hear the Channel sweepAnd all his waves complain,As Hallam’s dirge through all the years must keepIts monotone of pain.

* * * * *

Grey sky, brown waters, as a bird that flies,My heart flits forth from theseBack to the winter rose of northern skies,Back to the northern seas.And lo, the long waves of the ocean beatBelow the minster grey,Caverns and chapels worn of saintly feet,And knees of them that pray.And I remember me how twain were oneBeside that ocean dim,I count the years passed over since the sunThat lights me looked on him,And dreaming of the voice that, save in sleep,Shall greet me not again,Far, far below I hear the Channel sweepAnd all his waves complain.

Threecrests against the saffron sky,Beyond the purple plain,The kind 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 steam.

* * * * *

Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,Fair and too fair you be;You tell me that the voice is stillThat should have welcomed me.

1870.

Ishallnot see thee, nay, but I shall knowPerchance, the grey eyes in another’s eyes,Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flowOn purest brows, yea, and the swift surmiseShall follow and track, and find thee in disguiseOf all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow,When through the scent of heather, faint and low,The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.

From all sweet art, and out of all old rhyme,Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;The shadows of the beauty of all time,In song or story are but shapes of thee;Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear,Shall life or death bring all thy being near?

Idreamedthat somewhere in the shadowy place,Grief of farewell unspoken was forgotIn welcome, and regret remembered not;And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praiseOn lips that had been songless many days;Hope had no more to hope for, and desireAnd dread were overpast, in white attireNew born we walked among the new world’s ways.

Then from the press of shades a spirit threwTowards me such apples as these gardens bear;And turning, I was ’ware of her, and knewAnd followed her fleet voice and flying hair,—Followed, and found her not, and seeking youI found you never, dearest, anywhere.

Theperfect piteous beauty of thy faceIs like a star the dawning drives away;Mine eyes may never see in the bright dayThy pallid halo, thy supernal grace;But in the night from forth the silent placeThou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a strayStar of the starry flock that in the greyIs seen, and lost, and seen a moment’s space.

And as the earth at night turns to a star,Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun,So in the spiritual place afar,At night our souls are mingled and made one,And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise,That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.

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 neverShall 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.

Cometo me in my dreams,and then,One saith,I shall be well again,For then the night will more than payThe hopeless longing of the day.

Nay, come notthouin dreams, my sweet,With shadowy robes, and silent feet,And with the voice, and with the eyesThat greet me in a soft surprise.

Last night, last night, in dreams we met,And how, to-day, shall I forget,Or how, remembering, restrainMine incommunicable pain?

Nay, where thy land and people are,Dwell thou remote, apart, afar,Nor mingle with the shapes that sweepThe melancholy ways of Sleep.

But if, perchance, the shadows break,If dreams depart, and men awake,If face to face at length we see,Be thine the voice to welcome me.

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 place 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.

Thereis a land in the remotest day,Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies;The eastern shore sees faint tides fade away,That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighsMake life,—the lands below 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 the 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 neat 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.

Thelanguid sunset, mother of roses,Lingers, a light on the magic seas,The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses,Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze.

The red rose clouds, without law or leader,Gather and float in the airy plain;The nightingale sings to the dewy cedar,The cedar scatters his scent to the main.

The strange flowers’ perfume turns to singing,Heard afar over moonlit seas:The Siren’s song, grown faint in winging,Falls in scent on the cedar trees.

As waifs blown out of the sunset, flying,Purple, and rosy, and grey, the birdsBrighten the air with their wings; their cryingWakens a moment the weary herds.

Butterflies flit from the fairy garden,Living blossoms of flying flowers;Never the nights with winter harden,Nor moons wax keen in this land of ours.

Great fruits, fragrant, green and golden,Gleam in the green, and droop and fall;Blossom, and bud, and flower unfolden,Swing, and cling to the garden wall.

Deep in the woods as twilight darkens,Glades are red with the scented fire;Far in the dells the white maid hearkens,Song and sigh of the heart’s desire.

Ah, and as moonlight fades in morning,Maiden’s song in the matin grey,Faints as the first bird’s note, a warning,Wakes and wails to the new-born day.

The waking song and the dying measureMeet, and the waxing and waning lightMeet, and faint with the hours of pleasure,The rose of the sea and the sky is white.

THE PHÆACIANS.

Whyfrom the dreamy meadows,More fair than any dream,Why seek ye for 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 labourBreaks 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.

Fairwhite 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.

Theweary 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 thingTo 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.

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.

Betweenthe 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.

Lastnight, within the stifling train,Lit by the foggy lamp o’erhead,Sick of the sad Last News, I readVerse of that joyous child of Spain,

Who dwelt when Rome was waxing cold,Within the Roman din and smoke.And like my heart to me they spoke,These accents of his heart of old:—

“Brother,had we but time to live,And fleet the careless hours together,With all that leisure has to giveOf perfect life and peaceful weather,

“The Rich Man’s halls,the anxious faces,The weary Forum,courts,and casesShould know us not;but quiet nooks,But summer shade by field and well,But county rides,and talk of books,At home,with these,we fain would dwell!

“Now neither lives,but day by daySees the suns wasting in the west,And feels their flight,and doth delayTo lead the life he loveth best.”

So from thy city prison broke,Martial, thy wail for life misspent,And so, through London’s noise and smokeMy heart replies to the lament.

For dear as Tagus with his gold,And swifter Salo, were to thee,So dear to me the woods that foldThe streams that circle Fernielea!

Asbirds are fain to build their nestThe first soft sunny day,So longing wakens in my breastA month before the May,When now the wind is from the West,And Winter melts away.

The snow lies yet on Eildon Hill,But soft the breezes blow.If melting snows the waters fill,We nothing heed the snow,But we must up and take our will,—A fishing will we go!

Below the branches brown and bare,Beneath the primrose lea,The trout lies waiting for his fare,A hungry trout is he;He’s hooked, and springs and splashes thereLike salmon from the sea!

Oh, April tide’s a pleasant tide,However times may fall,And sweet to welcome Spring, the Bride,You hear the mavis call;But all adown the water-sideThe Spring’s most fair of all.

‘When we spoke to her of the New Jerusalem, she said she would rather go to a country place in Heaven.’

Letters from the Black Country.

I’mweary of towns, it seems a’most a pityWe didn’t stop down i’ the country and clem,And you say that I’m bound for another city,For the streets o’ the New Jerusalem.

And the streets are never like Sheffield, here,Nor the smoke don’t cling like a smut tothem;But the water o’ life flows cool and clearThrough the streets o’ the New Jerusalem.

And the houses, you say, are of jasper cut,And the gates are gaudy wi’ gold and gem;But there’s times I could wish as the gates was shut—The gates o’ the New Jerusalem.

For I come from a country that’s over-builtWi’ streets that stifle, and walls that hem,And the gorse on a common’s worth all the giltAnd the gold of your New Jerusalem.

And I hope that they’ll bring me, in Paradise,To green lanes leafy wi’ bough and stem—To a country place in the land o’ the skies,And not to the New Jerusalem.

Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe,What is the word methinks ye know,Endless over-word that the ScytheSings to the blades of the grass below?Scythes that swing in the grass and clover,Something, still, they say as they pass;What is the word that, over and over,Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

Hush,ah hush, the Scythes are saying,Hush,and heed not,and fall asleep;Hush, they say to the grasses swaying,Hush, they sing to the clover deep!Hush—’tis the lullaby Time is singing—Hush,and heed not,for all things pass,Hush,ah hush! and the Scythes are swingingOver the clover, over the grass!

Yewanderers that were my sires,Who read men’s fortunes in the hand,Who voyaged with your smithy firesFrom waste to waste across the land,Why did you leave for garth and townYour life by heath and river’s brink,Why lay your gipsy freedom downAnd doom your child to Pen and Ink?

You wearied of the wild-wood mealThat crowned, or failed to crown, the day;Too honest or too tame to stealYou broke into the beaten way;Plied loom or awl like other men,And learned to love the guineas’ chink—Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me thenTo earn so few—with Pen and Ink!

Where it hath fallen the tree must lie.’Tis over late formeto roam,Yet the caged bird who hears the cryOf his wild fellows fleeting home,May feel no sharper pang than mine,Who seem to hear, whene’er I think,Spate in the stream, and wind in pine,Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.

For then the spirit wandering,That slept within the blood, awakes;For then the summer and the springI fain would meet by streams and lakes;But ah, my Birthright long is sold,But custom chains me, link on link,And I must get me, as of old,Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink.

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