Class 
 
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 Book •^SSl^ 
 
 Copyright N^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
^\)t Htbersiue iliterature g)erie0 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 SELECTED FROM 
 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 
 AUTHORS 
 
 BT 
 
 LAURA E. LOCKWOOD, Ph.D. 
 
 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 IN WELLESLEY COLLEGE 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
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 ^^ 
 
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 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 R. L. S. 244 
 
 '■■fi'^^ 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
 JAN 24 1916 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In bringing together this group of sonnets, I have had in 
 mind, first, the lover of English poetry who will, I hope, wel- 
 come a small and convenient volume containing so many of 
 his favorite sonnets; and secondly, my own students of Mil- 
 ton, who come to the reading of his sonnets with a vague 
 interest in this form of poetry, but with little historical or 
 technical knowledge about it. They need to read before and 
 after Milton, in order to understand him by comparing his 
 work with that of others; and the sonnet collections hitherto 
 made from the whole field of English literature are in vol- 
 umes too expensive for use in large classes. 
 
 With these objects in mind, I have read from Wyatt and 
 Surrey to the authors in the last number of Poetry, selecting 
 and rejecting, culling and re-culling, until I here offer what 
 seems to me representative of the best English sonnets. 
 There appears a slightly larger proportion of sonnets before 
 Shakespeare, because these are least well known and also 
 the most difficult to obtain. Except in two or three cases, 
 sonnets have been excluded whose entire theme is the de- 
 scription of natural scenery, since such subjects rarely have 
 the inherent unity demanded by the sonnet, however beau- 
 tiful they may be as poetry. The fact that sonnets have 
 appeared in other collections has not in the least influenced 
 their inclusion or exclusion, for the ''best is the best, though 
 a hundred judges have declared it so." The working basis 
 has been to seek sonnets with a clear theme, a definite some- 
 thing to say; and as far as possible to choose only those that 
 develop this thought, according to a clearly conceived plan, 
 in musical, imaginative language. But by no means is every 
 one of these two hundred sonnets great, for a great sonnet is 
 one of the rarest things in literature; real greatness has been 
 
PREFACE 
 
 achieved in few cases. Some of the sonnets have been in- 
 cluded for significance of thought, although faulty in rhyme 
 scheme or lacking power in music; others below excellence 
 in thought, development, or diction have been given place, 
 because they are the highest achievement of the unpoetical 
 age in which they were written. If, however, all together 
 they represent the best our English poets have accomplished, 
 they show how rich, varied, and significant is the message 
 of the sonnet. 
 
 My choice will, doubtless, not meet the approval of any 
 one person, but wherever my judgment is questioned and 
 my sins of commission and omission are condemned, there 
 must necessarily be comparison and discussion; and this will 
 inevitably further intelligence regarding the sonnet and 
 stimulate interest in its poetry, which is the chief end and 
 purpose of this little book. 
 
 Many of these sonnets are from books copyrighted by 
 Houghton Mifflin Company; others are reprinted by cour- 
 teous permission of various pubhshers. A conscientious effort 
 has been made to search out the holders of all copyrights, 
 and it is hoped that no acknowledgments have unintention- 
 ally been omitted. 
 
 Laura E. Lockwood. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 FORM 
 
 The word ''sonnet" is derived from the Italian suono, 
 sound, with the diminutive suffix added; its meaning is, 
 then, "a Uttle sound." This term was clearer to the Italians, 
 from whom we borrowed the poem, than it is to us, for they 
 were in the habit of accompanying tliis form of verse with 
 music. Petrarch sang his own sonnets to the sound of the 
 lute, and it was not unusual to hear the minstrels sing- 
 ing them from street to street. Indeed, the Italians hardly 
 thought of the sonnet except as accompanied by music. 
 
 The rules for the composition of the sonnet have been 
 fixed by the acceptance and practice of the best writers; an- 
 other kind of lyric may choose its number of feet to the line, 
 or lines to the stanza, but the sonnet must have fourteen 
 lines and no more, must have five beats to each line, neither 
 fewer nor greater in number. It was not, however, to the 
 Italians any poem of fourteen five-stress lines, the subject 
 being expanded according to the caprice of the poet; on the 
 contrary, it should have, if it were a regular sonnet,^ a clear 
 and unified theme, stated in the first quatrain, developed or 
 proved in the second, confirmed or regarded from a new point 
 of view in the first tercet, and concluded in the second tercet. 
 It had thus four parts, divided unevenly into two separate 
 systems, eight lines being devoted to placing the thought 
 before the mind, and six to deducing the conclusion from 
 that thought. 
 
 This division was made clearer by the use of pause and 
 rhyme. There were three times when the poet should pause, 
 
 * There were also tailed sonnets, with short-lined stanzas following ; iterating 
 sonnets, having only one or two rhymes; interwoven sonnets, in which words in 
 the middle of the lines rhymed as well as those at the end; and several other 
 forms. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 after having given a definite phase of his subject, before he 
 presented it in a new and brighter hght. The pauses were 
 thus a logical part of the plan to show a theme unfolding in 
 a clear, yet prescribed way; they were not used merely for 
 the sake of pause, or just to make the poem appear neater, 
 but as transition that would render the logic more apparent. 
 Moreover, the rigid rhyme scheme aided this use of pause 
 in the careful blocking out of thought. The quatrains, 
 abbaabba, were alike and held together by the repeating 
 a, yet kept apart by the definite unity of pattern in each; 
 thus emphasizing the separation and the similarity of state- 
 ment and proof. The confirmation and conclusion, however, 
 must be still further set apart by a new rhyme scheme, nei- 
 ther reproducing nor suggesting the succession of sounds in 
 the quatrain; the new scheme did not, indeed, admit any of 
 the rhyming letters " allowed in the quatrains, and it pre- 
 scribed another and different arrangement of rhymes. The 
 favorite order of the sestet was, cdecde or cdcdcd; but 
 here much license was allowed in the placing of rhymes. 
 The rhyming of the last two lines w^as in general avoided; 
 both Dante and Petrarch in a few instances tried this closing 
 rhyme, but evidently considered it unsuitable because it 
 would divide the lines from the rest of the sonnet and give 
 them a peculiar significance that might detract from the 
 perfect unity of the whole. 
 
 The aim and desire of the great Italian writers was that 
 the sonnet should close leaving the reader with the sense of 
 finish and completeness, with the feeling of having been 
 given the thought in its full relation and also its final result. 
 It must not, therefore, v/ork up steadily from the first fine to 
 a climax at the last line, for then no conclusion or conse- 
 quence was possible; nor must it be developed through 
 twelve lines, to be finished off with an epigrammatic turn of 
 thought in the last two lines, since this was merely to startle 
 or surprise the mind of the reader. 
 
 No feeble or obscure fine could be allowed to stand, and no 
 important word should be used twice, unless such repetition 
 were necessary for some peculiar effect. The utmost econ- 
 
 vi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 omy must be practiced, if the poet was to present his thought 
 entire and in a convincing, satisfying manner. Such were 
 the exacting laws which the greatest ItaUan poets sought to 
 follow in their efforts to create a perfect sonnet. 
 
 This does not mean that the laws were absolute and that 
 the poets made no experiments, but comparatively few 
 irregular sonnets from the well-known ^Titers remain to tes- 
 tify the search for another form. Out of 327 written by Pe- 
 trarch, 310 follow the quatrain rhyme scheme as given above, 
 and 301 conform to either the first or the second plan for 
 the sestet. 
 
 Our earliest writers, Wyatt and Surrey, accepted the dic- 
 tum of the Italians as far as number of lines and of feet to 
 the line, but experimented with rhyme. Wyatt almost al- 
 ways follows Petrarch in the octave; the sestet he closes with 
 a rhymed couplet. Surrey was less easily satisfied on the 
 delicate subject of rhyme; he never employs the Italian 
 rhyme scheme, but usually has three quatrains in alternate 
 rhyme with a couplet at the close, or he uses six alternate 
 rhymes with one of these forming the closing couplet; some- 
 times again a new rhyme appears in the last two lines. 
 These two pioneers consistently employed the closing coup- 
 let, which shows that they either had not grasped the rela- 
 tion of rhyme to thought in the Italian scheme, or consid- 
 ered another arrangement better adapted to the English 
 language. 
 
 Since the century of Wyatt and Surrey, the best of our 
 English poets have established by use the canon of fourteen 
 five-stress lines as essential to the sonnet; they have made 
 still further experiments with rhyme. Many combinations 
 and variations of rhyme schemes have been tried. Three 
 clear types have, however, predominated: that modeled on 
 the form of Petrarch, the octave abbaahha, and two 
 or three new rhymes variously arranged in the sestet; that 
 devised by Surrey, but usually called after Shakespeare 
 since his sonnets are the most famous composed in this form, 
 abah cdcdefefg g; and that contrived by Spenser, abab 
 hcbccdcdee, which has had fewer followers than the other 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 two and at present is not often used. The English sonnet 
 composed on one of these patterns may, then, have four, 
 five, six, or seven rhymes, but of these three prevaihng types 
 there have been and are still many modifications. For ex- 
 ample : Shelley's Ozymandias, Hallam's Written in Edinburgh, 
 Dobell's The Army Surgeon, and Rupert Brooke's The Sol- 
 dier. Since, however, the sonnet is a poem deriving part of 
 its charm and power from the fact that the form is conven- 
 tional and familiar to the ear of the reader, no one of these 
 erratic rhyme schemes has found many followers. The mod- 
 ern sonnet remains, with few exceptions, loyal to the scheme 
 of Petrarch or to that of Shakespeare. ^ 
 
 As far as the manner of developing the thought is con- 
 cerned we have three distinct methods in English. The son- 
 net may, as the Petrarchian sonnet usually does, begin and 
 grow to a climax at the end of the eighth line, closing quietly 
 through the following six lines in a natural sequence of 
 thought; secondly, it may be presented by three different 
 statements of the idea, which is the way Shakespeare builds 
 his sonnets, and close with a two-line application, conclusion, 
 or proof; or, lastly, the thought may run over from the oc- 
 tave into the sestet, and the break come, if there is any break 
 at all, later in the poem. Milton was the first to construct 
 sonnets according to this third plan; Wordsworth and later 
 poets very often follow his example. Whichever scheme is 
 adopted, rhyme and pause should be used to interpret and 
 support the plan of thought development, and in the best 
 sonnets this is always the case. But the English poets, lov- 
 ing to play with this little musical instrument of the sonnet, 
 have experimented as often in ways of unfolding the thought 
 as in the manner of arranging the rhymes. 
 
 HISTOKY 
 
 The complexity of the sonnet form would lead one to sup- 
 pose a long period of experimentation before the laws were 
 evolved, settled, and accepted by poets as a convention not 
 
 * For the reason of this loyalty, see the discussion by Watts in Encyclopcedia 
 Britannica (9th edition), vol. xxii, p. 262. 
 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 to be violated. Although this was in all probability the case, 
 there is a very incomplete record of such tentative feeUng 
 after form. Among the earliest known examples occur those 
 with the same number of lines and of feet to the line, as well 
 as something of the same rhyme and pause scheme, as are 
 found in the sonnet at the height of its popularity. Its origin, 
 then, becomes a matter for the labor, or the skillful guessing, 
 of the scholar, a question still of much controversy and of 
 apparently impossible solution. Several theories have been 
 advanced, each having its supporters among students of 
 Italian literature. 
 
 Some hold that the sonnet is a development of the Greek 
 epigram.^ However, the more commonly defended theories 
 are: first, that the Italian singers borrowed the form, or some- 
 thing approximate to it, from the Provengal troubadours,^ 
 and this thesis has been warmly supported, especially by the 
 French critics; secondly, that the sonnet came to birth in 
 Italy itself or at least in Sicily.^ Those who contend that 
 Sicily is to be accorded the fame of creating this form of 
 poem argue that the poets evolved it by working upon Arabic 
 models at the court of WiUiam II of Sicily (1166-89), whose 
 devotion to Arab literature made his court a center of that 
 study, and that it continued to flourish at the court of his 
 successor, Frederick II (1189-1250). Other critics are as 
 firmly convinced that Tuscany or central Italy should have 
 the honor, but they divide themselves into two camps as 
 regards the source poem out of which the sonnet grew. The 
 one group attempt to show that it resulted from a combina- 
 tion of two short love-lyrics, called stromhotti; ^ the octave 
 was originally the eight-line strombotto, rhyming ah ah ah ah 
 and the sestet the six-line strombotto with rhyme, c d c d c d. 
 These two the poets combined, varying the line and chang- 
 ing four feet to five, and thus produced the sonnet. The 
 
 * William Sharp, Sonnets of the Nineteenth Century, p. xxxi. 
 
 * Sidney Lee, Elizabethan Sonnets (London, 1904), vol. i, p. xiii. M. Louis 
 de Vayrieres, Monographic du Sonnet (Paris, 1869). 
 
 3 Francesco Trucchi, Poesie italiane (Prato, 1846), pp. xxvi-xxx. Heinrich 
 Welti, Geschichte des Sonnettes (Leipzig, 1884), pp. 1-54. 
 
 * Tommaso Casini, Le Forme metriche italiana (Firenze, 1890), pp. 35-38. 
 Charles Tomlinson, The Sonnet (London, 1874), pp. 7-29. 
 
 ix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 other group hold that it was modeled on one of the stanzas 
 of a love-song, called a canzone.^ These popular songs were 
 constructed in many ways; one of the forms frequently used 
 may have been the source of the sonnet, as the lines of the 
 stanza were fourteen and the rhyme scheme similar to that 
 later used by the sonnetteers. For example, the stanzas of a 
 canzone by Guittone d' Arezzo rhyme abbaabbaaccadd. 
 The octave is here ready-made in form, and the sestet suffers 
 only change of rhyme. There are strong arguments for, as 
 well as against, both the Italian and the Proven gal origin of 
 the sonnet, but no critic has as yet adduced convincing proof 
 to establish the claims of either country. 
 
 Practically all critics are agreed, whatever theory of origin 
 they hold, that the earliest known writers were Ludovico 
 della Vernaccia (about 1200), Giacomo da Lentino (about 
 1210), and Piero delle Vigne (1181?-1249); and that Guit- 
 tone d' Arezzo (1220-94) was the first poet who composed 
 a sonnet in the form later approved and accepted by the 
 Italian writers. The sonnet rapidly became popular in Italy, 
 was used with great skill by Dante, and brought to the height 
 of its perfection by Petrarch. 
 
 "Whatever its origin in land or poem, Pattison is certainly 
 right when he says, ''The sonnet — both thing and name — 
 comes to us from the Itahan." ^ And it came not by accident 
 or unconscious imitation, but brought by the poets Thomas 
 Wyatt (1503-1642) and the Earl of Surrey (1515-47), with 
 the definite purpose of introducing it into England. They 
 had traveled in Italy and fallen under the spell of Petrarch; 
 returning to England, they set about a reform of English 
 literature. Puttenham tells us: " They greatly polished our 
 rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had 
 been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first 
 reformers of our English metre and stile." ^ The low estate 
 of English poetry is clear when such rough lines and poor 
 rhymes as those of Wyatt were considered a reformation. 
 
 i Mary Bowen, Influence of Petrarch upon the Elizabethan Sonnet. Unpub- 
 lished Thesis. 
 
 2 Mark Pattison, The Sonnets of John Milton (London, 1883). 
 8 Arber Reprints (London, 1869), vol. 7, p. 74. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The lines are, indeed, often little better than stumbling 
 prose. The subject is love, exercising itself in extravagant 
 praise of bodily beauty, and profuse complaint at the fair 
 one's unreasoning coldness and indifference. In his other 
 poetry, Wyatt can be simple and sincere, but in the sonnets 
 he is usually paraphrasing, or attempting to translate di- 
 rectly, the work of Petrarch, and with difficulty endeavoring 
 to maintain the emotional fervor of his master. Surrey, deal- 
 ing generally with the same personal themes, is more musical, 
 has a better command of line, a more graceful and pleasing 
 diction. The work of these poets, done between 1530 and 
 1540, was not published until 1557, in TotteVs Miscellany. 
 This book appears to have been popular, but, strange to say, 
 few poets sought to imitate the new form of verse. 
 
 At this time in France a group of writers, calling them- 
 selves the Pleiade, under the leadership of Ronsard and Du 
 Bellay, set about vigorously the complete reformation of 
 French literature. Their assertion was that French, being 
 crude in thought and form, could be elevated only by an 
 imitation of Greek, Latin, and Italian models; hence one of 
 the favorite tasks of these poets was the translation, para- 
 phrase, or imitation of the Italian sonnets, especially those 
 written by Petrarch. This work, carried on with vigor from 
 about 1550 to the death of Ronsard in 1584, had a great influ- 
 ence in England, where the educated read chiefly French 
 books. 
 
 English thought, under the stimulus of French enthusiasm, 
 turned again to Italy, and the sonnet soon became the popu- 
 lar form in England. Each of the poets, there being so many 
 of them that Ben Jonson says the name of poet became a 
 term of contempt, tried his hand at it. He not only wrote 
 one or a dozen, but he generally composed a sequence of a 
 hundred or a list approaching that perfect number. Thou- 
 sands upon thousands of sonnets were written, almost al- 
 ways on the subject of love, the poets seeking, either ser- 
 vilely or reverently, to follow in the footsteps of Petrarch. 
 They succeeded, however, in most cases, in reproducing only 
 the extravagant love-praise and suffering, but failed to attain 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 the beauty of language and sincerity of emotion that made 
 Petrarch's sonnets Hve. Yet there is a fascination about the 
 wailing sorrows and the glowing praises of Lodge for Phillis, 
 Fletcher for Licia, Daniel for Delia, Percy for Coelia, Dray- 
 ton for Idea, Griffin for Fidessa, Smith for Chloris, Sidney for 
 Stella, and Spenser for his "soverayne saynt." The world 
 seems very young, very fresh, and full of harmless feeling for 
 beauty and love. One somehow senses the beauty as real and 
 discounts the pain as only a means of enhancing the loveli- 
 ness. The sonnets range in poetic grace and emotional sin- 
 cerity from the happiest creations of Sidney and Spenser to 
 the half-indifferent exercises of Drayton or the banalities of 
 Smith and Griffin. They are, to be sure, in most cases only 
 paraphrases of Petrarch or his French imitators, — this Sid- 
 ney Lee has clearly shown us, — nevertheless, we like the 
 poets who follow so ardently, as a child his toy, their ideal 
 of shining eyes and glowing cheeks. 
 
 Shakespeare writes, too, a sequence of sonnets, and he is 
 of and not of this group of lovers who praise and blame 
 their mistresses. Despite all the attempts to find the lady or 
 friend, or both, of his sonnets, the mystery of their meaning 
 has never been satisfactorily solved, yet it is clear that 
 Shakespeare does the same thing his contemporaries are 
 doing, only he does it superlatively well, with far greater 
 power of thought, delicacy of sentiment, and sweetness of 
 music. But the number of really great sonnets from his pen 
 is small; the faults of the time in repetition, involved sen- 
 tences, and extravagant emotion, mar the most of his son- 
 nets. His best are among the best of all literature, yet they 
 are comparatively few in number. 
 
 With the beginning of the seventeenth century the sonnet- 
 eering vogue had somewhat spent its force, and Puritanism 
 began to frown more sternly upon all such idle vanities as 
 praise of ladies' beauty. William Drummond, "the Scottish 
 Petrarch" and disciple of Spenser, writes sonnets to his lady 
 which are free from glorification of physical charm and full 
 of that which the Puritan sanctioned, religious melancholy 
 and prayer for resignation. They are simpler in language, 
 
 xii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 with fewer elaborate figures, and less repetition than have the 
 earlier sonnets; they lack, however, freshness and vigor of 
 imagination. Milton, a httle later, takes time from the stren- 
 uous business of state to write now and then a sonnet. His 
 sonnets begin in English a new type, a new standard of fash- 
 ioning this difficult poem. With one exception, each stands 
 by itself, unconnected with those that precede or follow, 
 and only one deals with that favorite subject of love. Milton 
 uses the sonnet for expressing his thought regarding people 
 or events, as a way of estimating character, praising deeds, 
 or seeking to stimulate men to action. He combines this 
 freer scope of subject-matter with great simpHcity of struc- 
 ture and diction, composing his sonnets without adornment 
 and his sentences to read almost as clearly as prose. Like 
 Shakespeare, however, Milton writes few of the highest qual- 
 ity, not because of imperfect form or faulty subject-matter, 
 but because he is in only a few cases so deeply moved by his 
 theme that emotion makes the lines glow with a compelling 
 vividness and beauty. Before Milton, the sonnet had been 
 sometimes dignified, occasionally simple and sincere, in many 
 cases passionate; yet rarely before his work had these qual- 
 ities been combined in the same sonnet. 
 
 The eighteenth century found its mode of expression in the 
 freer ode, the satire, the more pointed epigram, and the elegy. 
 Very few essayed the sonnet and still fewer, as Cowper in one 
 instance, succeeded in writing sonnets of worth. Gray in 
 1742 wrote his one sonnet, formal, artificial, correct, and 
 classical. Thomas Warton wrote nine; not one of which at- 
 tains anything hke the simplicity we find in Milton, or the 
 grace by which Spenser dehghts us. It is not until 1789, 
 when William Lisles Bowles published his little book of four- 
 teen sonnets, that the sonnet becomes again the medium 
 through which the poet speaks simply and plainly his indi- 
 vidual thoughts and emotions. Bowles followed Milton's 
 practice in avoiding love-themes and in making each sonnet 
 a unit by itself. Coleridge was enthusiastic over the work of 
 this author, beginning his own sonnet with "My heart has 
 thank'd thee, Bowles," and again remarking, "Surely never 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 was a writer so equal in excellence." * This praise did much to 
 make these sonnets known and read. 
 
 It was, however, Wordsworth who re-created and re-digni- 
 fied the sonnet; he loved and defended it against its detrac- 
 tors, using it separately and in sequence for the expression of 
 philosophy, religion, social reform, nature, friendship, and 
 the common events of family life. Like Milton, he gives the 
 sentence structure the simplicity and directness of prose, and 
 at his best develops the thought within the rigid bounds of the 
 sonnet as easily and naturally as in conversation. Most writ- 
 ers since have striven for this ideal, which lets the thought 
 reveal itself without the obvious show of complexly unrolling 
 phrases. Wordsworth, in his defense and his practice, as- 
 sured the acceptance of the sonnet by the Romantic School, 
 with which begins its renaissance and its popularity among 
 modern poets. These two writers, Milton and Wordsworth, 
 so stamped the sonnet that in manner it has changed little 
 since, only gaining new poetic fervor with Keats and Rossetti 
 and Mrs. Browning; in subject, it has become possibly more 
 flexible, lending itself equally as well to the old subject of 
 intimate love as to that of the impersonal criticism of church 
 and state, and to themes all the way between these two. 
 
 » The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Macmillan & Company, 
 1895), p. 40. 
 
ENGLISH SONNETS 
 
 THE DESERTED LOVER CONSOLETH HIMSELF 
 
 Divers doth use, as I have heard and know, 
 
 When that to change their ladies do begin, 
 
 To mourn, and wail, and never for to lynn; 
 
 Hoping thereby to 'pease their painful woe. 
 
 And some there be that when it chanceth so 
 
 That women change, and hate where love hath been, 
 
 They call them false, and think with words to win 
 
 The hearts of them which otherwhere doth grow. 
 
 But as for me, though that by chance indeed 
 
 Change hath outworn the favour that I had, 
 
 I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad, 
 
 Nor call her false that falsely did me feed; 
 
 But let it pass, and think it is of kind 
 
 That often change doth please a woman's mind. 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt (1 503 f -1642), 
 
 THE LOVER DESPAIRING TO ATTAIN 
 
 Whoso list to hunt? I know where is an hind! 
 But as for me, alas! I may no more. 
 The vain travail hath wearied me so sore; 
 I am of them that furthest come behind. 
 Yet may I by no means my wearied mind 
 Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore 
 Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore, 
 Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. 
 Who list to hunt, I put him out of doubt 
 As well as I, may spend his time in vain! 
 And graven with diamonds in letters plain 
 There is written her fair neck round about; 
 "Noli me tangere; for Caesar's I am, 
 And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 1 
 
A VOW TO LOVE FAITHFULLY 
 
 Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green, 
 Or where his beams do not dissolve the ice; 
 In temperate heat, where he is felt and seen; 
 In presence prest of people, mad or wise; 
 Set me in high, or yet in low degree; 
 In longest night, or in the shortest day; 
 In clearest sky, or where clouds thickest be; 
 In lusty youth, or when my hairs are gray: 
 Set me in heav'n, in earth, or else in hell, 
 In hill, or dale, or in the foaming flood; 
 Thrall, or at large, alive whereso I dwell. 
 Sick, or in health, in evil fame, or good. 
 Hers will I be; and only with this thought 
 Content myself, although my chance be nought. 
 Earl of Surrey {1517 f-mi). 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF SPRING 
 
 The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings 
 With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale. 
 The nightingale with feathers new she sings: 
 The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.^ 
 Summer is come, for every spray now springs, 
 The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; 
 The buck in brake his winter coat he shngs; 
 The fishes flete with new repaired scale; 
 The adder all her slough away she slings; 
 The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; 
 The busy bee her honey now she mings; 
 Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. 
 And thus I see among these pleasant things 
 Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs! 
 
 Earl of Surrey. 
 
AMORETTI 
 
 XXII 
 
 This holy season, fit to fast and pray, 
 
 Men to devotion ought to be inclined: 
 
 Therefore, I likewise, on so holy day, 
 
 For my sweet Saint some service fit will find. 
 
 Her temple fair is built within my mind, 
 
 In which her glorious image placed is; 
 
 On which my thoughts do day and night attend. 
 
 Like sacred priests that never think amiss! 
 
 There I to her, as th' author of my bliss. 
 
 Will build an altar to appease her ire; 
 
 And on the same my heart will sacrifice. 
 
 Burning in flames of pure and chaste desire: 
 
 The which vouchsafe, goddess, to accept, 
 
 Among thy dearest relics to be kept. 
 
 Edmund Spenser {15521-1599). 
 
 XL 
 
 Mark when she smiles with amiable cheer, 
 And tell me whereto can ye liken it; 
 When on each eyelid sweetly do appear 
 An hundred Graces as in shade to sit. 
 Likest it seemeth, in my simple wit. 
 Unto the fair sunshine in summer's day; 
 That, when a dreadful storm away is flit, 
 Through the broad world doth spread his goodly ray; 
 At sight whereof, each bird that sits on spray, 
 And every beast that to his den was fled. 
 Comes forth afresh out of their late dismay. 
 And to the light hft up their drooping head. 
 So my storm-beaten heart likewise is cheered 
 With that sunshine, when cloudy looks are cleared. 
 
 Edmund Spenser. 
 
 3 
 
LXVII 
 
 Like as a huntsman after weary chase, 
 Seeing the game from him escaped away. 
 Sits down to rest him in some shady place, 
 With panting hounds beguilM of their prey: 
 So, after long pursuit and vain assay, 
 When I all weary had the chase forsook, 
 The gentle deer returned the self-same way, 
 Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook: 
 There she, beholding me with milder look, 
 Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide; 
 Till I in hand her yet half trembling took, 
 And with her own good will her firmly tied. 
 Strange thing, me seemed, to see a beast so wild, 
 So goodly won, with her own will beguiled. 
 
 Edmund Spenser. 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 Most glorious Lord of life! that, on this day, 
 
 Didst make thy triumph over death and sin; 
 
 And, having harrowed hell, didst bring away 
 
 Captivity thence captive, us to win: 
 
 This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin; 
 
 And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die. 
 
 Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin, 
 
 May live forever in felicity; 
 
 And that thy love we weighing worthily. 
 
 May likewise love thee for the same again; 
 
 And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy, 
 
 With love may one another entertain! 
 
 So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought: 
 
 Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught. 
 
 Edmund Spenser, 
 
LXXV 
 
 One day I wrote her name upon the strand, 
 But came the waves, and washed it away: 
 Again I wrote it with a second hand; 
 But came the tide, and made my pains his pray. 
 
 **Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain essay 
 A mortal thing so to immortahze; 
 For I myself shall like to this decay, 
 And eek my name be wip^d out likewise." 
 
 "Not so," quod I; "let baser things devise 
 To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: 
 My verse your virtues rare shall eternize. 
 And in the heavens write your glorious name. 
 Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue, 
 Our love shall live, and later life renew." 
 
 Edmund Spenser, 
 
 A VISION UPON THE CONCEIT OF THE 
 FAERY QUEEN 
 
 Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, 
 Within that Temple where the vestal flame 
 Was wont to burn; and passing by that way 
 To see that buried dust of Uving fame. 
 Whose tomb fair love, and fairer virtue kept, 
 All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen: 
 At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept, 
 And from thenceforth those graces were not seen; 
 For they this Queen attended, in whose stead 
 Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse. 
 Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed. 
 And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce: 
 Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief. 
 And cursed the access of that celestial thief. 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh {1552?-1618), 
 
ASTROPHEL AND STELLA 
 
 XXXI 
 
 With how sad steps, Moon! thou dimb'st the skies! 
 
 How silently, and with how wan a face! 
 
 What, may it be that even in heavenly place 
 
 That busy archer his sharp arrows tries! 
 
 Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes 
 
 Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case; 
 
 I read it in thy looks: thy languished grace, 
 
 To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 
 
 Then, even of fellowship, Moon, tell me. 
 
 Is constant love deemed there but want of wit? 
 
 Are beauties there as proud as here they be? 
 
 Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
 
 Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess? — 
 
 Do they call virtue there ungratefulness? 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney {1554-1586). 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 Come Sleep! Sleep, the certain knot of peace. 
 The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release. 
 The indifferent judge between the high and low; 
 With shield of proof shield me from out the prease 
 Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw: 
 
 make in me those civil wars to cease; 
 
 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 
 
 Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, 
 A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light, 
 A rosy garland and a weary head: 
 And if these things, as being thine by right. 
 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
 Liveher than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, 
 
XLI 
 
 Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance 
 Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 
 Both by the judgment of the EngUsh eyes 
 And of some sent from that sweet enemy, France; 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance; 
 Town folks my strength; a daintier judge appHes 
 His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise; 
 Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; 
 Others, because of both sides I do take 
 My blood from them who did excel in this, 
 Think Nature me a man-at-arms did make. 
 How far they shot awry! The true cause is, 
 Stella looked on; and from her heavenly face 
 Sent forth the beams which made so fan- my race. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, 
 
 LEAVE ME, LOVE, WHICH REACHEST 
 BUT TO DUST 
 
 Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, 
 And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things; 
 Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: 
 Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings. 
 Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might 
 To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be. 
 Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light 
 That doth both shine and give us sight to see. 
 Oh, take fast hold! let that light be thy guide 
 In this small course which birth draws out to death, 
 And think how evil becometh him to slide 
 Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath. 
 Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see: 
 Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, 
 
PHILLIS 
 
 XXII 
 
 Fair art thou, Phillis, ay, so fair, sweet maid, 
 
 As nor the sun, nor I have seen more fair; 
 
 For in thy cheeks sweet roses are embayed, 
 
 And gold more pure than gold doth gild thy hair. 
 
 Sweet bees have hived their honey on thy tongue, 
 
 And Hebe spiced her nectar with thy breath; 
 
 About thy neck do all the graces throng, 
 
 And lay such baits as might entangle death. 
 
 In such a breast what heart would not be thrall? 
 
 From such sweet arms who would not wish embraces? 
 
 At thy fair hands who wonders not at all 
 
 Wonder itself through ignorance embases? 
 
 Yet natheless though wondrous gifts you call these. 
 
 My faith is far more wonderful than all these. 
 
 Thomas Lodge {1558f-1625). 
 
 WHAT MEANT THE POETS IN INVECTIVE 
 VERSE 
 
 What meant the poets in invective verse 
 
 To sing Medea's shame, and Scylla's pride, 
 
 Calypso's charms by which so many died? 
 
 Only for this their vices they rehearse; 
 
 That curious wits which in the world converse, 
 
 May shun the dangers and enticing shows 
 
 Of such false Sirens, those home-breeding foes. 
 
 That from their eyes their venom do disperse. 
 
 So soon kills not the basilisk with sight; 
 
 The viper's tooth is not so venomous; 
 
 The adder's tongue not half so dangerous. 
 
 As they that bear the shadow of delight, 
 
 Who chain blind youths in trammels of their hair. 
 
 Till waste brings woe, and sorrow hastes despair. 
 
 Robert Greene {1560 f-1592) . 
 
 8 
 
DIANA 
 
 IX 
 
 My lady's presence makes the Roses red, 
 Because to see her lips they blush for shame. 
 The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became; 
 And her white hands in them this envy bred. 
 The Marigold abroad her leaves doth spread, 
 Because the sun's and her power is the same. 
 The Violet of purple colour came. 
 Dyed with the blood she made my heart to shed. 
 In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take; 
 From her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed; 
 The living heat which her eye-beams do make 
 Warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed. 
 The rain wherewith she watereth these flowers. 
 Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers. 
 Henry Constable (1662-1613). 
 
 DELIA 
 
 Beauty, sweet Love, is like the morning dew, 
 Whose short refresh upon the tender green 
 Cheers for a time but till the sun doth shew, 
 And straight 't is gone as it had never been. 
 Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish. 
 Short is the glory of the blushing rose; 
 The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish, 
 Yet which at length thou must be forced to lose- 
 When thou, surcharged with burthen of thy years, 
 Shalt bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth. 
 And that in Beauty's lease, expired, appears 
 The date of Age, the calends of our death, — 
 But ah, no more! — this must not be foretold, 
 For women grieve to think they must be old. 
 
 Samuel Daniel {1562-1619). 
 
 9 
 
CARE-CHARMER SLEEP, SON OF THE 
 SABLE NIGHT 
 
 Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, 
 Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, 
 Relieve my languish, and restore the hght; 
 With dark forgetting of my care return, 
 And let the day be time enough to mourn 
 The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth: 
 Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, 
 Without the torment of the night's untruth. 
 Cease, dreams, the images of the day-desires, 
 To model forth the passions of the morrow; 
 Never let rising Sun approve you liars, 
 To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow: 
 Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, 
 And never wake to feel the day's disdain. 
 
 Samuel Daniel. 
 
 WERE I AS BASE AS IS THE LOWLY PLAIN 
 
 Were I as base as is the lowly plain, 
 And you, my Love, as high as heaven above, 
 Yet should the thoughts of me your humble swain 
 Ascend to heaven in honour of my Love. 
 Were I as high as heaven above the plain, 
 And you, my Love, as humble and as low 
 As are the deepest bottoms of the main, 
 Whereso'er you were, with you my love should go. 
 Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the skies. 
 My love should shine on you like to the sun. 
 And look upon you with ten thousand eyes. 
 Till heaven waxed blind, and till the world were done. 
 Whereso'er I am, below or else above you, 
 Whereso'er you are, my heart shall truly love you. 
 Joshuah Sylvester (1563-1618), 
 
 10 
 
IDEA 
 
 IV 
 
 Bright Star of Beauty! on whose Eyelids sit 
 
 A thousand nymph-like and enamoured Graces, 
 
 The Goddesses of Memory and Wit, 
 
 Which there in order take their several places. 
 
 In whose dear Bosom, sweet delicious Love 
 
 Lays down his quiver, which he once did bear, 
 
 Since he that blessed Paradise did prove. 
 
 And leaves his mother's lap to sport him there. 
 
 Let others strive to entertain with words! 
 
 My soul is of a braver metal made: 
 
 I hold that vile which vulgar wit affords, 
 
 In me 's that faith which Time cannot invade! 
 
 Let what I praise be still made good by you 
 
 Be you most worthy, whilst I am most true. 
 
 Michael Drayton (1563-1631). 
 
 LXXI 
 
 Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part, — 
 
 Nay I have done, you get no more of me: 
 
 And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, 
 
 That thus so cleanly I myself can free: 
 
 Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows. 
 
 And when we meet at any time again. 
 
 Be it not seen in either of our brows 
 
 That we one jot of former love retain. 
 
 Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, 
 
 When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies. 
 
 When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death. 
 
 And Innocence is closing up his eyes, — 
 
 Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, 
 
 From death to life thou mighst him yet recover! 
 
 Michael Drayton, 
 
 11 
 
SONNETS 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
 Thou art more lovely and more temperate: 
 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 
 And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 
 And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
 And every fair from fair sometime declines, 
 By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; 
 But thy eternal sununer shall not fade, 
 Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; 
 Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade. 
 When in eternal Unes to time thou grow'st: 
 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see. 
 So long this lives, and this gives life to thee. 
 
 William Shakespeare (1564-1616). 
 
 XXIX 
 
 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate. 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 Featur'd like him, like him with friends possessed. 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope. 
 With what I most enjoy contented least; 
 Yet in these'thoughts myself almost despising. 
 Haply I think on thee, and then my state. 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; 
 For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 12 
 
XXX 
 
 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
 
 I summon up remembrance of things past, 
 
 I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 
 
 And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: 
 
 Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow. 
 
 For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 
 
 And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, 
 
 And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: 
 
 Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 
 
 And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 
 
 The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 
 
 Which I new pay as if not paid before. 
 
 But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 
 
 All losses are restored and sorrows end. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, 
 Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
 Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; 
 Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
 With ugly rack on his celestial face, 
 And from the forlorn world his visage hide, 
 Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: 
 Even so my sun one early morn did shine 
 With all- triumphant splendour on my brow; 
 But, out, alack! he was but one hour mine. 
 The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. 
 Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; 
 Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun 
 staineth. 
 
 William Shakespeare, 
 13 
 
LV 
 
 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
 
 Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme? 
 
 But you shall shine more bright in these contents 
 
 Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. 
 
 When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 
 
 And broils root out the work of masonry, 
 
 Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn 
 
 The living record of your memory. 
 
 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 
 
 Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room 
 
 Even in the eyes of all posterity 
 
 That wear this world out to the ending doom. 
 
 So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 
 
 You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. 
 
 William Shakespeare, 
 
 LXXI 
 
 No longer mourn for me when I am dead 
 Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
 Give warning to the world that I am fled 
 From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: 
 Nay, if you read this line, remember not 
 The hand that writ it; for I love you so. 
 That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, , 
 If thinking on me then should make you woe. 
 O, if, I say, you look upon this verse 
 When I perhaps compounded am with clay. 
 Do not so much as my poor name rehearse. 
 But let your love even with my life decay; 
 Lest the wise world should look into your moan. 
 And mock you with me after I am gone. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 14 
 
LXXIII 
 
 That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 
 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
 
 In me thou see'st the twilight of such day 
 
 As after sunset fadeth in the west; 
 
 Which by and by black night doth take away, 
 
 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
 
 In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, 
 
 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
 
 As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
 
 Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. 
 
 This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, 
 
 To love that well which thou must leave ere long. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 XGVIII 
 
 From you have I been absent in the spring, 
 
 When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim. 
 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing. 
 
 That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. 
 
 Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
 
 Of different flowers in odour and in hue, 
 
 Could make me any summer's story tell, 
 
 Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: 
 
 Nor did I wonder at the lily's white. 
 
 Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; 
 
 They were but sweet, but figures of delight, 
 
 Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. 
 
 Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away. 
 
 As with your shadow I with these did play. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 15 
 
CII 
 
 My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in 
 
 seeming; 
 I love not less, though less the show appear: 
 That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming 
 The owner's tongue doth publish every where. 
 Our love was new, and then but in the spring. 
 When I was wont to greet it with my lays; 
 As Philomel in summer's front doth sing. 
 And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: 
 Not that the summer is less pleasant now 
 Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, 
 But that wild music burthens every bough. 
 And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. 
 Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, 
 Because I would not dull you with my song. 
 
 William Shakespeare, 
 
 CVI 
 
 When in the chronicle of wasted time 
 
 I see descriptions of the fairest wights, 
 
 And beauty making beautiful old rhyme 
 
 In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, 
 
 Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, 
 
 Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 
 
 I see their antique pen would have express'd 
 
 Even such a beauty as you master now. 
 
 So all their praises are but prophecies 
 
 Of this our time, all you prefiguring; 
 
 And, for they look'd but with divining eyes, 
 
 They had not skill enough your worth to sing: 
 
 For we, which now behold these present days. 
 
 Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 16 
 
CXVI 
 
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments. Love is not love 
 Which alters when it alteration finds, 
 Or bends with the remover to remove: 
 
 no! it is an ever-fixed mark, 
 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
 
 It is the star to every wandering bark. 
 
 Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be taken. 
 
 Love 's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 
 Within his bending sickle's compass come; 
 
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
 
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
 
 If this be error and upon me prov'd, 
 
 1 never writ, nor no man ever lov'd. 
 
 William Shakespeare, 
 
 CXXIX 
 
 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 
 
 Is lust in action; and till action, lust 
 
 Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, 
 
 Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; 
 
 Enjoy 'd no sooner but despised straight; 
 
 Past reason hunted; and no sooner had. 
 
 Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait, 
 
 On purpose laid to make the taker mad: 
 
 Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; 
 
 Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; 
 
 A bhss in proof, and proved, a very woe; 
 
 Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. 
 
 All this the world well knows; yet none knows well 
 
 To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 
 
 William Shakespeare. 
 
 17 
 
AH, SWEET CONTENT! WHERE IS THY 
 MILD ABODE? 
 
 Ah, sweet Content! where is thy mild abode? 
 Is it with Shepherds and light-hearted Swains, 
 Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad. 
 Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains? 
 Ah, sweet Content! where dost thou safely rest? 
 In heaven, with angels? which the praises sing 
 Of Him that made, and rules at His behest. 
 The minds and hearts of every living thing. 
 Ah, sweet Content! where doth thine harbour hold? 
 Is it in churches with religious men. 
 Which please the gods with prayers manifold. 
 And in then- studies meditate it then? 
 Whether thou dost in heaven or earth appear. 
 Be where thou wilt, thou will not harbour here! 
 
 Barnabe Barnes {1569 f -1609). 
 
 AT THE ROUND EARTH'S IMAGINED 
 CORNERS BLOW 
 
 At the round earth's imagined corners blow 
 
 Your trumpets. Angels, and arise, arise, 
 
 From death, you numberless infinities 
 
 Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go. 
 
 All whom the Flood did, and Fire shall, overthrow, 
 
 All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, 
 
 Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes 
 
 Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. 
 
 But let them sleep. Lord, and me mourn a space; 
 
 For, if above all these, my sins abound 
 
 'T is late to ask abundance of Thy grace. 
 
 When we are there. Here on this lowly ground 
 
 Teach me how to repent; for that's as good 
 
 As if Thou'dst sealed my pardon with thy blood. 
 
 John Donne (1573-1631). 
 18 
 
DEATH, BE NOT PROUD, THOUGH SOME 
 HAVE CALLED THEE 
 
 Death, be not proud, though some have called thee 
 
 Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; 
 
 For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow 
 
 Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. 
 
 Prom rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be. 
 
 Much pleasure; then from thee, much more must flow: 
 
 And soonest our best men do with thee go; 
 
 Rest of their bones and soul's deUvery! 
 
 Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, Kings, and desperate 
 
 men. 
 And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell. 
 And poppy or charmes can make us sleep as well, 
 And better than thy stroke; why swelFst thou then? 
 One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 
 And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die. 
 
 John Donne. 
 
 I KNOW THAT ALL BENEATH THE MOON 
 DECAYS 
 
 I KNOW that all beneath the moon decays, 
 And what by mortals in this world is brought, 
 In Time's great periods shall return to nought; 
 That fairest states have fatal nights and days; 
 I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays. 
 With toil of spright which are so dearly bought, 
 As idle sounds, of few or none are sought. 
 And that nought lighter is than airy praise; 
 I know frail beauty 's like the purple flower. 
 To which one morn oft birth and death affords; 
 That love a jarring is of minds' accords. 
 Where sense and will invasal reason's power: 
 Know what I list, this all cannot me move. 
 But that, O me! I both must write and love. 
 
 William Drummond (1585-1649), 
 19 
 
DEAR WOOD, AND YOU, SWEET SOLITARY 
 PLACE 
 
 Dear wood, and you, sweet solitary place. 
 Where from the vulgar I estranged live, 
 Contented more with what your shades me give. 
 Than if I had what Thetis doth embrace; 
 What snaky eye, grown jealous of my peace. 
 Now from your silent horrors would me drive, 
 When Sun, progressing in his glorious race 
 Beyond the Twins, doth near our pole arrive? 
 What sweet dehght a quiet life affords. 
 And what is it to be of bondage free. 
 Far from the madding worldling's hoarse discords, 
 Sweet flowery place I first did learn of thee: 
 Ah I if I were mine own, your dear resorts 
 I would not change with princes' stately courts. 
 
 William Drummond, 
 
 ALEXIS, HERE SHE STAYED; AMONG 
 THESE PINES 
 
 Alexis, here she stayed; among these pines, 
 
 Sweet hermi tress, she did alone repair; 
 
 Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, 
 
 More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines; 
 
 She set her by these musk^d eglantines. 
 
 The happy place the print seems yet to bear; 
 
 Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines, 
 
 To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear; 
 
 Me here she first perceived, and here a morn 
 
 Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face; 
 
 Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born. 
 
 And I first got a pledge of promised grace; 
 
 But ah! what served it to be happy so 
 
 Sith passed pleasures double but new woe? 
 
 William Drummond, 
 20 
 
A ROSE, AS FAIR AS EVER SAW THE 
 NORTH 
 
 A ROSE, as fair as ever saw the North, 
 Grew m a Httle garden all alone: 
 A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth, 
 Nor fairer garden yet was never known. 
 The maidens danced about it morn and noon. 
 And learned bards of it their ditties made; 
 The nimble fairies, by the pale-faced moon, 
 Watered the root, and kissed her pretty shade. 
 But, welladay! the gardener careless grew. 
 The maids and fairies both were kept away. 
 And in a drought the caterpillars threw 
 Themselves upon the bud and every spray. 
 God shield the stock! If heaven send no supplies, 
 The fairest blossom of the garden dies. 
 
 William Browne (1691-1643 f). 
 
 SIN 
 
 Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round I 
 Parents first season us: then schoolmasters 
 Deliver us to laws; they send us bound 
 To rules of reason, holy messengers, 
 Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, 
 Afflictions sorted, anguish of aU sizes, 
 Fine nets and strategems to catch us in. 
 Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, 
 Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness. 
 The sound of glory ringing in our ears; 
 Without, our shame; within, our consciences; 
 Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. 
 Yet all these fences and their whole array 
 One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away. 
 
 George Herbert (1593-1633). 
 
 21 
 
TO THE NIGHTINGALE 
 
 O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray 
 Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, 
 Thou with fresh hope the Lover's heart dost fill, 
 While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. 
 Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day, 
 First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, 
 Portend success in love. 0! if Jove's will 
 Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, 
 Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate 
 Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh; 
 As thou from year to year hast sung too late 
 For my rehef, yet had'st no reason why. 
 Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate, 
 Both them I serve, and of their train am I. 
 
 John Milton (1608-1674), 
 
 TO THE LORD GENERAL FAIRFAX AT THE 
 SIEGE OF COLCHESTER 
 
 Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings, 
 
 FiUing each mouth with envy or with praise, 
 
 And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, 
 
 And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings. 
 
 Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings 
 
 Victory home, though new rebellions raise 
 
 Their Hydra heads, and the false North displays 
 
 Her broken league to imp their serpent wings. 
 
 O, yet a nobler task awaits thy hand 
 
 For what can war but endless war still breed? 
 
 Till truth and right from violence be freed, 
 
 And public faith clear'd from the shameful brand 
 
 Of public fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed. 
 
 While Avarice and Rapine share the land. 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 22 
 
ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEMONT 
 
 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 
 Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old. 
 When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, 
 Forget not: in thy book record their groans 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
 Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
 To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
 O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
 The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow 
 A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 
 
 John Milton, 
 
 ON HIS BLINDNESS 
 
 When I consider how my light is spent 
 Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, 
 And that one Talent which is death to hide 
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
 To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
 My true account, lest He returning chide, 
 *'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" 
 I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 
 That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need 
 Either man's work, or his own gifts. Who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 
 Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed. 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 
 They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 John Milton, 
 
 23 
 
ON HIS DECEASED WIFE 
 
 Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, 
 Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, 
 Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. 
 Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 
 Purification in the Old Law did save. 
 And such as yet once more I trust to have 
 Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, 
 Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. 
 Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight 
 Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined 
 So clear as in no face with more delight. 
 But, oh I as to embrace me she inclined, 
 I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. 
 
 John Milton, 
 
 TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL 
 
 ON THE PROPOSALS OF CERTAIN MINISTERS AT THE COMMITTEE 
 FOR PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud 
 
 Not of war only, but detractions rude. 
 
 Guided by faith and matchless fortitude. 
 
 To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, 
 
 And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud 
 
 Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued, 
 
 While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued. 
 
 And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud. 
 
 And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remains 
 
 To conquer still; Peace hath her victories 
 
 No less renowned than War: new foes arise. 
 
 Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. 
 
 Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 
 Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw. 
 
 John MiUon. 
 24 
 
ON THE DEATH OF MR. RICHARD WEST 
 
 In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 
 And reddening Phcebus lifts his golden fire; 
 The birds in vain their amorous descant join, 
 Or cheerful fields resume their green attire: 
 These ears, alas! for other notes repine, 
 A different object do these eyes require; 
 My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine, 
 And in my breast the imperfect joys expu-e. 
 Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, 
 And new-born pleasure brings to happier men: 
 The fields to all their wonted tribute bear; 
 To warm their Uttle loves the birds complain: 
 I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear. 
 And weep the more because I weep in vain. 
 
 Thomas Gray (1716-1771), 
 
 ON KING ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE AT 
 WINCHESTER 
 
 Where Venta's Norman castle still uprears 
 Its raftered hall, that o'er the grassy f oss 
 And scattered flinty fragments clad in moss. 
 On yonder steep in naked state appears; 
 High-hung remains, the pride of warlike years, 
 Old Arthur's board: on the capacious round 
 Some British pen has sketched the names renowned. 
 In marks obscure, of his immortal peers. 
 Though joined with magic skill, with many a rime. 
 The Druid frame, unhonoiu-ed, falls a prey 
 To the slow vengeance of the wizard Time, 
 And fade the British characters away; 
 Yet Spenser's page, that chaunts in verse sublime 
 Those Chiefs, shall live, unconscious of decay. 
 
 Thomas Warton {1728-1790), 
 
 25 
 
TO MRS. UNWIN 
 
 Mary 1 1 want a lyre with other strings, 
 Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew, 
 An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new 
 And undebased by praise of meaner things; 
 That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, 
 I may record thy worth with honour due. 
 In verse as musical as thou art true, 
 And that immortalizes whom it sings. 
 But thou hast little need. There is a Book 
 By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, 
 On which the eyes of God not rarely look, 
 A chronicle of actions just and bright; 
 There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine. 
 And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine. 
 William Cowper (1731-1800). 
 
 WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF SPRING 
 
 The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove. 
 
 Each simple flower, which she had nursed in dew, 
 
 Anemonies, that spangled every grove. 
 
 The primrose wan, and harebell mildly blue. 
 
 No more shall violets linger in the dell. 
 
 Or purple orchis variegate the plain. 
 
 Till Spring again shall call forth every bell, 
 
 And dress with humid hands her wreaths again. 
 
 Ah, poor humanity! so frail, so fair 
 
 Are the fond visions of thy early day. 
 
 Till iyrsbnt passion and corrosive care, 
 
 Bid all thy fairy colours fade away. 
 
 Another May new buds and flowers shall bring: 
 
 Ah! why has happiness no second Spring? 
 
 Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). 
 
 26 
 
OSTEND: ON HEARING THE BELLS AT SEA 
 
 How sweet the tuneful bells' responsive peal! 
 As when, at opening dawn, the fragrant breeze 
 Touches the trembling sense of pale desease, 
 So piercing to my heart their force I feel! 
 And hark! with lessening cadence now they falll 
 And now, along the white and level tide, 
 They fling their melancholy music wide; 
 Bidding me many a tender thought recall 
 Of summer days, and those dehghtful years 
 When from an ancient tower, in life's fair prime, 
 The mournful magic of their mingling chime 
 First waked my wondering childhood into tears! 
 But seeming now, when all those days are o'er, 
 The sound of joy once heard, and heard no more. 
 William Lisle Bowles {1762-1850), 
 
 O TIME! WHO KNOW'ST A LENIENT 
 HAND TO LAY 
 
 Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay 
 Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence, 
 Lulling to sad repose the weary sense. 
 
 The faint pang stealest unperceived away; 
 On thee I rest my only hope at last, 
 And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear 
 That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, 
 
 1 may look back on every sorrow past. 
 
 And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile; — 
 As some lone bird, at day's departing hour, 
 Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower 
 Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while: — 
 Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure, 
 Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure! 
 
 William Lisle Bowles. 
 
 27 
 
COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE 
 
 September 3, 1802 
 
 Earth has not anything to show more fair: 
 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 A sight so touching in its majesty: 
 This City now doth, like a garment, wear 
 The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
 Open unto the fields, and to the sky; 
 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
 Never did sun more beautifully steep 
 In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; 
 Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! 
 The river ghdeth at his own sweet will: 
 Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; 
 And all that mighty heart is lying still! 
 
 William Wordsworth (1770-1850). 
 
 WRITTEN IN LONDON 
 
 September, 1802 
 
 O Friend! I know not which way I must look 
 
 For comfort, being, as I am, opprest, 
 
 To think that now our life is only drest 
 
 For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, 
 
 Or groom! — We must run glittering like a brook 
 
 In the open sunshine, or we are unblest: 
 
 The wealthiest man among us is the best: 
 
 No grandeur now in nature or in book 
 
 Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, 
 
 This is idolatry; and these we adore: 
 
 Plain living and high thinking are no more: 
 
 The homely beauty of the good old cause 
 
 Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, 
 
 And pure religion breathing household laws. 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 28 
 
LONDON, 1802 
 
 Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour; 
 
 England hath need of thee: she is a fen 
 
 Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, 
 
 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 
 
 Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
 
 Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; 
 
 Oh! raise us up, return to us again; 
 
 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
 
 Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: 
 
 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: 
 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
 
 In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart 
 
 The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 
 
 William Wordsworth, 
 
 rr IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND 
 FREE 
 
 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, 
 
 The holy time is quiet as a Nun 
 
 Breathless with adoration; the broad sun 
 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity; 
 
 The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea: 
 
 Listen! the mighty Being is awake, 
 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 
 A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 
 
 Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, 
 
 If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 
 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine: 
 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; 
 
 And worship 'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 
 
 God being with thee when we know it not. 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 29 
 
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US 
 LATE AND SOON 
 
 The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
 The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours. 
 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
 It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 THOUGHT OF A BRITON ON THE 
 SUBJUGATION OF SWITZERLAND 
 
 Two Voices are there; one is of the sea. 
 
 One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice: 
 
 In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 
 
 They were thy chosen music. Liberty! 
 
 There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee 
 
 Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven: 
 
 Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven, 
 
 Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. 
 
 Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft: 
 
 Then cleave, cleave to that which still is left; 
 
 For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be 
 
 That Mountain floods should thunder as before, 
 
 And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore. 
 
 And neither awful Voice be heard by thee! 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 30 
 
SCORN NOT THE PONNE^^; oRITIC, YOU 
 HAVE FROWNED 
 
 Scorn not the sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, 
 Mindless of its just honours; with this key- 
 Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody 
 Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; 
 A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 
 With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; 
 The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf 
 Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 
 His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp 
 It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land 
 To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains — alas, too few! 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 SURPRISED BY JOY 
 
 Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind 
 
 I turned to share the transport — Oh! with whom 
 
 But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, 
 
 That spot which no vicissitude can find? 
 
 Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind — 
 
 But how could I forget thee? Through what power, 
 
 Even for the least division of an hour, 
 
 Have I been so beguiled as to be blind 
 
 To my most grievous loss? — That thought's return 
 
 Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, 
 
 Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, 
 
 Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more; 
 
 That neither present time, nor years unborn 
 
 Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 31 
 
MOST SWEET IT IS WITH UNUPLIFTED EYES 
 
 Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 
 
 To pace the ground, if path be there or none, 
 
 While a fair region round the traveller Hes 
 
 Which he forbears again to look upon; 
 
 Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, 
 
 The work of Fancy, or some happy tone 
 
 Of meditation, slipping in between 
 
 The beauty coming and the beauty gone. 
 
 K Thought and Love desert us, from that day 
 
 Let us break off all commerce with the Muse: 
 
 With Thought and Love companions of our way, 
 
 Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, 
 
 The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews 
 
 Of inspiration on the humblest lay. 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 TO NATURE 
 
 It may indeed be phantasy when I 
 
 Essay to draw from all created things 
 
 Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings; 
 
 And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie 
 
 Lessons of love and earnest piety. 
 
 So let it be; and if the wide world rings 
 
 In mock of this belief, to me it brings 
 
 Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity. 
 
 So will I build my altar in the fields, 
 
 And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, 
 
 And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields 
 
 Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee, 
 
 Thee only God! and Thou shalt not despise 
 
 Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice. 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). 
 
A WRINKLED, CRABBED MAN ' THEY 
 PICTURE THEE 
 
 A WRINKLED, crabbed man they picture thee, 
 
 Old Winter, with a rugged beard as gray 
 
 As the long moss upon the apple-tree; 
 
 Blue-Hpped, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose, 
 
 Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way 
 
 Plodding along through sleet and drifting snows. 
 
 They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth, 
 
 Old Winter! seated in thy great arm-chair, 
 
 Watching the children at their Christmas mirth; 
 
 Or circled by them as thy lips declare 
 
 Some merry jest or tale of murder dire, 
 
 Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night, 
 
 Pausing at times to rouse the mouldering fire, 
 
 Or taste the old October brown and bright. 
 
 Robert Southey (1774-1843). 
 
 NIGHT AND DEATH 
 
 Mtsteeious Night! when our first parent knew 
 Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 
 Did he not tremble for this lovely frame. 
 This glorious canopy of light and blue? 
 Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 
 Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
 Hesperus with the host of heaven came. 
 And lo! Creation widened in man's view. 
 Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 
 Within thy beams, Sun! or who could find. 
 Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, 
 That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? 
 Why do we then shun death with anxious strife! 
 If fight can thus deceive, wherefore not life? 
 
 Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841). 
 
TO THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET 
 
 Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, 
 
 Catching your heart up at the feel of June, 
 
 Sole voice that 's heard amidst the lazy noon. 
 
 When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; 
 
 And you, warm little housekeeper, who class 
 
 With those who think the candles come too soon, 
 
 Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune 
 
 Nick the glad silent moments as they pass; 
 
 Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong. 
 
 One to the fields, the other to the hearth. 
 
 Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong 
 
 At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth 
 
 To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song: 
 
 In doors and out, summer and winter. Mirth. 
 
 Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), 
 
 WHAT ART THOU, MIGHTY ONE! AND 
 WHERE THY SEAT? 
 
 What art thou. Mighty One! and where thy seat? 
 Thou broodest on the calm that cheers the lands, 
 And thou dost bear within thine awful hands 
 The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet; 
 Stern on thy dark-wrought car of cloud and wind. 
 Thou guid'st the northern storm at night's dead noon, 
 Or, on the red wing of the fierce monsoon, 
 Disturb'st the sleeping giant of the Ind. 
 In the drear silence of the polar span 
 Dost thou repose? or in the solitude 
 Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan 
 Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood? 
 Vain thought! the confines of his throne to trace, 
 Who glows through all the fields of boundless space! 
 
 Henry Kirke White (1785-1806). 
 
 34 
 
ON CHILLON 
 
 Eternal spirit of the chainless Mind! 
 Bright in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, 
 For there thy habitation is the heart — 
 The heart which love of thee alone can bind; 
 And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — 
 To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 
 Their country conquers with their martyrdom. 
 And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
 Chillon! thy prison is a holy place. 
 And thy sad floor an altar; for 't was trod. 
 Until his very steps have left a trace 
 Worn, as if thy cold pavements were a sod, 
 By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface! 
 For they appeal from tyranny to God. 
 
 Lord Byron {17 88-182 J^), 
 
 THE ROCK OF CASHEL 
 
 Royal and saintly Cashel! I would gaze 
 
 Upon the wreck of thy departed powers 
 
 Not in the dewy light of matin hours. 
 
 Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze. 
 
 But at the close of dim autumnal days. 
 
 When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers, 
 
 Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers 
 
 Such awful gleams as brighten o'er Decay's 
 
 Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks, 
 
 There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles 
 
 A melancholy moral; such as sinks 
 
 On the lone traveller's heart, amid the piles 
 
 Of vast Persepolis on her mountain-stand. 
 
 Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand. 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788-1846). 
 
 35 
 
SOME LAWS THERE ARE TOO SACRED FOR 
 THE HAND 
 
 Some laws there are too sacred for the hand 
 Of man to approach; recorded in the blood 
 Of patriots; before which, as the Rood 
 Of Faith, devotional we take our stand. 
 Time-hallowed laws! magnificently planned 
 When Freedom was the nurse of pubhc good. 
 And Power, paternal: laws that have withstood 
 All storms — unshaken bulwarks of the land! 
 Free will, frank speech, an undissembling mind, 
 Without which Freedom dies and laws are vain. 
 On such we found our rights, to such we cling: 
 In these shall Power her surest safeguard find. 
 Tread them not down in passion or disdain: 
 Make Man a reptile, he will turn and sting. 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere. 
 
 THE AFTERMATH 
 
 It was late summer, and the grass again 
 
 Had grown knee-deep, — we stood, my love and I, 
 
 Awhile in silence where the stream runs by; 
 
 Idly we listened to a plaintive strain, — 
 
 A young maid singing to her youthful swain, — 
 
 Ah me, dead days remembered make us sigh, 
 
 And tears will sometimes flow we know not why; 
 
 // spring be past, I said, shall love remain? 
 
 She moved aside, yet soon she answered me, 
 
 Turning her gaze responsive to mine own, — 
 
 Spring days are gone, and yet the grass, we see 
 
 Unto a goodly height again hath grown; 
 
 Dear love, just so lovers aftermath may be 
 
 A richer growth than e'er spring days have known. 
 
 Samuel Waddington {1790-1812). 
 
 36 
 
OZYMANDIAS 
 
 I MET a traveller from an antique land 
 Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
 Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 
 HaK sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
 Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
 The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. 
 And on the pedestal these words appear — 
 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' 
 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.'' 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley {1792-1822). 
 
 THE RETURN TO POETRY 
 
 Once more the eternal melodies from far 
 
 Woo me like songs of home: once more discerning, 
 
 Through fitful clouds, the pure majestic star 
 
 Above the poet's world serenely burning. 
 
 Thither my soul, fresh-winged by love, is turning, 
 
 As o'er the waves the wood-bird seeks her nest. 
 
 For those green heights of dewy stillness yearning, 
 
 Whence glorious minds o'erlook this earth's unrest. 
 
 Now be the spirit of heaven's truth my guide 
 
 Through the bright land! — that no brief gladness, found 
 
 In passing bloom, rich odour, or sweet sound, 
 
 May lure my footsteps from their aim aside: 
 
 Their true, high quest — to seek, if ne'er to gain. 
 
 The inmost, purest shrine of that august domain. 
 
 Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835). 
 
 37 
 
IN HILLY-WOOD 
 
 How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs, 
 
 Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me; 
 
 Faintly are heard the plowmen at their plows, 
 
 But not an eye can find its way to see. 
 
 The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile. 
 
 So thick the leafy armies gather round; 
 
 But where they do, the breeze blows cool the while, 
 
 Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground. 
 
 Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen. 
 
 Perks up its head the hiding grass between, — 
 
 In mid- wood silence, thus, how sweet to be; 
 
 Where all the noises, that on peace intrude, 
 
 Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, 
 
 Whose songs have charms to sweeten sohtude. 
 
 John Clare {1793-1864). 
 
 ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN^S 
 HOMER 
 
 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
 Round many western islands have I been 
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
 That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken; 
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 
 
 John Keats {1795-1821). 
 38 
 
TO ONE WHO HAS BEEN LONG IN 
 CITY PENT 
 
 To one who has been long in city pent, 
 'T is very sweet to look into the fair 
 And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer 
 Full in the smile of the blue firmament. 
 Who is more happy, when, with heart's content. 
 Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair 
 Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair 
 And gentle tale of love and languishment? 
 Returning home at evening, with an ear 
 Catching the notes of Philomel, — an eye 
 Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, 
 He mourns that day so soon has glided by. 
 E'en like the passage of an angel's tear 
 That falls through the clear ether silently. 
 
 John Keats, 
 
 ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET 
 
 The poetry of earth is never dead: 
 
 When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 
 
 And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 
 
 From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; 
 
 That is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead 
 
 In summer luxury, — he has never done 
 
 With his dehghts, for when tired out with fun, 
 
 He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 
 
 The poetry of earth is ceasing never: 
 
 On a lone winter evening, when the frost 
 
 Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 
 
 The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever. 
 
 And seems to one in drowsiness half lost. 
 
 The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 
 
 John Keats. 
 39 
 
TO SLEEP 
 
 O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight! 
 
 Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, 
 
 Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light, 
 
 Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; 
 
 O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close. 
 
 In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, 
 
 Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws 
 
 Around my bed its lulling charities; 
 
 Then save me, or the passed day will shine 
 
 Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; 
 
 Save me from curious conscience, that still lords 
 
 Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; 
 
 Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, 
 
 And seal the hushed casket of my soul. 
 
 John Keats. 
 
 BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEADFAST 
 AS THOU ART! 
 
 Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! 
 
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night 
 
 And watching, with eternal lids apart, 
 
 Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, 
 
 The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores. 
 
 Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask 
 
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors: 
 
 No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, 
 
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast. 
 
 To feel forever its soft fall and swell. 
 
 Awake forever in a sweet unrest. 
 
 Still, still, to hear her tender-taken breath, 
 
 And so live ever — or else swoon to death. 
 
 John Keats. 
 
 40 
 
IF I HAVE SINNED IN ACT, I MAY REPENT 
 
 If I have sinned in act, I may repent; 
 
 If I have erred in thought, I may disclaim 
 
 My silent error, and yet feel no shame; 
 
 But if my soul, big with an ill intent, 
 
 Guilty in will, by fate be innocent. 
 
 Or being bad, yet murmurs at the curse 
 
 And incapacity of being worse, 
 
 That makes my hungry passion still keep Lent ' 
 
 In keen expectance of a Carnival, — 
 
 Where, in all worlds, that round the sun revolve 
 
 And shed their influence on this passive ball, 
 
 Abides a power that can my soul absolve? 
 
 Could any sin survive, and be forgiven. 
 
 One sinful wish would make a hell of heaven. 
 
 Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), 
 
 WHAT WAS'T AWAKENED FIRST THE 
 UNTRIED EAR 
 
 What was't awakened first the untried ear 
 Of that sole man who was all human kind? 
 Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind. 
 Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere? 
 The four mellifluous streams that flowed so near, 
 Their lulling murmurs all in one combined? 
 The note of bird unnamed? The startled hind 
 Bursting the brake — in wonder, not in fear, 
 Of her new lord? Or did the holy ground 
 Send forth mysterious melody to greet 
 The gracious pressure of immaculate feet? 
 Did viewless seraphs rustle all around. 
 Making sweet music out of air as sweet? 
 Or his own voice awake him with its sound? 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 41 
 
SILENCE 
 
 There is a silence where hath been no sound, 
 
 There is a silence where no sound may be, 
 
 In the cold grave — under the deep, deep sea, 
 
 Or in wide desert where no life is found, 
 
 Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profoimd; 
 
 No voice is hushed — no life treads silently. 
 
 But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free. 
 
 That never spoke, over the idle ground: 
 
 But in green ruins, in the desolate walls 
 
 Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, 
 
 Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls. 
 
 And owls, that flit continually between. 
 
 Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan. 
 
 There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 
 
 Thomas Hood (1799-1845), 
 
 SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW 
 
 They do but grope in learning's pedant round 
 Who on the phantasies of sense bestow 
 An idol substance, bidding us bow low 
 Before those shades of being which are found. 
 Stirring or still, on man's brief trial-ground; 
 As if such shapes and modes, which come and go. 
 Had aught of Truth or Life in their poor show, 
 To sway or judge, and skill to sain or wound. 
 Son of inamortal seed, high-destined Man! 
 Know thy dread gift, — a creature, yet a cause: 
 Each mind is its own centre, and it draws 
 Home to itself, and moulds in its thought's span. 
 All outward things, the vassals of its will. 
 Aided by Heaven, by earth unthwarted still. 
 
 Cardinal Newman (1801-1890). 
 
 42 
 
HIDDEN JOYS 
 
 Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem, 
 
 There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground, 
 
 But holds some joy, of silence, or of sound; 
 
 Some sprite begotten of a summer dream. 
 
 The very meanest things are made supreme 
 
 With innate ecstasy. No grain of sand 
 
 But moves a bright and million peopled land. 
 
 And hath its Edens and its Eves, I deem. 
 
 For Love, though blind himself, a curious eye 
 
 Hath lent me, to behold the hearts of things. 
 
 And touched mine ear with power. Thus, far or nigh, 
 
 Minute or mighty, fixed, or free with wings, 
 
 Dehght from many a nameless covert sly 
 
 Peeps sparkling, and in tones famihar sings. 
 
 Samuel Laman Blanchard {1804-1845). 
 
 NATURE 
 
 As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
 Leads by the hand her little child to bed. 
 Half willing, half reluctant to be led. 
 And leave his broken playthings on the floor. 
 Still gazing at them through the open door. 
 Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
 By promises of others in their stead. 
 Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; 
 So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
 Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 
 Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
 Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay, 
 Being too full of sleep to understand 
 How far the unknown transcends the what we know. 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow {1807-1882), 
 
 43 
 
HOLIDAYS 
 
 The holiest of all holidays are those 
 
 Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; 
 
 The secret anniversaries of the heart, 
 
 When the full river of feeling overflows: — 
 
 The happy days unclouded to their close; 
 
 The sudden joys that out of darkness start 
 
 As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart 
 
 Like swallows singing down each wind that blows! 
 
 White as the gleam of a receding sail, 
 
 White as a cloud that floats and fades in air, 
 
 White as the whitest lily on the stream, 
 
 These tender memories are; — a fairy tale 
 
 Of some enchanted land we know not where. 
 
 But lovely as a landscape in a dream. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 
 DIVINA COMMEDIA 
 
 I 
 
 Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 
 A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 
 Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet 
 Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 
 Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; 
 Far off the noises of the world retreat; 
 The loud vociferations of the street 
 Become an undistinguishable roar. 
 So, as I enter here from day to day, 
 And leave my burden at this minster gate, 
 Kneehng in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, 
 The tumult of the time disconsolate 
 To inarticulate murmurs dies away, 
 While the eternal ages watch and wait. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 
 44 
 
II 
 
 How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! 
 This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves 
 Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves 
 Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers," 
 And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! 
 But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves 
 Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, 
 And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! 
 Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, 
 What exultations tramphng on despair, 
 What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, 
 What passionate outcry of a soul in pain. 
 Uprose this poem of the earth and air, 
 This mediaeval miracle of song! 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I ENTER, and I see thee in the gloom 
 
 Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! 
 
 And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. 
 
 The air is filled with some unknown perfume; 
 
 The congregation of the dead make room 
 
 For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; 
 
 Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine 
 
 The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. 
 
 From the confessionals I hear arise 
 
 Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies. 
 
 And lamentations from the crypts below; 
 
 And then a voice celestial that begins 
 
 With the pathetic words, ''Although your sins 
 
 As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow." 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 
 45 
 
A WRETCHED THING IT WERE, TO HAVE 
 OUR HEART 
 
 A WRETCHED thing it were, to have our heart 
 
 Like a broad highway or a populous street. 
 
 Where every idle thought has leave to meet, 
 
 Pause, or pass on, as in an open mart; 
 
 Or like some road-side pool, which no nice art 
 
 Has guarded that the cattle may not beat 
 
 And foul it with a multitude of feet. 
 
 Till of the heavens it can give back no part. 
 
 But keep thou thine a holy sohtude. 
 
 For He, who would walk there, would walk alone; 
 
 He who would drink there, must be first endued 
 
 With single right to call that stream his own; 
 
 Keep thou thine heart close-fastened, unrevealed, 
 
 A fenced garden and a fountain sealed. 
 
 Archbishop Trench (1807-1886), 
 
 TO LEAVE UNSEEN SO MANY A GLORIOUS 
 SIGHT 
 
 To leave unseen so many a glorious sight, 
 
 To leave so many lands unvisited. 
 
 To leave so many worthiest books unread, 
 
 Unrealized so many visions bright; 
 
 Oh I wretched yet inevitable spite 
 
 Of our brief span, that we must yield our breath, 
 
 And wrap us in the unfeeling coil of death. 
 
 So much remaining of unproved delight. 
 
 But hush, my soul, and vain regrets, be stilled; 
 
 Find rest in Him who is the complement 
 
 Of whatsoe'er transcends our mortal doom, 
 
 Of baffled hope and unfulfilled intent: 
 
 In the clear vision and aspect of whom 
 
 All longings and all hopes shall be fulfilled. 
 
 Archbishop Trench. 
 46 
 
THE OCEAN 
 
 The Ocean, at the bidding of the Moon, 
 For ever changes with his restless tide; 
 Flung shoreward now, to be regathered soon 
 With kingly pauses of reluctant pride. 
 And semblance of return. Anon from home 
 He issues forth again, high ridged and free, 
 The seething hiss of his tumultuous foam 
 Like armies whispering where great echoes be! 
 Oh! leave me here upon this beach to rove. 
 Mute hstener to that sound so grand and lone — 
 A glorious sound, deep-drawn and strongly thrown, 
 And reaching those on mountain heights above; 
 To British ears, as who shall scorn to own, 
 A tutelar fond voice, a Saviour-tone of love I 
 
 Charles Tennyson-Turner (1808-1879). 
 
 THE BUOY-BELL 
 
 How like the leper, with his own sad cry 
 Enforcing his own solitude, it tolls! 
 That lonely bell set in the rushing shoals, 
 To warn us from the place of jeopardy! 
 O friend of man! sore- vexed by Ocean's power. 
 The changing tides wash o'er thee day by day; 
 Thy trembling mouth is filled with bitter spray. 
 Yet still thou ringest on from hour to hour; 
 High is thy mission, though thy lot is wild — 
 To be in danger's realm a guardian sound; 
 In seamen's dreams a pleasant part to bear, 
 And earn their blessing as the year goes round; 
 And strike the key-note of each grateful prayer. 
 Breathed in their distant homes by wife or child! 
 
 Charles Tennyson-Turner. 
 47 
 
THE LATTICE AT SUNRISE 
 
 As on my bed at dawn I mused and prayed, 
 I saw my lattice pranked upon the wall, 
 The flaunting leaves and flitting birds withal — 
 A sunny phantom interlaced with shade; 
 'Thanks be to heaven!" in happy mood I said, 
 'What sweeter aid my matins could befall 
 Than this fair glory from the East hath made? 
 What holy sleights hath God, the Lord of all. 
 To bid us feel and see! we are not free 
 To say we see not, for the glory comes 
 Nightlj^ and daily, like the flowing sea; 
 His lustre pierceth through the midnight glooms; 
 And, at prime hour, behold! He follows me 
 With golden shadows to my secret rooms! 
 
 Charles Tennyson-Turner. 
 
 TO SCIENCE 
 
 Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! 
 Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 
 Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, 
 Vulture whose wings are dull reahties? 
 How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, 
 Who would'st not leave him in his wandering 
 To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, 
 Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? 
 Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? 
 And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
 To seek a shelter in some happier star? 
 Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood. 
 The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
 The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe {1809-1849). 
 
 48 
 
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION 
 
 With stammering lips and insufficient sound, 
 
 I strive and struggle to deliver right 
 
 That music of my nature, day and night 
 
 With dream and thought and feeling interwound, 
 
 And inly answering all the senses round 
 
 With octaves of a mystic depth and height 
 
 Which step out grandly to the infinite 
 
 From the dark edges of the sensual ground. 
 
 This song of soul I struggle to outbear 
 
 Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, 
 
 And utter all myself into the air: 
 
 But if I did it, — as the thunder-roll 
 
 Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, 
 
 Before that dread apocaljrpse of soul. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning {1809-1861). 
 
 COMFORT 
 
 Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet 
 From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low. 
 Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so 
 Who art not missed by any that entreat. 
 Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet! 
 And if no precious gums my hands bestow, 
 Let my tears drop Uke amber while I go 
 In reach of Thy divinest voice complete 
 In humanest affection — thus, in sooth, 
 To lose the sense of losing. As a child, 
 Whose song-bird seeks the wood forevermore, 
 Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth 
 Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled. 
 He sleeps the faster that he wept before. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 49 
 
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE 
 
 VI 
 
 Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 
 Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 
 Alone upon the threshold of my door 
 Of individual life, I shall command 
 The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 
 Serenely in the sunshine as before. 
 Without the sense of that which I forbore — 
 Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 
 Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 
 With pulses that beat double. What I do 
 And what I dream include thee, as the wine 
 Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
 God for myself, He hears that name of thine, 
 And sees within mine eyes the tears of two. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
 
 XIV 
 
 If thou must love me, let it be for nought 
 Except for love's sake only. Do not say 
 " I love her for her smile — her look — her way 
 Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought 
 That falls in well with mine, and certes brought 
 A sense of pleasant ease on such a day: " — 
 For these things in themselves, Beloved, may 
 Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought, 
 May be unwrought so. Neither love me for 
 Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, — 
 A creature might forget to weep, who bore 
 Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! 
 But love me for love's sake, that evermore 
 Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
 
 50 
 
XXII 
 
 When our two souls stand up erect and strong, 
 Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, 
 Until the lengthening wings break into fire 
 At either curved point, — what bitter wrong 
 Can the earth do to us, that we should not long 
 Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, 
 The angels would press on us and aspire 
 To drop some golden orb of perfect song 
 Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay- 
 Rather on earth. Beloved, — where the unfit 
 Contrarious moods of men recoil away 
 And isolate pure spirits, and permit 
 A place to stand and love in for a day, 
 With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 XLIII 
 
 How do I lave thee? Let me count the ways. 
 
 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
 
 My soul can reach, when feeling ^''\, of sight 
 
 For ends of Being and ideal Grace. 
 
 I love thee to the level of everyday's 
 
 Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 
 
 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; 
 
 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 
 
 I love thee with the passion put to use 
 
 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 
 
 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 
 
 With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath. 
 
 Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, 
 
 I shall but love thee better after death. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 51 
 
MONTENEGRO 
 
 They rose to where their sovran eagle sails, 
 They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, 
 Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night 
 Against the Turk, whose inroad nowhere scales 
 Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, 
 And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight 
 Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight 
 By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. 
 O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne 
 Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm 
 Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years. 
 Great Tsernogora! never since thine own 
 Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm 
 Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. 
 
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson {1809-1892), 
 
 WRITTEN IN EDINBURGH 
 
 Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, 
 
 Yea, an imperial city, that might hold 
 
 Five times a hundred noble towns in fee, 
 
 And either with their might of Babel old, 
 
 Or the rich Roman pomp of empery 
 
 Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled, 
 
 Highest in arms; brave tenement for the free. 
 
 Who never couch to thrones, or sin for gold. 
 
 Thus should her towers be raised — with vicinage 
 
 Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets, 
 
 As if to vindicate 'mid choicest seats 
 
 Of art, abiding Nature's majesty; 
 
 And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage 
 
 Chainless alike, and teaching Liberty. 
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam {1811-1833). 
 
 52 
 
PARTED LOVE 
 
 Methinks I have passed through some dreadful door, 
 Shutting off summer and its sunniest glades 
 From a dark waste of marsh and ruinous shades: 
 And in that sunlit past, one day before 
 All other days is crimson to the core; 
 That day of days when hand in hand became 
 Encirchng arms, and with an effluent flame 
 Of terrible surprise, we knew love's lore. 
 The rose-red ear that then my hand caressed, 
 Those smiles bewildered, that low voice so sweet, 
 The truant threads of silk about the brow 
 Dishevelled, when our burning lips were pressed 
 Together, and the temple-pulses beat! 
 All gone now — where am I, and where art thou ? 
 William Bell Scott {1811-1890), 
 
 THE UNIVERSE VOID 
 
 Revolving worlds, revolving systems, yea, 
 Revolving firmaments, nor there we end; 
 Systems of firmaments revolving, send 
 Our thought across the Infinite astray. 
 Gasping and lost and terrified, the day 
 Of life, the goodly interests of home. 
 Shrivelled to nothing; that unbounded dome 
 Pealing still on, in blind fatality. 
 No rest is there for our soul's winged feet. 
 She must return for shelter to her ark — 
 The body, fair, frail, death-born, incomplete. 
 And let her bring this truth back from the dark: 
 Life is self-centred, man is nature's god; 
 Space, time, are but the walls of his abode. 
 
 William Bell Scott. 
 
 53 
 
THE HUMAN FLOWER 
 
 In the old void of unrecorded time, 
 
 In long, slow aeons of the voiceless past, 
 
 A seed from out the weltering fire-mist cast. 
 
 Took root — a strugghng plant that from its prime 
 
 Through rudiments uncouth, through rock and slime, 
 
 Grew, changing form and issue — and clinging fast. 
 
 Stretched its aspiring tendrils till at last 
 
 Shaped like a spirit it began to climb 
 
 Beyond its rugged stem, with leaf and bud 
 
 Still burgeoning to greet the sunht air 
 
 That clothed its regal top with love and power. 
 
 And compassed it as with a heavenly flood — 
 
 Until it burst in boom beyond compare. 
 
 The world's consummate, peerless human flower. 
 
 Christopher P. Cranch {1813-1892). 
 
 AGED CITIES 
 
 I HAVE known cities with the strong-armed Rhine 
 
 Clasping their mouldering quays in lordly sweep; 
 
 And Angered where the Marne's low waters shine 
 
 Through Tyrian Frankfort; and been fain to weep 
 
 'Mid the green cliffs where pale Mosella laves 
 
 That Roman sepulchre, imperial Treves. 
 
 Ghent boasts her street, and Bruges her moonlight square; 
 
 And holy Mechlin, Rome of Flanders, stands, 
 
 Like a queen mother, on her spacious lands; 
 
 And Antwerp shoots her glowing spire in air. 
 
 Yet have I seen no place, by inland brook, 
 
 Hill-top, or plain, or trim arcaded bowers. 
 
 That carries age so nobly in its look, 
 
 As Oxford with the sun upon its towers. 
 
 Frederick William Faber (1814-1863). 
 
 54 
 
TO A FLOWER ON THE SKIRTS OF 
 MONT BLANC 
 
 With heart not yet half-rested from Mont Blanc, 
 O'er thee, small flower, my wearied eyes I bent, 
 And rested on that hmnbler vision long. 
 Is there less beauty in thy purple tent 
 Outspread, perchance a boundless firmament 
 O'er viewless myriads wliich beneath thee throng, 
 Than in that mount whose sides, with ruin hung, 
 Frown o'er black glens and gorges thunder-rent? 
 Is there less mystery? Wisely if we ponder, 
 Thine is the mightier marvel. Life in thee 
 Is strong as in cherubic wings that wander, 
 Seeking the limits of Infinity; — 
 Life, life to be transmitted, not to expire 
 Till yonder snowy vault shall melt in fire. 
 
 Aubrey de Vere the Younger {1814-1902). 
 
 THE SUN-GOD 
 
 I SAW the Master of the Sun. He stood 
 
 High in his luminous car, himself more bright; 
 
 An Archer of immeasurable might: 
 
 On his left shoulder hung his quivered load; 
 
 Spurned by his Steeds the eastern mountains glowed; 
 
 Forward his eager eye, and brow of light 
 
 He bent; and, while both hands that arch embowed. 
 
 Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night. 
 
 No wings profaned that god-like form: around 
 
 His neck high-held an ever-moving crowd 
 
 Of locks hung glistening: while such perfect sound 
 
 Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome 
 
 Thrilled as a dew drop; and each passing cloud 
 
 Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam. 
 
 Aubrey de Vere the Younger, 
 
 65 
 
THOUGH TO THE VILEST THINGS BENEATH 
 THE MOONi 
 
 Though to the vilest things beneath the moon 
 
 For poor Ease' sake I give away my heart, 
 
 And for the moment's sympathy let part 
 
 My sense and sight of truth, Thy precious boon, 
 
 My painful earnings, lost, all lost, as soon 
 
 Almost as gained; and though aside I start. 
 
 Belie Thee daily, hourly, — still Thou art, 
 
 Art surely as in heaven the sun at noon; 
 
 How much so e'er I sin, what e'er I do 
 
 Of evil, still the sky above is blue. 
 
 The stars look down in beauty as before: 
 
 It is enough to walk as best we may. 
 
 To walk, and, sighing, dream of that blest day 
 
 When ill we cannot quell shall be no more. 
 
 Arthur Hugh Clough {1819-1861), 
 
 LOVE 
 
 Our love is not a fading, earthly flower: 
 
 Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise, 
 
 And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, 
 
 Doth momently to fresher beauty rise. 
 
 To us the leafless autumn is not bare. 
 
 Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green: 
 
 Our summer hearts make summer's fulness where 
 
 No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: 
 
 For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie; 
 
 Love — whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, 
 
 Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I 
 
 Into the infinite freedom openeth, 
 
 And makes the body's dark and narrow grate 
 
 The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate. 
 
 James Russell Lowell {1819-1891). 
 
 1 Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan 
 Company. 
 
 56 
 
AN ANCIENT CHESS KING * 
 
 Haply some Rajah first in ages gone 
 Amid his languid ladies finger'd thee, 
 While a black nightingale, sun-swart as he, 
 Sang his one wife, love's passionate orison: 
 Haply thou mayst have pleased old Prester John 
 Among his pastures, when full royally 
 He sat in tent — grave shepherds at his knee — 
 While lamps of balsam winked and glimmered on. 
 What dost thou here? Thy masters are all dead. 
 My heart is full of ruth and yearning pain 
 At sight of thee, king that hast a crown 
 Outlasting theirs, and tells of greatness fled 
 Through cloud-hung nights of unabated rain 
 And murmur of the dark majestic town. 
 
 Jean Ingelow {1820-1897), 
 
 "TIMOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME" 
 
 Could I have sung one Song that should survive 
 The singer's voice, and in my country's heart 
 Find loving echo — evermore a part 
 Of all her sweetest memories; could I give 
 One great Thought to the People, that should prove 
 The spring of noble action in their hour 
 Of darkness, or control their headlong power 
 With the firm reins of Justice and of Love; 
 Could I have traced one Form that should express 
 The sacred mystery that underlies 
 All Beauty, and through man's enraptured eyes 
 Teach him how beautiful is Holiness, — 
 I had not feared thee. But to yield my breath, 
 Life's Purpose unfulfilled! — This is thy sting, 
 Death! Sir Noel Paton{1821-1901). 
 
 1 Reprinted from Complete Poems, by permission of the publishers, Little, 
 Brown & Company. 
 
 57 
 
IMMORTALITY » 
 
 Foiled by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn, 
 We leave the brutal world to take its way, 
 And, Patience! in another life, we say, 
 The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne! 
 And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn 
 The world's poor routed leavings? or will they, 
 Who fail'd under the heat of this hfe's day, 
 Support the fervours of the heavenly morn? 
 No, no! the energy of life may be 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun! 
 And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, 
 From strength to strength advancing — only he. 
 His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 
 
 Matthew Arnold {1822-1888), 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
 
 We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still, 
 
 Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill 
 
 Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty. 
 
 Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea. 
 
 Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, 
 
 Spares but the cloudy border of his base 
 
 To the foil'd searching of Mortahty; 
 
 And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, 
 
 Self-schooled, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure. 
 
 Didst walk on earth unguess'd at. — Better so! 
 
 All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 
 
 All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow. 
 
 Find their sole voice in that victorious brow. 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 > The two sonnets by Matthew Arnold are reprinted from his Poetical 
 Works, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company. 
 
 58 
 
LIKE A MUSICIAN THAT WITH FLYING 
 FINGER 
 
 Like a musician that with flying finger 
 Startles the voice of some new instrument, 
 And, though he knew that in one string are blent 
 All its extremes of sound, yet still doth linger 
 Among the hghter threads, fearing to start 
 The deep soul of that one melodious wire, 
 Lest it, unanswering, dash his high desire. 
 And spoil the hopes of his expectant heart; — 
 Thus, with my mistress oft conversing, I 
 Stir every hghter theme with careless voice, 
 Gathering sweet music and celestial joys 
 From the harmonious soul o'er which I fly; 
 Yet o'er the one deep master-chord I hover, 
 And dare not stoop, fearing to tell — I love her. 
 
 William Caldwell Roscoe (1823-1859), 
 
 THE BUBBLE OF THE SILVER SPRINGING 
 WAVES 
 
 The bubble of the silver-springing waves, 
 CastaUan music, and that flattering sound, 
 Low rustling of the loved ApoUian leaves. 
 With which my youthful hair was to be crowned, 
 Grow dimmer in my ears; while Beauty grieves 
 Over her votary, less frequent found; 
 And, not untouched by stormes, my life-boat heaves 
 Through the splashed ocean-waters, outward bound. 
 And as the leaning mariner, his hand 
 Clasped on his ear, strives trembling to reclaim 
 Some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand, 
 So lean I back to the poetic land; 
 And in my heart a sound, a voice, a name 
 Hangs, as above the lamp hangs the expiring flame. 
 William Caldwell Roscoe, 
 
 59 
 
THE ARMY SURGEON 
 
 Over that breathing waste of friends and foes, 
 The wounded and the dying, hour by hour 
 In will a thousand, yet but one in power, 
 He labours through the red and groaning day. 
 The fearful moorland where the myriads lay 
 Moved as a moving field of mangled worms. 
 And as a raw brood, orphaned in the storms, 
 Thrust up their heads if the wind bend a spray 
 Above them, but when the bare branch performs 
 No sweet parental office, sink away 
 With helpless chirp of woe, so, as he goes, 
 Around his feet in clamorous agony 
 They rise and fall; and all the seething plain 
 Bubbles a cauldron vast of many-coloured pain. 
 
 Sydney Dobell (1824-1874). 
 
 HOME: IN WAR TIME 
 
 She turned the fair page with her fairer hand — 
 More fair and frail than it was wont to be; 
 O'er each remembered thing he loved to see 
 She fingered, and as with fairy's wand 
 Enchanted it to order. Oft she fanned 
 New motes into the sun; and as a bee 
 Sings through a brake of bells, so murmured she. 
 And so her patient love did understand 
 The reliquary room. Upon the sill 
 She fed his favorite bird. "Ah, Robin, sing! 
 He loves thee." Then she touches a sweet string 
 Of soft recafi, and towards the Eastern hifi 
 Smiles all her soul — for him who cannot hear 
 The raven croaking at his carrion ear. 
 
 Sydney Dobell. 
 
 60 
 
THE CHURCH IN 1849 
 
 O MIGHTY Mother, hearken! for thy foes 
 Gather round thee, and exulting cry- 
 That thine old strength is gone and thou must die, 
 Pointing with fierce rejoicing to thy woes. 
 And is it so? The raging whirlwind blows 
 No stronger now than it has done of yore : 
 Rebellion, strife, and sin have been before; 
 The same companions whom thy Master chose. 
 We too rejoice: we know thy might is more 
 When to the world thy glory seemeth dim; 
 Nor can Hell's gates prevail to conquer Thee, 
 Who hearest over all the voice of Him 
 Who chose thy first and greatest Prince should be 
 A fisher on the Lake of Galilee. 
 
 Adelaide A. Procter {1825-1864), 
 
 DARKNESS! 
 
 Come, blessed Darkness, come, and bring thy balm 
 
 For eyes grown weary of the garish Day! 
 
 Come with thy soft, slow steps, thy garments gray. 
 
 Thy veiling shadows, bearing in thy palm 
 
 The poppy-seeds of slumber, deep and calm! 
 
 Come with thy patient stars, whose far-off ray 
 
 Steals the hot fever of the soul away. 
 
 Thy stillness sweeter than a chanted psalm! 
 
 blessed Darkness, Day indeed is fair, 
 
 And Light is dear when summer days are long. 
 
 And one by one the harvesters go by; 
 
 But so is rest sweet, and surcease from care. 
 
 And folded palms, and hush of evensong, 
 
 And all the unfathomed silence of the sky! 
 
 Julia C. R. Dorr {1825-1913). 
 
 * Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons. 
 
 61 
 
TO A MOTH THAT DRINKETH OF THE 
 RIPE OCTOBER 
 
 A MOTH belated, — sun and zephyr-kist, — 
 
 Trembling about a pale arbutus bell, 
 
 Probing to wildering depths its honeyed cell, — 
 
 A noonday thief, a downy sensualist! 
 
 Not vainly, sprite, thou drawest careless breath, 
 
 Strikest ambrosia from the cool-cupped flowers. 
 
 And flutterest through the soft, uncounted hours, 
 
 To drop at last in unawaited death; — 
 
 'T is something to be glad! and those fine thrills 
 
 Which move thee, to my lip have drawn the smile 
 
 Wherewith we look on joy. Drink! drown thine ills, 
 
 If ill have any part in thee; erewhile 
 
 May the pent force — thy bounded life — set free, 
 
 Fill larger sphere with equal ecstasy! 
 
 Emily Pfeiffer {1827-1890), 
 
 TO NATURE 
 
 Blind Cyclops, hurling stones of destiny, 
 
 And not in fury! — working bootless ill, 
 
 In mere vacuity of mind and will — 
 
 Man's soul revolts against thy work and thee! 
 
 Slaves of a despot, conscienceless and nil, 
 
 Slaves, by mad chance befooled to think them free, 
 
 We still might rise, and with one heart agree 
 
 To mar the ruthless grinding of thy mill! 
 
 Dead t3T:*ant, tho' our cries and groans pass by thee, 
 
 Man, cutting off from each new ''tree of life'* 
 
 Himself, its fatal flower, could still defy thee, 
 
 In waging on thy work eternal strife, — 
 
 The races come and coming evermore, 
 
 Heaping with hecatombs thy dead-sea shore. 
 
 Emily Pfeiffer. 
 
 62 
 
AD MATREM 
 
 March 13, 1862 
 
 Oft in the after-days, when thou and I 
 Have fallen from the cope of human view, 
 When, both together, under the sweet sky 
 We sleep beneath the daisies and the dew. 
 Men will recall thy gracious presence bland, 
 Conning the pictured sweetness of thy face; 
 Will pore o'er paintings by thy plastic hand. 
 And vaunt thy skill, and tell thy deeds of grace. 
 Oh may they then, who crown thee with true bays, 
 Saying, "What love unto her son she bore! " 
 Make this addition to thy perfect praise, 
 "Nor ever yet was mother worshipped more!" 
 So shall I live with thee, and thy dear fame 
 Shall link my love unto thine honoured name. 
 
 Julian Henry Fane {1827-1870). 
 
 A SONNET IS A MOMENT'S MONUMENT ^ 
 
 A Sonnet is a moment's monument, — 
 
 Memorial from the Soul's eternity 
 
 To the one deathless hour. Look that it be, 
 
 Whether for lustral right or dire portent, 
 
 Of its own arduous fulness reverent: 
 
 Carve it in ivory or in ebony. 
 
 As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see 
 
 Its flowering crest impearled and orient. 
 
 A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals 
 
 The soul, — its converse to what Power 't is due: — 
 
 Whether for tribute to the august appeals 
 
 Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, 
 
 It serve: or 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, 
 
 In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti {1828-1882). 
 
 * The eight sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti are reprinted from his Com- 
 plete Poetical Works, published by Little, Brown & Company. 
 
 63 
 
LOVE SIGHT 
 
 When do I see thee most, beloved one? 
 
 When in the light the spirits of mine eyes 
 
 Before thy face, their altar, solemnize 
 
 The worship of that Love through thee made known? 
 
 Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone) 
 
 Close-kissed and eloquent of still repHes 
 
 Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, 
 
 And my soul only sees thy soul its own? 
 
 O love, my love! if I no more should see 
 
 Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, 
 
 Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, — 
 
 How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope 
 
 The ground- whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 
 
 The wind of Death's imperishable wing? 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 THE DARK GLASS 
 
 Not I myself know all my love for thee: 
 How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh 
 To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday? 
 Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be 
 As doors and windows bared to some loud sea. 
 Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray; 
 And shall my sense pierce love, — the last relay 
 And ultimate outpost of eternity? 
 Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all? 
 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, — 
 One httle heart-flame sheltered in his hand. 
 Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call 
 And veriest touch of powers primordial 
 That any hour-girt life may understand. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
 
 64 
 
THE SONG-THROE 
 
 By thine own tears thy song must tears beget, 
 
 O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none 
 
 Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own 
 
 Anguish or ardor, else no amulet. 
 
 Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet 
 
 Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry 
 
 Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, 
 
 That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet. 
 
 The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave 
 
 Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul 
 
 Fledges his shaft: to no august control 
 
 Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave: 
 
 But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart, 
 
 The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 THE HEART OF THE NIGHT 
 
 From child to youth ; from youth to arduous man; 
 
 From lethargy to fever of the heart; 
 
 From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart; 
 
 From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban; — 
 
 Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran 
 
 Till now. Alas, the soul! — how soon must she 
 
 Accept her primal immortality, — 
 
 The flesh resume its dust whence it began! 
 
 Lord of work and peace! Lord of life! 
 
 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late, 
 
 Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath: 
 
 That when the peace is garnered in from strife. 
 
 The work retrieved, the will regenerate. 
 
 This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death! 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 65 
 
SOUL'S BEAUTY 
 
 Under the arch of Life, where love and death, 
 
 Terror and mystery, guard her slirine, I saw 
 
 Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, 
 
 I drew it in as simply as my breath. 
 
 Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, 
 
 The sky and sea bend on thee, — which can draw, 
 
 By sea or sky or woman, to one law, 
 
 The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. 
 
 This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise 
 
 Thy voice and hand shake still — long known to thee 
 
 By flying hair and fluttering hem, — the beat 
 
 Following her daily of thy heart and feet. 
 
 How passionately and irretrievably, 
 
 In what fond flight, how many ways and days! 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 LOST DAYS 
 
 The lost days of my life until to-day. 
 What were they, could I see them on the street 
 Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat 
 Sown once for food but trodden into clay? 
 Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? 
 Or drops of blood dabbhng the guilty feet? 
 Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat 
 The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway? 
 I do not see them here; but after death 
 God knows I know the faces I shall see, — 
 Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 
 "I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me? " 
 "And I — and I — thyself," (lo! each one saith,) 
 "And thou thyself to all eternity!'' 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 66 
 
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS 
 
 Not that the earth is changing, O my God! 
 Not that the seasons totter in their walk, — 
 Nor that the virulent ill of act and talk 
 Seethes ever as a wine-press ever trod, — 
 Not therefore are we certain that the rod 
 Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now 
 Beneath thine hand so many nations bow, 
 So many kings: — not therefore, my God! 
 But because Man is parcelled out in men 
 To-day; because, for any wrongful blow, 
 No man not stricken asks, *'I would be told 
 Why thou dost thus "; but his heart whispers then, 
 **He is he, I am I." By this we know 
 That the earth falls asunder, being old. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 INTERNAL HARMONY ^ 
 
 Assured of worthiness, we do not dread 
 Competitors; we rather give them hail 
 And greeting in the lists where we may fail: 
 Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head! 
 My betters are my masters: purely fed 
 By their sustainment I Hkewise shall scale 
 Some rocky steps between the mount and vale; 
 Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed. 
 So that I draw the breath of finer air. 
 Station is naught, nor footways laurel-strewn, 
 Nor rivals tightly belted for the race. 
 God speed to them! My place is here or there, 
 My pride is that among them I have place: 
 And thus I keep this instrument in tune. 
 
 George Meredith {1828-1909). 
 
 ^ The three sonnets by George Meredith are reprinted from hia Works, by 
 permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 67 
 
ON THE DANGER OF WAR 
 
 Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, 
 
 This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick. 
 
 When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric 
 
 Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food. 
 
 Dark looms the issue though the cause be good, 
 
 But with the doubt 't is our old devil's trick. 
 
 O now the down-slope of the lunatic 
 
 Illumine lest we redden of that brood! 
 
 For not since man, in his first view of Thee, 
 
 Ascended to the heavens, giving sign 
 
 Within him of deep sky and sounded sea. 
 
 Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress; 
 
 In peril of his blood his ears incline 
 
 To drums whose loudness is their emptiness. 
 
 George Meredith. 
 
 LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT 
 
 On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. 
 Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend 
 Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, 
 Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. 
 Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. 
 And now upon his western wing he leaned. 
 Now his huge bulk o'er Africa careened. 
 Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. 
 Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars 
 With memory of the old revolt from Awe, 
 He reached a middle height, and at the stars, 
 Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. 
 Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, 
 The army of unalterable law. 
 
 George Meredith, 
 
 68 
 
DEMOCRACY DOWNTRODDEN 
 
 How long, Lord? — The voice is sounding still: 
 
 Not only heard beneath the altar-stone, 
 
 Not heard of John Evangelist alone 
 
 In Patmos. It doth cry aloud and will 
 
 Between the earth's end and earth's end, until 
 
 The day of the great reckoning — bone for bone, 
 
 And blood for righteous blood, and groan for groan: 
 
 Then shall it cease on the air with a sudden thrill: 
 
 Not slowly growing fainter if the rod 
 
 Strikes here or there amid the evil throng; 
 
 Or one oppressor's hand is stayed and numbs; 
 
 Not till the vengeance that is coming comes. 
 
 For shall all hear the voice excepting God, 
 
 Or God not listen, hearing? — Lord, how long? 
 
 William Michael Rossetti {1829 ). 
 
 THE WORLD 1 
 
 By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair: 
 
 But all night as the moon so change th she; 
 
 Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy, 
 
 And subtle serpents gHding in her hair. 
 
 By day she wooes me to the outer air. 
 
 Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety: 
 
 But through the night, a beast she grins at me, 
 
 A very monster void of love and prayer. 
 
 By day she stands a lie: by night she stands. 
 
 In all the naked horror of the truth, 
 
 With pushing horns and clawed and clutching 
 
 hands. 
 Is this a friend indeed, that I should sell 
 My soul to her, give her my life and youth. 
 Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell ? 
 
 Christina G, Rossetti (1830-1894). 
 
 ' The three sonnets by Christina G. Rossetti are reprinted from her Poetical 
 Works, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company. 
 
 69 
 
REST 
 
 O EAETH, lie heavily upon her eyes; 
 
 Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; 
 
 Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth, 
 
 With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. 
 
 She hath no questions, she hath no replies, 
 
 Hush'd in and curtain' d with a blessed dearth 
 
 Of all that irk'd her from the hour of birth; 
 
 With stillness that is almost Paradise. 
 
 Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her, 
 
 Silence more musical than any song; 
 
 Even her very heart has ceased to stir: 
 
 Until the morning of Eternity 
 
 Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be; 
 
 And when she wakes she will not think it long. 
 
 Christina G. Rossetti. 
 
 REMEMBER 
 
 Remember me when I am gone away, 
 Gone far away into the silent land; 
 When you can no more hold me by the hand, 
 Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. 
 Remember me when no more, day by day, 
 You tell me of our future that you planned: 
 Only remember me; you understand 
 It will be late to counsel then or pray. 
 Yet if you should forget me for a while 
 And afterwards remember, do not grieve 
 For if the darkness and corruption leave 
 A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, 
 Better by far you should forget and smile 
 Than that you should remember and be sad. 
 
 Christina G. Rossetti. 
 
 70 
 
MAZZINI 1 
 
 That he is dead the sons of kings are glad; 
 And in their beds the tyrants sounder sleep. 
 Now he is dead his martyrdom will reap 
 Late harvest of the palms it should have had 
 In life. Too late the tardy lands are sad. 
 His unclaimed crown in secret they will keep 
 For ages, while in chains they vainly weep, 
 And vainly grope to find the roads he bade 
 Them take. glorious soul! there is no dearth 
 Of worlds. There must be many better worth 
 Thy presence and thy leadership than this. 
 No doubt, on some great sun to-day, thy birth 
 Is for a race, the dawn of Freedom's bliss. 
 Which but for thee it might for ages miss. 
 
 Helen Hunt Jackson (1881-1885). 
 
 THE SONNET'S VOICE 
 
 Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach 
 Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, 
 The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear 
 A restless lore like that the billows teach; 
 For on these sonnet- waves my soul would reach 
 From its own depths, and rest within you, dear. 
 As, through the billowy voices yearning here 
 Great nature strives to find a human speech. 
 A sonnet is a wave of melody: 
 From heaving waters of the impassioned soul 
 A billow of tidal music one and whole 
 Flows in the '' octave"; then returning free, 
 Its ebbing surges in the ''sestet" roll 
 Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea. 
 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton {1832 ). 
 
 » Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown 
 Company. 
 
 71 
 
NATURA BENIGNAi 
 
 What power is this? What witchery wins my feet 
 To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow, 
 All silent as the emerald gulfs below, 
 Down whose ice-walls the wings of twiUght beat? 
 What thrill of earth and heaven — most wild, most 
 
 sweet — 
 What answering pulse that all the senses know, 
 Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow 
 Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet? 
 Mother, 't is I reborn: I know thee well: 
 That throb I know and all its prophesies, 
 Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell 
 Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies! 
 Dumb Mother, struggling with the years to tell 
 The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes. 
 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton. 
 
 A DREAM 
 
 Beneath the loveHest dream there coils a fear: 
 Last night came she whose eyes are memories now; 
 Her far-off gaze seemed all forgetful how 
 Love dimmed them once, so calm they shone and clear. 
 "Sorrow," I said, "has made me old, my dear; 
 ^T is I, indeed, but grief can change the brow: 
 Beneath my load a seraph's neck might bow. 
 Vigils like mine would blanch an angel's hair." 
 Oh, then I saw, I saw the sweet lips move! 
 I saw the love-mists thickening in her eyes — 
 I heard a sound as if a murmuring dove 
 Felt lonely in the dells of Paradise; 
 But when upon my neck she fell, my love. 
 Her hair smelt sweet of whin and woodland spice. 
 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton. 
 
 1 The three following sonnets by Theodore Watts-Dunton are reprinted 
 from The Coming of Love, by permission of the publishers, John Lane Com- 
 pany. 
 
 72 
 
IN A GRAVEYARD 
 
 Oliver Madox Brown 
 
 November 12, 1874 
 
 Farewell to thee, and to our dreams farewell — 
 Dreams of high deeds and golden days of thine, 
 Where once again should Art's twin powers combine — 
 The painter's wizard- wand, the poet's spell! 
 Though Death strikes free, careless of Heaven and Hell — 
 Careless of Man, of Love's most lovely shrine; 
 Yet must Man speak — must ask of Heaven a sign 
 That tliis wild world is God's, and all is well. 
 Last night we mourned thee, cursing eyeless Death, 
 Who, sparing sons of Baal and Ashtoreth, 
 Must needs slay thee, worth all the world to slay; 
 But round this grave the winds of winter say: 
 "On earth what hath the poet? An alien breath. 
 Night holds the keys that ope the doors of Day." 
 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton, 
 
 DANTE 1 
 
 Poet, whose unscarred feet have trodden Hell, 
 By what grim path and dread environing 
 Of fire couldst thou that dauntless footstep bring 
 And plant it firm amid the dolorous cell 
 Of darkness where perpetually dwell 
 The spirits cursed beyond imagining? 
 Or else is thine a visionary wing, 
 And all thy terror but a tale to tell? 
 *' Neither and both, thou seeker! I have been 
 No wilder path than thou thyself dost go. 
 Close masked in an impenetrable screen. 
 Which having rent I gaze around, and know 
 What tragic wastes of gloom, before unseen. 
 Curtain the soul that strives and sins below. 
 
 Richard Garnett {1835-1906). 
 
 1 The two sonnets by Richard Garnett are reprinted from The Queen anA 
 Other Poems, by permission of the publishers, John Lane Company. 
 
 73 
 
AGE 
 
 I WILL not rail or grieve, when torpid eld 
 Frosts the slow-journeying blood, for I shall see 
 The lovelier leaves hang j-ellow on the tree, 
 The nimbler brooks in icy fetters held. 
 Methinks the aged eye that first beheld 
 The fitful ravage of December wild, 
 Then knew himself indeed dear Nature's child, 
 Seeing the common doom, that all compelled. 
 No kindred we to her beloved broods. 
 If, dying these, we drew a selfish breath; 
 But one path travel all her multitudes. 
 And none dispute the solemn Voice that saith: 
 "Sun to thy setting; to your autumn, woods; 
 Stream to thy sea; and man unto thy death!" 
 
 Richard Gamett. 
 
 A PARABLE 1 
 
 I LONGED for rest, and some one spoke me fair, 
 And proffered goodly rooms wherein to dwell. 
 Hung round with tapestries, and garnished well, 
 That I might take mine ease and pleasure there; 
 And there I sought a refuge from despair, 
 A joy that should my life's long gloom dispel; 
 But ominously through those fair halls there fell 
 Strange sounds, as of old music in the air. 
 As day went down, the music grew apace. 
 And in the moonlight saw I, white and cold, 
 A presence, radiant in the radiant space. 
 With smiling hps that never had grown old; 
 And then I knew the secret none had told. 
 And shivered there, an ahen in that place. 
 
 Louise Chandler Moulton (1835-1908). 
 
 * Reprinted from Poems and Sonnets, by permission of the publishers. 
 Little, Brown & Company. 
 
 74 
 
LOVE'S WISDOM! 
 
 Now on the summit of Love's topmost peak 
 Kiss we and part; no further can we go; 
 And better death than we from high to low 
 Should dwindle or dechne from strong to weak. 
 We have found all, there is no more to seek; 
 All have we proved, no more is there to know; 
 And Time could only tutor us to eke 
 Out rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow. 
 We cannot keep at such a height as this; 
 For even straining souls like ours inhale 
 But once in life so rarefied a bliss. 
 What if we lingered till love's breath should fail! 
 Heaven of my Earth! one more celestial kiss, 
 Then down by separate pathways to the vale. 
 
 Alfred Austin {1885 ). 
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 While men pay reverence to the mighty things, 
 They must revere thee, thou blue-cinctured isle 
 Of England — not to-day, but this long while 
 In front of nations. Mother of great kings, 
 Soldiers, and poets. Round thee the sea flings 
 Her steel bright arm, and shields thee from the guile 
 And hurt of France. Secure, with august smile, 
 Thou sittest, and the East its tribute brings. 
 Some say thy old-time power is on the wane. 
 Thy moon of grandeur, filled, contracts at length — 
 They see it darkening down from less to less. 
 Let but a hostile hand make threat again. 
 And they shall see thee in thy ancient strength, 
 Each iron sinew quivering, lioness! 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907). 
 
 * Reprinted from Lyrical Poems by Alfred Austin, by permission of the 
 publishers, The Macmillan Company. 
 
 75 
 
WHEN I BEHOLD WHAT PLEASURE IS 
 PURSUIT 
 
 When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit 
 What life, what glorious eagerness it is; 
 Then mark how full Possession falls from this, 
 How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit, — 
 I am perplext, and often stricken mute. 
 Wondering which hath attained the higher bliss. 
 The winged insect, or the clirysahs 
 It thrust aside with unreluctant foot. 
 Spirit of verse, that still elud'st my art 
 Thou airy phantom that dost ever haunt me, 
 never, never rest upon my heart. 
 If when I have thee I shall little want thee! 
 Still flit away in moonlight, rain, and dew, 
 Will-o'-the-wisp, that I may still pursue! 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
 
 TO THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON ^ 
 
 Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred, 
 
 And all our wide glad wastes a-flower around. 
 
 That twice have heard keen April's clarion sound 
 
 Since here we first together saw and heard 
 
 Spring's light reverberate and reiterate word 
 
 Shine forth and speak in season. Life stands crowned 
 
 Here with the best one thing it ever found. 
 
 As of my soul's best birthdays dawns the third. 
 
 There is a friend that as the wise man saith 
 
 Cleaves closer than a brother: nor to me 
 
 Hath time not shown, through days like waves at strife. 
 
 This truth more sure than all things else but death. 
 
 This pearl most perfect found in all the sea 
 
 That washes towards your feet these waifs of life. 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne {1837-1909). 
 
 1 The two sonnets by Algernon Charles Swinburne are reprinted from his 
 Collected Poems, published by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 76 
 
ON THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION OF THE 
 JEWS 
 
 (Written June, 1882) 
 
 O Son of man, by lying tongues adored, 
 By slaughterous hands of slaves with feet red-shod 
 In carnage deep as ever Christian trod 
 Profaned with prayer and sacrifice abhorred 
 And incense from the trembling tyrant's horde, 
 Brute worshippers of wielders of the rod. 
 Most murderous even of all that call thee God, 
 Most treacherous even that ever called thee Lord; 
 Face loved of little children long ago, 
 Head hated of the priests and rulers then. 
 If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine 
 Run ravening as the Gadarean swine, 
 Say, was not this thy Passion, to foreknow 
 In death's worst hour the works of Christian men? 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
 
 THE MARSEILLAISE 
 
 What means this mighty chant, wherein the wail 
 
 Of some intolerable woe, grown strong 
 
 With sense of more intolerable wrong. 
 
 Swells to a stern victorious march — a gale 
 
 Of vengeful wrath? What mean the faces pale, 
 
 The fierce resolve, the ecstatic pangs along 
 
 Life's fiery ways, the demon thoughts which throng 
 
 The gates of awe, when these wild notes assail 
 
 The sleeping of our souls? Hear ye no more 
 
 Than the mad foam of revolution's leaven. 
 
 Than a roused people's throne-o'erwhelming tread? 
 
 Hark! 't is man's spirit thundering on the shore 
 
 Of iron fate; the tramp of titans dread. 
 
 Sworn to dethrone the gods unjust from heaven. 
 
 John Todhunter {1839 ). 
 
 77 
 
BUT ONE SHORT WEEK AGO THE TREES 
 WERE BARE 
 
 But one short week ago the trees were bare, 
 And winds were keen and violets pinched with frost; 
 Winter was with us; but the larches tost 
 Lightly their crimson buds, and here and there 
 Rooks cawed. To-day the Spring is in the air 
 And in the blood: sweet sun-gleams come and go 
 Upon the hills, in lanes the wild flowers blow, 
 And tender leaves are bursting everywhere. 
 About the hedge the small birds peer and dart, 
 Each bush is full of amorous flutterings 
 And little rapturous cries. The thrush apart 
 Sits throned, and loud his ripe contralto rings. 
 Music is on the wind, and in my heart 
 Infinite love for all created things. 
 
 John Todhunter, 
 
 THE JEWS' CEMETERY 
 
 Lido of Venice 
 
 A TRACT of land swept by the salt sea foam, 
 Fringed with acacia flowers, and billowy-deep 
 In meadow grasses, where tall poppies sleep, 
 And bees athirst for wilding honey roam. 
 How many a bleeding heart hath found its home 
 Under these hillocks which the sea-mews sweep! 
 Here knelt an outcast race to curse and weep. 
 Age after age, 'neath heaven's unanswering dome. 
 Sad is the place, and solemn. Grave by grave, 
 Lost in the dunes, with rank weeds overgrown, 
 Pines in abandonment; as though unknown, 
 Uncared for, lay the dead, whose records pave 
 This path neglected; each forgotten stone 
 Wept by no mourner but the moaning wave. 
 
 John Addington Symonds (1840-1893). 
 78 
 
INEVITABLE CHANGE 
 
 Rebuke me not! I have nor wish nor skill 
 
 To alter one hair's breadth in all this house 
 
 Of Love, rising with domes so luminous 
 
 And air-built galleries on life's topmost hill! 
 
 Only I know that fate, chance, years that kill, 
 
 Change that transmutes, have aimed their darts at us; 
 
 Envying each lovely shrine and amorous 
 
 Reared on earth's soil by man's too passionate will. 
 
 Dread thou the moment when these glittering towers, 
 
 These adamantine walls and gates of gems. 
 
 Shall fade hke forms of sun-forsaken cloud; 
 
 When dulled by imperceptible chill hours, 
 
 The golden spires of our Jerusalems 
 
 Shall melt to mist and vanish in night's shroud! 
 
 John Addington Symonds. 
 
 THE SUBLIME 
 
 To stand upon a windy pinnacle. 
 Beneath the infinite blue of the blue noon, 
 And underfoot a valley terrible 
 As that dim gulf, where sense and being swoon 
 When the soul parts; a giant valley strewn 
 With giant rocks; asleep, and vast, and still, 
 And far away. The torrent, which has hewn 
 His pathway through the entrails of the hill, 
 Now crawls along the bottom and anon 
 Lifts up his voice, a muffled tremulous roar, 
 Borne on the wind an instant, and then gone 
 Back to the caverns of the middle air; 
 A voice as of a nation overthrown 
 With beat of drums, when hosts have marched to war. 
 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (I84O ). 
 
 79 
 
A NEW PILGRIMAGE 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 Yet it is pitiful how friendships die, 
 
 Spite of our oaths and eternal high vows. 
 
 Some fall through bhte of tongues wagged secretly, 
 
 Some through strife loud in empty honour's house. 
 
 Some vanish with fame got too glorious, 
 
 And rapt to heaven in fiery chariots fly; 
 
 And some are drowned in sloth and the carouse 
 
 Of wedded joys and long love's tyranny. 
 
 O ye, who with high-hearted valliance 
 
 Deem truth eternal and youth's dreams divine. 
 
 Keep ye from love, and fame, and the mischance 
 
 Of other worship than the Muses nine. 
 
 So haply shall you tread life's latest strand 
 
 With a true brother still, and hand in hand. 
 
 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. 
 
 WITH ESTHER! 
 
 II 
 
 When I hear laughter from a tavern door. 
 
 When I see crowds agape and in the rain 
 
 Watching on tiptoe and with stifled roar 
 
 To see a rocket fired or a bull slain, 
 
 When misers handle gold, when orators 
 
 Touch strong men's hearts with glory till they weep, 
 
 When cities deck their streets for barren wars 
 
 Which have laid waste their youth, and when I keep 
 
 Calmly the count of my own life, and see 
 
 On what poor stuff my manhood's dreams were fed 
 
 Till I too learn'd what dole of vanity 
 
 Will serve a human soul for daily bread, 
 
 — Then I remember that I once was young 
 
 And lived with Esther the world's gods among. 
 
 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. 
 
 1 Reprinted from Esther: A Young Man's Tragedy, by permission of the 
 publishers. Small, Maynard & Company. 
 
 80 
 
DON QUIXOTE 
 
 Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack, 
 Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro, 
 Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe, 
 And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back, 
 Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack! 
 To make Wiseacredom, both high and low, 
 Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go) 
 Despatch its Dogberrys upon thy track : 
 Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest! 
 Yet would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill 
 And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest, 
 Some fire of thine might burn within us still! 
 Ah! would but one might lay his lance in rest. 
 And charge in earnest — were it but a mill. 
 
 Austin Dobson {I84O ). 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 Feom morn to eve they struggled — Life and Death. 
 At first it seemed to me that they in mirth 
 Contended, and as foes of equal worth. 
 So firm their feet, so undisturbed their breath. 
 But when the sharp red sun cut through its sheath 
 Of western clouds, I saw the brown arms' girth 
 Tighten and bear that radiant form to earth, 
 And suddenly both fell upon the heath. 
 And then the wonder came — for when I fled 
 To where those great antagonists down fell 
 I could not find the body that I sought, 
 And when and where it went I could not tell; 
 One only form was left of those who fought, 
 The long dark form of Death, and it was dead. 
 
 Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901). 
 
 81 
 
THE DEAD 
 
 The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold 
 
 Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still. 
 
 They have forged our chains of being for good or ill; 
 
 And their invisible hands these hands yet hold. 
 
 Our perishable bodies are the mould 
 
 In which their strong imperishable will — 
 
 Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil — 
 
 Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold. 
 
 Vibrations infinite of life in death, 
 
 As a star's traveUing fight survives its star! 
 
 So may we hold our lives, that when we are 
 
 The fate of those who then wifi draw this breath, 
 
 They shall not drag us to their judgment-bar 
 
 And curse the heritage which we bequeath. 
 
 Mathilde Blind (1841-1896). 
 
 JACOB AND THE ANGEL 
 
 For a design by J. T. Nettleship 
 
 Shall he not bless me? Will he never speak 
 Those words of proud concession, "Let me go: 
 For the day breaketh?'' Wearily and slow 
 The shrouded hours troop past across the peak, 
 Eastering; and I, with hands grown all too weak 
 And strength that would have failed me long ago, 
 But for the set soul, strain to overthrow 
 The instant God. — Alas! 't is I that speak — 
 Not Jacob — I that in this night of days 
 Do wrestle with the angel Art, till breath 
 And gladness fail me. Yet the stern soul stays 
 And will not loose him till he bless me; ay, 
 Even though the night defer my victory 
 Until the day break on the dawn of death. 
 
 John Payne (184^ ). 
 
 82 
 
WITH A COPY OF HENRY VAUGHN'S 
 SACRED POEMS 
 
 Lay down thy burden at this gate and knock. 
 
 What if the world without be dark and drear? 
 
 For there be fountains of refreshment here 
 
 Sweeter than all the runnels of the rock. 
 
 Hark! even to thy hand upon the lock 
 
 A wilding warble answers, loud and clear, 
 
 That falls as fain upon the heart of fear 
 
 As shepherds' song unto the folded flock. 
 
 This is the quiet wood-church of the soul. 
 
 Be thankful, heart, to him betimes that stole, 
 
 Some Easter morning, through the golden door — 
 
 Haply ajar for early prayer to rise — 
 
 And brought thee back from that song-flowered shore 
 
 These haunting harmonies of Paradise. 
 
 John Payne, 
 
 AWAKENING 
 
 With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod, 
 With eye so practised in each form around, — 
 And all forms mean, — to glance above the ground 
 Irks it, each day of many days we plod, 
 Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road; 
 But suddenly, we know not how, a sound 
 Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned 
 With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod, 
 And we awake. joy of deep amaze! 
 Beneath the everlasting hills we stand. 
 We hear the voices of the morning seas, 
 And earnest prophesyings in the land. 
 While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze 
 The encompassing great cloud of witnesses. 
 
 Edward Dowden (1843-1913), 
 83 
 
SEEKING GOD 
 
 I SAID, "I will find God," and forth I went 
 To seek Him in the clearness of the sky. 
 But over me stood unendurably 
 Only a pitiless, sapphire firmament 
 Ringing the world, — blank splendour; yet intent 
 Still to find God, "I will go seek," said I, 
 'His way upon the waters," and drew nigh 
 An ocean marge weed-strewn and foam besprent; 
 And the waves dashed on idle sand and stone, 
 And very vacant was the long, blue sea; 
 But in the evening as I sat alone. 
 My window opening to the vanishing day. 
 Dear God! I could not choose but kneel and pray, 
 And it sufficed that I was found of Thee. 
 
 Edward Dowden, 
 
 MY LOVE FOR THEE DOTH MARCH LIKE 
 ARMED MEN 
 
 My love for thee doth march like armdd men 
 Against a queenly city they would take. 
 Along the army's front its banners shake; 
 Across the mountains and the sun-smit plain 
 It steadfast sweeps as sweeps the steadfast rain; 
 And now the trumpet makes the still air quake, 
 And now the thundering cannon doth awake 
 Echo on echo, echoing loud again. 
 But, lo — the conquest higher than bard had sung; 
 Instead of answering cannon, proud surrender. 
 Joyful the iron gates are open flung. 
 And for the conqueror, welcome gay and tender! 
 O bright the invader's path with tribute flowers. 
 While comrade flags flame forth on walls and towers. 
 Richard Watson Gilder {1844-1909). 
 
 84 
 
THE ODYSSEY 
 
 As one that for a weary space has Iain 
 Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine 
 In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, 
 Where that iEgean 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 brine 
 Salt on his lips, and the large air again, — 
 So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
 Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free 
 Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, 
 And through the music of the languid hours. 
 They hear like ocean on a western beach 
 The surge and thunder of the Odyssey. 
 
 Andrew Lang (1844.-1912), 
 
 TRANSFORMATION 
 
 "Give me the wine of happiness," I cried, 
 "The bread of life! — O ye benign, unknown. 
 
 Immortal powers! — I crave them for my own; 
 
 I am athirst, I will not be denied 
 
 Though Hell were up in arms!" No sound replied; 
 
 But turning back to my rude board and lone. 
 
 My soul, confounded, there beheld — a stone, 
 
 Pale water in a shallow cup beside! 
 
 With gushing tears, in utter hopelessness, 
 
 I stood and gazed. Then rose a voice that spoke, — 
 "God gave this, too, and what He gave will bless!" 
 
 And 'neath the hands that trembhng took and broke, 
 
 Lo, truly a sweet miracle divine, 
 
 The stone turned bread, the water ruby wine! 
 
 Gertrude Bloede {1845-1905). 
 
 85 
 
SUNKEN GOLDi 
 
 In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships; 
 
 And gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell, 
 
 Lie nestled in the ocean-flower's bell 
 
 With love's old gifts, once kissed by long-drowned hps; 
 
 And round some wrought gold cup the sea-grass whips, 
 
 And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell. 
 
 Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell 
 
 And seek dim sunlight with their restless tips. 
 
 So He the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes 
 
 Beneath the now hushed surface of myself, 
 
 In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes; 
 
 They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold 
 
 In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf. 
 
 The gleam of irrecoverable gold. 
 
 Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907). 
 
 SEA-SHELL MURMURS 
 
 The hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood 
 On dusty shelves, when held against the ear 
 Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear 
 The faint far murmur of the breaking flood. 
 We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood 
 In our own veins, impetuous and near. 
 And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear 
 And with our feelings' ever shifting mood. 
 Lo! in my heart I hear, as in a shell, 
 The murmur of a world beyond the grave, 
 Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. 
 Thou fool ! this echo is a cheat as well, — 
 The hum of earthly instincts; and we crave 
 A world unreal as the shell-heard sea. 
 
 Eugene Lee-Hamilton. 
 
 ^ Reprinted from Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, by permission of the pub- 
 lisher, ElUot Stock. 
 
AFTER SEVERANCE 
 
 So all the vows of friendship which we swore 
 Are broke, and we estranged, at distance stand. 
 Across the chasm is stretched no beckoning hand 
 Of reconciliation. Now, no more 
 We hold sweet talk of books and poets' lore; 
 The current of a discord, cold, austere, 
 Widens between us, year by bitter year, 
 And each drifts further from the other's door. 
 Thus some wide summer river that of yore 
 Floated the lover to his mistress dear 
 Across the sunset waters, now with snows 
 Engorged, rough-packed with jagged ice- wastes drear, 
 Barriers the way, nor intercourse allows 
 From incommunicable shore to shore. 
 
 Lloyd Miffiin {1846 ). 
 
 SUICIDE 
 
 Invisible as a wind along the sky, 
 She ever wanders o'er the earth immense, 
 A spirit of beauty but malevolence, 
 With foot unechoing and with furtive eye. 
 She loaths and shuns all haunts where peace may lie, 
 Or love, and every joy engendered thence. 
 Yet prowls to wait, with wary and avid sense, 
 For sorrow's heaviest and most burning sigh! 
 Then, when some dreary sufferer darkly fails 
 To find in life's chill heaven one starry trace, 
 One hope no menace of despair assails, 
 Toward him she steals with sure insidious pace. 
 And slowly to his desperate look unveils 
 The maddening glooms and splendors of her face I 
 Edgar Fawcett {1847-1904). 
 
 87 
 
OTHER WORLDS 
 
 I SOMETIMES muse, when my adventurous gaze 
 
 Has roamed the starry arches of the night, 
 
 That were I dowered with strong angehc sight, 
 
 All would look changed in those pale heavenly ways. 
 
 What wheeling worlds my vision would amaze! 
 
 What chasms of gloom would thrill me and affright! 
 
 What rhythmic equipoise would rouse delight! 
 
 What moons would beam on me, what suns would blaze! 
 
 Then through my awed soul sweeps the larger thought 
 
 Of how creation's edict may have set 
 
 Vast human multitudes on those far spheres, 
 
 With towering passions to which mine mean naught, 
 
 With majesties of happiness, or yet 
 
 With agonies of unconjectured tears! 
 
 Edgar Fawcett. 
 
 PRESCIENCE OF DEATH » 
 
 I WONDER oft why God, who is so good, 
 Has barred so close, so close the gates of death. 
 I stand and listen with suspended breath 
 While night and silence round about me brood. 
 If then, perchance, some spirit-whisper would 
 Grow audible and pierce my torpid sense, 
 And oft I feel a presence, veiled, intense. 
 That pulses softly through the solitude; 
 But as my soul leaps quivering to my ear 
 To grasp the potent message, all takes flight, 
 And from the fields and woods I only hear 
 The murmurous chorus of the summer night. 
 I am as one that's dead — yet in his gloom 
 Feels faintly song of birds above his tomb. 
 
 Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (1848-1895). 
 
 » Reprinted from Idyls of Norway, by permission of the publishers, Charles 
 Scribner's Sons. 
 
VENUS OF THE LOUVRE 
 
 Down the long hall she glistens like a star, 
 
 The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone, 
 
 Yet none the less immortal, breathing on. 
 
 Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar. 
 
 When first the enthralled enchantress from afar 
 
 Dazzled mine eyes, I saw not her alone, 
 
 Serenely poised on her world-worshipped throne, 
 
 As when she guided once her dove-drawn car, — 
 
 But at her feet a pale, death-stricken Jew, 
 
 Her life adorer, sobbed farewell to love. 
 
 Here Heine wept! Here still he weeps anew, 
 
 Nor ever shall his shadow lift or move. 
 
 While mourns one ardent heart, one poet-brain, 
 
 For vanished Hellas and Hebraic pain. 
 
 Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). 
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain. 
 The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng. 
 These I ignore to-day and only long 
 To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain, 
 One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song, 
 For all the victories of man's high endeavor. 
 Palm-bearing, laurelled deeds that live forever, 
 The splendor clothing him whose will is strong. 
 Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one 
 Who has persisted and achieved? Rejoice! 
 On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun. 
 Salute him with free heart and choral voice, 
 'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan, 
 The bold, significant, successful man. 
 
 Emma Lazarus, 
 
EPITHALAMIUM 
 
 High in the organ-loft, with liUied hair, 
 
 Love plied the pedals with his snowy foot, 
 
 Pouring forth music like the scent of fruit, 
 
 And stirring all the incense-laden air; 
 
 We knelt before the altar's gold rail, where 
 
 The priest stood robed, with chalice and palm-shoot, 
 
 With music-men, who bore citole and lute, 
 
 Behind us, and the attendant virgins fair; 
 
 And so our red aurora flashed to gold. 
 
 Our dawn to sudden sun, and all the while 
 
 The high-voiced children trebled clear and cold. 
 
 The censer-boys went singing down the aisle. 
 
 And far above, with fingers strong and sure, 
 
 Love closed our lives* triumphant overture. 
 
 Edmund W. Gosse {1849 ). 
 
 THREE SONNETS OF SORROW ^ 
 
 I 
 
 A CHILD, with mystic eyes and flowing hair, 
 I saw her first, 'mid flowers that shared her grace: 
 Though but a boy, I cried, "How fau- a face!" 
 And, coming nearer, told her she was fair. 
 She faintly smiled, yet did not say, "Forbear"! 
 But seemed to take a pleasure in my praise. 
 She led my steps through many a leafy place 
 And pointed where shy birds and flowers were. 
 At length we stood upon a brooklet's brink — 
 I seem to hear its sources babbhng yet — 
 She gave me water from her hand to drink. 
 The while her eyes upon its flow were set. 
 "Thy name?" I asked; she answered low, "Regret," 
 Then faded as the sun began to sink. 
 
 Philip Bourke Marston {1850-1887). 
 
 " The two sonnets by Philip Bourke Marston are reprinted from his Col- 
 lected Poems, by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Company. 
 
 90 
 
LOVE AND MUSIC 
 
 I LISTENED to the music broad and deep: 
 I heard the tenor in an ecstasy 
 Touch the sweet, distant goal; I heard the cry 
 Of prayer and passion; and I heard the sweep 
 Of mighty wings, that in their waving keep 
 The music that the spheres make endlessly, — 
 Then my cheek quivered, tears made blind mine eye; 
 As flame to flame I felt the quick blood leap. 
 And, through the tides and moonlit winds of sound. 
 To me love's passionate voice grew audible. 
 Again I felt thy heart to my heart bound, 
 Then silence on the viols and voices fell; 
 But, like the still, small voice within a shell, 
 I heard Love thrilling through the void profound. 
 Philip Bourke Marston. 
 
 A PRAYER FOR PEACE 
 
 Nearer the eagles swoop in darkening rings, 
 Death scents his awful quarry from afar, 
 While men in millions march to bloody war 
 Hateless, unhated, at the word of Kings: 
 But somewhere hid beneath his secret wings 
 The sons of God, before a juster bar. 
 Plead in his name who bore the cross and scar 
 For Love that sees clear-eyed what war-lust brings. 
 Plead on, ye seers w^ith love-enlightened eyes. 
 Hold up your hands to w^here the angels gaze 
 With deep compassion on our human strife; 
 Prayer moves the world with power beyond amaze. 
 And they who look above this mortal life 
 Know Peace on earth, in Heaven hath great allies. 
 Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley {1851 ). 
 
 91 
 
THE ASSIGNATION 
 
 The darkness throbbed that night with the great heat, 
 
 And my heart throbbed at thought of what should be; 
 
 The house was dumb, the lock sUd silently; 
 
 I only heard the night's hot pulses beat 
 
 Around me as I sped with quiet feet 
 
 Down the dark corridors, and once the sea 
 
 Moaned in its slumber, and I stayed, but she 
 
 Came forth to meet me lily-white and sweet. 
 
 Was there a man's soul ever worth her kiss? 
 
 Silent and still I stood, and she drew near, 
 
 And her lips mixed with mine, and her sweet breath 
 
 Fanned my hot face; and afterward I wis, 
 
 What the sea said to us I did not hear; 
 
 But now I know it spake of Doom and Death. 
 
 Herbert E. Clarke {1852 ). 
 
 BEYOND ? 
 
 What hes beyond the splendour of the sun, 
 Beyond his flashing belt of sister-spheres? 
 What deeps are they whereinto disappears 
 The visitant comet's sword, of fire fine-spun? 
 What rests beyond the myriad lights that run 
 Their nightly race around our human fears? 
 Hope-signals raised on multitudinous spears 
 Of armies, captained by the Eternal One? 
 Beyond the sun, and far beyond the stars, 
 Beyond the weariness of this our day. 
 Beyond this fretting at the prison-bars, 
 The urgent soul, divine in soulless clay. 
 Bids us set forth, through endless avatars, 
 To seek where God has hidden Himself away. 
 
 George Arthur Greene {1853 ). 
 
 92 
 
RENOUNCEMENT 
 
 I MUST not think of thee; and, tired yet strong, 
 
 I shun the thought that lurks in all delight — 
 
 The thought of thee — and in the blue Heaven's height, 
 
 And in the sweetest passage of a song. 
 
 Oh! just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng 
 
 Tliis breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright; 
 
 But it must never, never come in sight; 
 
 I must stop short of thee the whole day long. 
 
 But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, 
 
 When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, 
 
 And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, 
 
 Must doff my will as raiment laid away, — 
 
 With the first dream that comes with the first sleep 
 
 I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. 
 
 Alice Meynell {1853 ). 
 
 NO MORE THESE PASSION-WORN FACES 
 SHALL MEN'S EYES 
 
 No more these passion-worn faces shall men's eyes 
 Behold in life. Death leaves no trace behind 
 Of their wild hate and wilder love, grown blind 
 In desperate longing, more than the foam which lies 
 Splashed up awhile where the showered spray descries 
 The waves whereto their cold limbs were resigned; 
 Yet ever doth the sea-wind's undefined 
 Vague waiUng shudder with their dying sighs. 
 For all men's souls twixt sorrow and love are cast. 
 As on the earth each lingers his brief space. 
 While surely nightfall comes where each man's face 
 In death's obliteration sinks at last. 
 As a deserted wind-tossed sea's foam trace — 
 Life's chilled boughs emptied by death's autumn blast. 
 Oliver Madox Brown (1855-1874). 
 
 93 
 
GENIUS LOCI* 
 
 Peace, shepherd, peace! What boots it singing on? 
 
 Since long ago grace-giving Phoebus died, 
 
 And all the train that loved the stream-bright side 
 
 Of the poetic mount with him are gone 
 
 Beyond the shores of Styx and Acheron, 
 
 In unexplored realms of night to hide. 
 
 The clouds that strew their shadows far and wide 
 
 Are all of Heaven that visits Helicon. 
 
 Yet here, where never muse or god did haunt. 
 
 Still may some nameless power of Nature stray, 
 
 Pleased with the reedy stream's continual chaunt 
 
 And purple pomp of these broad fields in May. 
 
 The shepherds meet him where he herds the kine, 
 
 And careless pass him by whose is the gift divine. 
 
 Margaret L. Woods {1856 ). 
 
 HER CHOICE 2 
 
 "Behold! it is a draught from Lethe's wave. 
 Thy voice of weeping reacheth even that strand 
 Washed by strange waters in Elysian land; 
 I bring the peace thy weary soul doth crave. 
 Drink, and from vain regret thy future save." 
 She lifted deep, dark eyes wherein there lay 
 The sacred sorrow of love's ended day. 
 Then took the chalice from the angel's hand. 
 Life with new love, or life with memory 
 Of the old love? Her heart made instant choice; 
 Like tender music rang the faithful voice: 
 
 " sweet my love, an offering to thee!" 
 And with brave smile, albeit the tears flowed fast. 
 Upon the earth the priceless draught she cast. 
 
 Eliza Calvert Hall {1856 ). 
 
 1 Reprinted from Collected Poems, by permission of the publishers, John 
 Lane Company. 
 
 2 Reprinted from Century Magazine, by permission of the Editors. 
 
 94 
 
TEARS 
 
 When I consider Life and its few years — 
 
 A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; 
 
 A call to battle, and the battle done 
 
 Ere the last echo dies within our ears; 
 
 A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; 
 
 The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; 
 
 The burst of music down an unlistening street — 
 
 I wonder at the idleness of tears. 
 
 Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, 
 
 Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep, 
 
 By every cup of sorrow that you had. 
 
 Loose me from tears, and make me see aright 
 
 How each hath back what once he stayed to weep: 
 
 Homer his sight, David his little lad. 
 
 Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856 ). 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 Darkly, as by some gloomed mirror glassed, 
 Herein at times the brooding eye beholds 
 The great scarred visage of the pompous Past; 
 But oftener only the embroidered folds 
 And soiled regality of his rent robe, 
 Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties 
 And cumber with their trailing pride the globe. 
 And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes; 
 Till the world seems a world of husks and bones 
 Where sightless Seers and Immortals dead. 
 Kings that remember not their awful thrones. 
 Invincible armies long since vanquished, 
 And powerless potentates and foolish sages 
 Lie 'mid the crumbling of the massy ages. 
 
 William Watson [1858 ). 
 
 95 
 
FRIEND, WHO IN THESE SAD NUMBERS 
 DOST DEPLORE 
 
 To an American Poet after reading his " Dirge on the Violation 
 of the Panama Treaty " 
 
 Friend, who in these sad numbers dost deplore 
 A faithless deed: because I love thy land. 
 That gave to me of late so hearty a hand, 
 In thronged Manhattan, or amid the roar 
 Of that loud city on Michigan's still shore, 
 Therefore do I rejoice that one pure band 
 Keep not ignoble silence, but withstand 
 Ev'n Her, their mother, when she shuts the door 
 In Honour's face. So Chatham, whose free speech 
 Yet rings through Time — so Wordsworth, whose free song 
 Comes blowing from his mountains — dared to impeach 
 Their England, speaking out for Man. And long 
 May Earth breed men like these, who scorned to teach 
 That Power can shift the bounds of Right and Wrong. 
 
 William Watson. 
 
 RIZPAH 1 
 
 Blown through the gusty spaces of the night. 
 
 The pale clouds fleet like ghosts along the sky; 
 
 A fitful wind goes moaning feebly by. 
 
 And the faint moon, poised o'er the craggy height, 
 
 Dies in its own uncertain, misty light. 
 
 Within the hills the water-springs are dry; 
 
 The herbs are withered; and the sand- wastes lie 
 
 Dim, wide, and lonely to the weary sight. 
 
 Behold! her awful vigil she will keep 
 
 Through the wan night as through the burning day; 
 
 Though all the world should sleep she will not sleep, 
 
 But watch, wild-eyed and fierce, to scare away, 
 
 As round and round, with hoarse, low cries they creep, 
 
 From her dead sons the hungry beasts of prey. 
 
 James B. Kenyan (1858 ). 
 
 » The two sonnets by James B. Kenyon are reprinted from In Realms of 
 Gold, by permission of the publishers, Cassell & Company, Limited. 
 
 96 
 
THE TRAVELLER 
 
 When in the dark we slowly drift away 
 O'er unknown seas, and busy thoughts at last 
 Are quieted, and all the cares are past 
 That, bandit-like, infest the reahns of day — 
 To what pale country does the spirit stray? 
 Within what wan lit land, what regions vast, 
 Does this strange traveller travel far and fast, 
 Till in the east the day breaks, cold and gray? 
 Ah, tell me, when we slumber, whither goes, 
 And whence at waking comes, the silent guest, 
 Whose face no man hath seen, whom no man knows — 
 The dim familiar of each human breast? 
 Behold, at length, when day indeed shall close, 
 Will this uneasy traveller, too, have rest? 
 
 James B. Kenyon, 
 
 LOVE'S VARLETS 
 
 Love, he is nearer (though the moralist 
 Of rule and line cry shame on me), more near 
 To thee and to the heart of thee, be't wist, 
 Who sins against thee even for the dear 
 Lack that he hath of thee; than who, chill- wrapt 
 In thy light-thought-on customed livery, 
 Keeps all thy laws with formal service apt, 
 Save that great law to tremble and to be 
 Shook to his heart-strings if there do but pass 
 The rumour of thy pinions. Such one is 
 Thy varlet, guerdoned with the daily mass 
 That feed on thy remainder-meats of bliss. 
 More hath he of thy bosom, whose slips of grace 
 Fell through despair of thy close gracious face. 
 
 Francis Thompson (1859-1907). 
 
 97 
 
THE CONTRAST 
 
 He loved her; having felt his love begin 
 With that first look, — as lover oft avers. 
 He made pale flowers his pleading ministers, 
 Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in 
 To serve his suit; but when he could not win, 
 Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers; 
 And at her name his pulse no longer stirs, 
 And life goes on as if she had not been. 
 She never loved him; but she loved Love so, 
 So reverenced Love, that all her being shook 
 At his demand whose entrance she denied. 
 Her thoughts of him such tender color took 
 As western skies that keep the afterglow. 
 The words he spoke were with her till she died. 
 Helen Gray Cone {1859 
 
 AN UNPRAISED PICTURE ^ 
 
 I SAW a picture once by Angelo, — 
 *' Unfinished," said the critic, "done in youth," — 
 And that was all, no thought of praise, forsooth! 
 He was informed, and doubtless it was so. 
 And yet I let an hour of dreaming go 
 The way of all time, touched to tears and ruth, 
 Passion and joy, the prick of conscience's tooth. 
 Before that careworn Christ's divine, soft glow. 
 The painter's yearning with an unsure hand 
 Had moved me more than might his master days: 
 He seemed to speak like one whose Mecca-land 
 Is first beheld, tho' faint and far the w^ays; 
 Who may not then his shaken voice command 
 Yet trembles forth a word of prayer and praise. 
 
 Richard E. Burton {1859 ). 
 
 1 Reprinted from Dumb in June, by permission of the publishers, Lothrop, 
 Lee & Shepard Company. 
 
AMERICA TO ENGLAND, 1900 ^ 
 
 The nightmare melts at last, and London wakes 
 
 To her old habit of victorious ease. 
 
 More men, and more, and more for over-seas, 
 
 More guns until the giant hammer breaks 
 
 That patriot folk whom even God forsakes. 
 
 Shall not great England work her will on these, 
 
 The foolish little nations, and appease 
 
 An angry shame that in her memory aches? 
 
 But far beyond the fierce-contested flood. 
 
 The cannon-planted pass, the shell-torn town, 
 
 The last wild carnival of fire and blood. 
 
 Beware, beware that dim and awful Shade, 
 
 Armored with Milton's sword and Cromwell's frown, 
 
 Affronted freedom, of her own betrayed! 
 
 Katherine Lee Bates {1859 ). 
 
 THE REST IS SILENCE 
 
 II 
 
 Eager and shy, as when among her peers 
 
 A girl will pour her confidence, she told. 
 
 In voice where laughter ran a thread of gold, 
 
 A history all novel to our ears. 
 
 Her bhssful eyes oblivious of tears. 
 
 With lingering touch she one by one unrolled 
 
 Her bridal memories from fold on fold 
 
 Of fragrant silence. Dead these fifty years 
 
 Was he with whom, young hand in hand, she went 
 
 To their first home, which simple neighbor-folk 
 
 Had filled with garden-bloom and forest scent; 
 
 Yet still of him, and that June path they fared. 
 
 Those welcoming flowers, her failing accents spoke; 
 
 — Of how Love led her to a place prepared. 
 
 Katherine Lee Bates. 
 
 > The two sonnets by Katherine Lee Bates are reprinted from America the 
 Beautiful, by permission of the publishers, Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 
 
 99 
 
THE CUP OF LIFEi 
 
 One after one the high emotions fade; 
 
 Time's wheeling measure empties and refills 
 
 Year after year; we seek no more the hills 
 
 That lured our youth divine and unafraid, 
 
 But swarming on some common highway, made 
 
 Beaten and smooth, plod onward with blind feet; 
 
 And only where the crowded crossways meet 
 
 We halt and question, anxious and dismayed. 
 
 Yet can we not escape it; some we know 
 
 Have angered and grown mad, some scornfully laughed; 
 
 Yet surely to each lip — to mine, to thine — 
 
 Comes with strange scent and pallid poisonous glow 
 
 The cup of Life, that dull Circean draught. 
 
 That taints us all, and turns the half to swine. 
 
 Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 
 
 THE LARGEST LIFE 
 
 II 
 
 Nay, never once to feel we are alone. 
 While the great human heart around us lies: 
 To make the smile on other lips our own, 
 To live upon the light in others' eyes: 
 To breathe without a doubt the limpid air 
 Of that most perfect love that knows no pain: 
 To say — I love you — only, and not care 
 Whether the love come back to us again, 
 Divinest self-forgetfulness, at first 
 A task, then a tonic, then a need; 
 To greet with open hands the best and worst, 
 And only for another's wound to bleed: 
 This is to see the beauty that God meant. 
 Wrapped round with life, ineffably content. 
 
 Archibald Lampman. 
 
 » The two sonnets by Archibald Lampman are reprinted from his Poems 
 (Morang & Company), by permission of the executors of the Lampman estate. 
 
 100 
 
TO PAINi 
 
 Not by the minutes of thin torture spun, 
 Not by the nights whose hours halt and slip back, 
 Not by the days when golden noon turns black, 
 Hast thou dismayed me; but that, one by one, 
 Pale shadows pass me of my tasks undone. 
 While, like a victim loosed from wheel and rack. 
 With will unnerved, breath scant and sinew slack, 
 I droop, where glad folk labour in the sun. 
 And yet, winged Inquisitor, return. 
 Stay, though I cringe and cry and plead for grace, 
 If thou hast more to teach, still would I learn; 
 I choose, even with faint heart and quivering lip. 
 Some place in the great, patient fellowship 
 Of those that know the Ught upon thy face. 
 
 Sophie Jewett (1861-1909), 
 
 TO W. P.2 
 
 II 
 
 With you a part of me hath passed away; 
 
 For in the peopled forest of my mind 
 
 A tree made leafless by this wintry wind 
 
 Shall never don again its green array. 
 
 Chapel and fireside, country road and bay. 
 
 Have something of their friendliness resigned; 
 
 Another, if I would, I could not find, 
 
 And I am grown much older in a day. 
 
 But yet I treasure in my memory 
 
 Your gift of charity, your mellow ease. 
 
 And the dear honour of your amity; 
 
 For these once mine, my life is rich with these. 
 
 And I scarce know which part may greater be, — 
 
 What I keep of you, or you rob from me. 
 
 George Santmjana (1863 ). 
 
 » Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, Thomas Y. 
 Crowell Company. 
 
 2 The two sonnets by George Santayana are reprinted from Sonnets and 
 Other Verse, by permission of the publishers, Duflfield & Company. 
 
 101 
 
SONNETS 
 
 XX 
 
 These strewn thoughts, by the mountain pathway 
 
 sprung, 
 I conned for comfort, till I ceased to grieve. 
 And with these flowering thorns I dare to weave 
 The crown, great Mother, on thine altar hung. 
 Teach thou a larger speech to my loosed tongue, 
 And to mine opened eyes thy secrets give, 
 That in thy perfect love I learn to live, 
 And in thine immortality be young. 
 The soul is not on earth an alien thing 
 That hath her life's rich sources otherwhere; 
 She is a parcel of the sacred air. 
 She takes her being from the breath of Spring, 
 The glance of Phoebus is her font of light. 
 And her long sleep a draught of primal night. 
 
 George Santayana. 
 
 NOVEMBER i 
 
 Hark you such sound as quivers? Kings will hear, 
 
 As kings have heard, and tremble on their thrones; 
 
 The old will feel the weight of mossy stones; 
 
 The young alone will laugh and scoff at fear. 
 
 It is the tread of armies marching near, 
 
 From scarlet lands to lands forever pale; 
 
 It is a bugle dying down the gale; 
 
 It is the sudden gushing of a tear. 
 
 And it is hands that grope at ghostly doors; 
 
 And romp of spirit children on the pave; 
 
 It is the tender sighing of the brave 
 
 Who fell, ah! long ago, in futile wars; 
 
 It is such sound as death; and, after all, 
 
 'T is but the forest letting dead leaves fall. 
 
 Mahlon Leonard Fisher {1874 )• 
 
 * Reprinted by permission from Braithwaite's Anthology of Magazine Verse 
 for 1913. The sonnet was originally published in The Bellman. 
 
 102 
 
DOORS 
 
 Like a young child who to his mother's door 
 
 Runs eager for the welcoming embrace, 
 
 And finds the door shut, and with troubled face 
 
 Calls and through sobbing calls, and o'er and o'er 
 
 Calling, storms at the panel — so before 
 
 A door that will not open, sick and numb, 
 
 I Hsten for a word that will not come. 
 
 And know at last I may not enter more. 
 
 Silence! And through the silence and the dark 
 
 By that closed door, the distant sob of tears 
 
 Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores 
 
 The spectral sea; and through the sobbing, hark! 
 
 Down the fair-chambered corridor of years. 
 
 The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors. 
 
 Herman Hagedorn {1882 ). 
 
 THE SOLDIER 1 
 
 If I should die, think only this of me: 
 
 That there's some corner of a foreign field 
 
 That is forever England. There shall be 
 
 In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 
 
 A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware. 
 
 Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
 
 A body of England's, breathing EngHsh ah-. 
 
 Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 
 
 And think, tliis heart, all evil shed away, 
 
 A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 
 
 Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; 
 
 Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 
 
 And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, 
 
 In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 
 
 Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). 
 
 * Reprinted from Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, by permission of the Editor. 
 
 103 
 
TO MRS. HYNDMAN^ 
 
 July 1, 1913 
 
 Mother of those whose need of mothering 
 Made them your children! By your open grave 
 High summer speaks with voice tall poplars have 
 At noon, and larks have found a place to sing, 
 Though round July's blue mirror coil and cling 
 The factory's dark breath. For you, who gave 
 Love-labour, yet more men shall live to save 
 The seed of men from Mammon's harvesting. 
 Wherefore I think you would not have us weep 
 That stand together here, and in the sun 
 Look last on you, who, from long labour, won 
 This quiet ground's full heritage of sleep, 
 But tears within the heart would have us keep, 
 That human love like yours grows fresh upon. 
 
 John Helston, 
 
 DEAF 
 
 These have I lost: now cushats only call 
 In long-lost groves down vales of memory; 
 And cuckoos sing in springs that used to be; 
 While owls go hooting, weirdly musical, 
 'Neath purple nights that have been buried all 
 In the dark tomb of years; and ceaselessly 
 The singing rills reecho from a sea 
 Where long ago they found their funeral. 
 And thro' the dusty crannies of my heart 
 The winds go wailing; and the dancing leaves 
 Beat their fine joys behind my closed eyes; 
 While in a secret storehouse set apart 
 I hear the sobbing of a sea that grieves, 
 And of a little summer wind that dies. 
 
 H. M. Waithman. 
 
 • Reprinted from Aphrodite, and Other Poems, by permission of the pub- 
 lishers. The Macmillan Company. 
 
 104 
 
THE PENALTY OF LOVE » 
 
 If Love should count you worthy, and should deign 
 One day to seek your door and be your guest, 
 Pause! ere you draw the bolt and bid him rest, 
 If in your old content you would remain. 
 For not alone he enters: in his train 
 Are angels of the mists, the lonely quest. 
 Dreams of the unfulfilled, the unpossessed; 
 And sorrow, and Life's immemorial pain. 
 He wakes desires you never may forget, 
 He shows you stars you never saw before. 
 He makes you share with him, for evermore, 
 The burden of the world's divine regret. 
 How wise were you to open not! — and yet, 
 How poor if you should turn him from the door! 
 
 Sidney Royse Lysaght 
 
 * Reprinted from Poems of the Unknown Way, by permission of the pub- 
 lishers, The Macmillan Company. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 75, 76 
 
 Arnold, Matthew 58 
 
 Austin, Alfred 75 
 
 Barnes, Barnabe 18 
 
 Bat^s, Katherine Lee 99 
 
 Blanchard, Samuel Laman 43 
 
 Blind, Mathilde 82 
 
 Bloede, Gertrude 85 
 
 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen 79, 80 
 
 Bowles, William Lisle 27 
 
 Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth 88 
 
 Brooke, Rupert 103 
 
 Brown, Oliver Madox 93 
 
 Browne, William 21 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 49, 50, 51 
 
 Burton, Richard E 98 
 
 Byron, Lord 35 
 
 Clare, John 38 
 
 Clarke, Herbert E 92 
 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh 56 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley 41 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 32 
 
 Cone, Helen Gray 98 
 
 Constable, Henry 9 
 
 CowPER, William 26 
 
 Cranch, Christopher P 54 
 
 Daniel, Samuel 9, 10 
 
 De Vere, Sir Aubrey 35, 36 
 
 De Vere, Aubrey, the Younger 55 
 
 Dobell, Sydney 60 
 
 Dobson, Austin 81 
 
 Donne, John 18, 19 
 
 Dorr, Julia C. R 61 
 
 DowDEN, Edward 83, 84 
 
 Drayton, Michael 11 
 
 Drummond, William 19, 20 
 
 107 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Faber, Frederick William 54 
 
 Fane, Julian Henry 63 
 
 Fawcett, Edgar 87, 88 
 
 Fisher, Mahlon Leonard 102 
 
 Garnett, Richard 73, 74 
 
 Gilder, Richard Watson 84 
 
 GossE, Edmund W 90 
 
 Gray, Thomas 25 
 
 Greene, George Arthur 92 
 
 Greene, Robert 8 
 
 Hagedorn, Herman 103 
 
 Hall, Eliza Calvert 94 
 
 Hallam, Arthur Henry 52 
 
 Helston, John 104 
 
 Hemans, Felicia Dorothea 37 
 
 Herbert, George 21 
 
 Hood, Thomas 42 
 
 Hunt, Leigh 34 
 
 Ingelow, Jean 57 
 
 Jackson, Helen Hunt 71 
 
 Jewett, Sophie 101 
 
 Keats, John 38, 39, 40 
 
 Kenyon, James B 96, 97 
 
 Lampman, Archibald 100 
 
 Lang, Andrew 85 
 
 Lazarus, Emma 89 
 
 Lee-Hamilton, Eugene 86 
 
 Lodge, Thomas 8 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 43, 44, 45 
 
 Lowell, James Russell 56 
 
 Lysaght, Sidney Royse 105 
 
 Marston, Philip Bourkb 90, 91 
 
 Meredith, George 67, 68 
 
 Meynell, Alice 93 
 
 Mifflin, Lloyd 87 
 
 Milton, John 22, 23, 24 
 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo 81 
 
 Moulton, Louise Chandler 74 
 
 Newman, Cardinal 42 
 
 Paton, Sir Noel 57 
 
 Payne, John 82, 83 
 
 108 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Pfeiffer, Emily 62 
 
 PoE, Edgar Allan 48 
 
 Procter, Adelaide A 61 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter 5 
 
 Rawnsley, Hardwicke Drummond 91 
 
 Reese, Lizette Woodworth 95 
 
 Roscoe, William Caldwell 59 
 
 RossETTi, Christina G 69, 70 
 
 RossETTi, Dante Gabriel 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 
 
 RossETTi, William Michael 69 
 
 Santayana, George 101, 102 
 
 Scott, William Bell 53 
 
 Shakespeare, William 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 37 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip 6, 7 
 
 Smith, Charlotte 26 
 
 Southey, Robert 33 
 
 Spenser, Edmund 3, 4, 5 
 
 Surrey, Earl op 2 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles 76, 77 
 
 Sylvester, Joshuah 10 
 
 Symonds, John Addington 78, 79 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 52 
 
 Tennyson-Turner, Charles 47, 48 
 
 Thompson, Francis 97 
 
 TODHUNTER, JOHN 77, 78 
 
 Trench, Archbishop 46 
 
 Waddington, Samuel 36 
 
 Waithman, H. M 104 
 
 Warton, Thomas 25 
 
 Watson, William 95, 96 
 
 Watts-Dunton, Theodore 71, 72, 73 
 
 White, Henry Kirke 34 
 
 White, Joseph Blanco 33 
 
 Woods, Margaret L 94 
 
 Wordsworth, William 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 1 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 A child, with mystic eyes and flowing hair 90 
 
 A Moth belated, — sun and zephyr-kist 62 
 
 A Rose, as fair as ever saw the North 21 
 
 A Sonnet is a moment's monument 63 
 
 A tract of land swept by the salt sea foam 78 
 
 A wretched thing it were, to have our heart 46 
 
 A wrinkled, crabbed man they picture thee 33 
 
 Ah, sweet Content! where is thy mild abode? 18 
 
 Alexis, here she stayed; among these pines 20 
 
 As a fond mother, when the day is o'er 43 
 
 As on my bed at dawn I mused and prayed 48 
 
 As one that for a weary space has lain 85 
 
 Assured of worthiness, we do not dread 67 
 
 At the round earth's imagined corners blow 18 
 
 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones .... 23 
 
 Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed 68 
 
 Beauty, sweet Love, is like the morning dew 9 
 
 Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack 81 
 
 " Behold! it is a draught from Lethe's wave 94 
 
 Beneath the loveliest dream there coils a fear 72 
 
 Bhnd Cyclops, hurling stones of destiny 62 
 
 Blown through the gusty spaces of the night 96 
 
 Bright Star of Beauty! on whose Eyelids sit 11 
 
 Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! 40 
 
 But one short week ago the trees were bare 78 
 
 By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair 69 
 
 By thine own tears thy song must tears beget 65 
 
 Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night 10 
 
 Come, blessed Darkness, come and bring thy balm 61 
 
 Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace 6 
 
 Could I have sung one Song that should survive 57 
 
 Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud 24 
 
 Darkly, as by some gloomed mirror glassed 95 
 
 Dear wood, and you, sweet solitary place 20 
 
 Death, be not proud, though some have called thee 19 
 
 Divers doth use, as I have heard and know 1 
 
 Down the long hall she glistens like a star 89 
 
 Eager and shy, as when among her peers 99 
 
 Earth has not anything to show more fair 28 
 
 110 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 Eternal spirit of the chainless Mind! 35 
 
 Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be 52 
 
 Fair art thou, Phillis, ay, so fair, sweet maid 8 
 
 Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings 22 
 
 Farewell to thee, and to our dreams farewell 73 
 
 Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn 58 
 
 Friend, who in these sad numbers dost deplore 96 
 
 From child to youth ; from youth to arduous man 65 
 
 From morn to eve they struggled — Life and Death 81 
 
 From you have I been absent in the spring 15 
 
 Full many a glorious morning have I seen 13 
 
 "Give me the wine of happiness," I cried 85 
 
 Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 50 
 
 Green little vaulter in the sunny grass 34 
 
 Haply some Rajah first in ages gone 57 
 
 Hark you such sound as quivers? Kings will hear 102 
 
 Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance 7 
 
 He loved her; having felt his love begin 98 
 
 High in the organ-loft, with lillied hair 90 
 
 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways 51 
 
 How like the leper, with his own sad cry 47 
 
 How long, O Lord? — The voice is sounding still 69 
 
 How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! 45 
 
 How sweet the tuneful bells' responsive peal! 27 
 
 How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs 38 
 
 I enter, and I see thee in the gloom 45 
 
 I have known cities with the strong-armed Rhine 54 
 
 I know that all beneath the moon decays 19 
 
 I listened to the music broad and deep 91 
 
 I longed for rest, and some one spoke me fair 74 
 
 I met a traveller from an antique land 37 
 
 I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong 93 
 
 I said, "I will find God," and forth I went 84 
 
 I saw a picture once by Angelo 98 
 
 I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood 55 
 
 I sometimes muse, when my adventurous gaze 88 
 
 I will not rail or grieve, when torpid eld 74 
 
 I wonder oft why God, who is so good 88 
 
 If I have sinned in act, I may repent 41 
 
 If I should die, think only this of me 103 
 
 If Love should count you worthy, and should deign 105 
 
 If thou must love me, let it be for nought 50 
 
 In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships 86 
 
 111 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 In the old void of unrecorded time 54 
 
 In vain to me the smiling mornings shine 25 
 
 Invisible as a wind along the sky 87 
 
 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free 29 
 
 It may indeed be phantasy when 1 32 
 
 It was late summer, and the grass again 36 
 
 Lay down thy burden at this gate and knock 83 
 
 Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust 7 
 
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds 17 
 
 Like a musician that with flying finger 59 
 
 Like a young child who to his mother's door 103 
 
 Like as a huntsman after weary chase 4 
 
 Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! 21 
 
 Love, he is nearer, though the moralist 97 
 
 Mark when she smiles with amiable cheer 3 
 
 Mary! I want a lyre with other strings 26 
 
 Methinks I have passed through some dreadful door 53 
 
 Methought I saw my late espoused saint 24 
 
 Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay 5 
 
 Milton! thou should 'st be living at this hour 29 
 
 Most glorious Lord of life! that, on this day 4 
 
 Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 32 
 
 Mother of those whose need of mothering 104 
 
 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold 38 
 
 My lady's presence makes the Roses red 9 
 
 My love for thee doth march like armed men 84 
 
 My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming ... 16 
 
 Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew 33 
 
 Nay, never once to feel we are alone 100 
 
 Nearer the eagles swoop in darkening rings 91 
 
 No longer mourn for me when I am dead 14 
 
 No more these passion-worn faces shall men's eyes 93 
 
 Not by the minutes of thin torture spun 101 
 
 Not I myself know all my love for thee 64 
 
 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 14 
 
 Not that the earth is changing, O my God! 67 
 
 Now on the summit of Love's topmost peak 75 
 
 O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes 70 
 
 O Friend! I know not which way I must look 28 
 
 O Mighty Mother, hearken! for thy foes 61 
 
 O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray 22 
 
 O soft embalmer of the still midnight! 40 
 
 O Son of man, by lying tongues adored 77 
 
 112 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay 27 
 
 Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain 89 
 
 Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 44 
 
 Oft in the after-days, when thou and 1 63 
 
 On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose 68 
 
 One after one the high emotions fade 100 
 
 One day I wrote her name upon the strand 5 
 
 Once more the eternal melodies from far 37 
 
 Others abide our question. Thou art free 58 
 
 Our love is not a fading, earthly flower 56 
 
 Over that breathing waste of friends and foes 60 
 
 Peace, shepherd, peace ! What boots it singing on? 94 
 
 Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem 43 
 
 Poet, whose unscarred feet have trodden Hell 73 
 
 Rebuke me not! I have nor wish nor skill 79 
 
 Remember me when I am gone away 70 
 
 Revolving worlds, revolving systems, yea 53 
 
 Royal and saintly Cashel! I would gaze 35 
 
 Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! 48 
 
 Scorn not the sonnet; Critic, you have frowned 31 
 
 Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green 2 
 
 Shall he not bless me? Will he never speak 82 
 
 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 12 
 
 She turned the fair page with her fairer hand 60 
 
 Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part 11 
 
 So all the vows of friendship which we swore 87 
 
 Some laws there are too sacred for the hand 36 
 
 Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet 49 
 
 Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred 76 
 
 Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind 31 
 
 That he is dead the sons of kings are glad 71 
 
 That time of year thou mayst in me behold 15 
 
 The bubble of the silver-springing waves 59 
 
 The darkness throbbed that night with the great heat 92 
 
 The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold 82 
 
 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 17 
 
 The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove 26 
 
 The holiest of all holidays are those 44 
 
 The hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood 86 
 
 The lost days of my life until to-day 66 
 
 The Ocean, at the bidding of the Moon 47 
 
 The nightmare melts at last, and London wakes 99 
 
 The poetry of earth is never dead 39 
 
 113 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings 2 
 
 The world is too much with us; late and soon 30 
 
 There is a silence where hath been no sound 42 
 
 These have I lost: now cushats only call 104 
 
 These strewn thoughts, by the mountain pathway sprung. 102 
 
 They do but grope in learning's pedant round 42 
 
 They rose to where their sovran eagle sails 52 
 
 This holy season, fit to fast and pray 3 
 
 Though to the vilest things beneath the moon 56 
 
 To leave unseen so many a glorious sight 46 
 
 To one who has been long in city pent 39 
 
 To stand upon a windy pinnacle 79 
 
 Two Voices are there; one is of the sea 30 
 
 Under the arch of Life, where love and death 66 
 
 Were I as base as is the lowly plain 10 
 
 What art thou. Mighty One! and where thy seat? 34 
 
 What lies beyond the splendour of the sun 92 
 
 What means this mighty chant, wherein the wail 77 
 
 What meant the poets in invective verse 8 
 
 What power is this? What witchery wins my feet 72 
 
 What was't awakened first the untried ear 41 
 
 When do I see thee most, beloved one? 64 
 
 When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit 76 
 
 When I consider how my light is spent 23 
 
 When I consider Life and its few years 95 
 
 When I hear laughter from a tavern door 80 
 
 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes 12 
 
 When in the chronicle of wasted time 16 
 
 When in the dark we slowly drift away 97 
 
 When our two souls stand up erect and strong 51 
 
 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 13 
 
 Where Venta's Norman castle still uprears 25 
 
 While men pay reverence to the mighty things 75 
 
 Whoso list to hunt? I know where is an hind! 1 
 
 With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod 83 
 
 With heart not yet half -rested from Mont Blanc 55 
 
 With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb 'st the skies! 6 
 
 With stammering lips and insuflBcient sound 49 
 
 With you a part of me hath passed away 101 
 
 Yet it is pitiful how friendships die 80 
 
 Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach 71 
 
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