i ^ ' THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BEQUEST OF Alice R. Hilgard TRAVELLER'S JOY Historic is my chiefe studie, Pocsie my only delight, to which I am particularly aftected : for as Cleanthes said, that as the voice being forciblie pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth forth more strong and shriller, so me seemes, that a sentence cunningly and closely couched in measure-keeping Posie, darts itselfe forth more furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke. Montaigne, "Essays," I. 25. TRAVELLER'S JOY COMPILED BY W. G. WATERS ... an eternal book Whence I may copy many a lovely saying About the leaves, and flowers about the playing Of nymphs in woods, and fountains ; and the shade Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid ; And many a verse from so strange influence That we must ever wonder how, and whence It came. Keats. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1906 PLYMOUTH W. BRENDON AND SON, LIMITED PRINTERS GIFT q n PREFACE THE work of the contemporary anthologist must needs differ both in character and in aim from that of him who gleaned in the scantier field of the past, seeing that every succeeding decacUi has largely increased the literary store from which he may gather. Fresh volumes of selections follow one another without intermission, and these, with a few marked exceptions, quickly sink into oblivion ; but the supply of anthologists seems as inexhaustible as that of ungarnered masterpieces. Various reasons may be advanced for this persistence. The fact that all the great prizes have been appropriated and set finally in the treasury of immortal achieve- ment will not daunt the searcher who is really in earnest. The ardour of the chase waxes with the rarity of the prey. The wealth of our literature is so immense ! How many fascinating byways are there which are only familiar to the diligent student, and of those which are thoroughly explored only an inconsiderable portion is known to the general v reader. The repose of many of the famous volumes, which have charmed past generations, grows ever more profound and undisturbed by reason of the perverted humour of the age, which ostentatiously postpones the claims of literary excellence to those of superficial novelty. In turning over their neg- lected pages the anthologist may now and again feel something of the wonder and delight of Cortes on the peak as he disinters from its musty obscurity some fragment rich in imagery and ringing with quaint melody. Moreover, he may harbour pride fully justified as he places his treasure where it may readily meet the eyes of those who, albeit appreciative of good literature, have little or no leisure to search on their own account. One reason of the survival of the anthologist lies in the fact that, if he is of the true grit, he never finds a collection made by another hand to be entirely satisfactory. He detects numerous faults of omission and inclusion, and he dreams the while of an ideal public whose wants in the matter of anthologies have been completely neglected. If he is wise he will provide especially for those summer and autumn travellers cycling or with a knapsack who would fain bear with them some light store of literary provender. Collections professing to cater for these have ap- peared from time to time, most of them taken vi largely from modern writers, and incidentally they have done good service in introducing the younger generation of literary workers to some who, too fastidiously, ignore all but the great writers of the past ; but a common mistake in many of these has been the allowance of novelty or of well- worn familiarity as qualification for admittance. Search will show that numerous treasures of our earlier literature still remain unknown except to the few, and to make some of these known to the many is the object of "Traveller's Joy." It is by the taste of these enticing morsels of good literary fare that men, hitherto indifferent, may be led to make a full meal of the same. The board will be none the less tempting if it should prove to be plenti- fully garnished with the spoil of years lying nearer to our golden prime. There is some truth in the jibe that men talk of the classics more than they read them ; wherefore no apology will be offered for the inclusion of cer- tain pieces with which every reader might be supposed to be familiar. In this age of hurry few have the time though they may have the taste for retrospective reading, and many of the stanzas within, which the critic will know by heart, will be rare and strange to the Joyful Traveller. " Traveller's Joy " is compiled for the student in vii posse rather than in esse : a guide to those flowery wildernesses which lie a little off the beaten track, and it may be hoped that those who find novelty may also find pleasure therein. Those who, in their fuller experience, may meet old friends will surely give them that greeting which old friends deserve. THE compiler desires to tender his acknowledgments and thanks to Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Bridges, Mr. Bour- dillon, Mr. Binyon, and Mr. Watts-Dunton for their kind permission to make use of such of their poems as appear in this volume. Mr. Alfred Nutt and Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, representing severally Mrs. Henley and Mrs. Stevenson, have permitted the insertion of certain of Henley's poems and of the extract from "Prince Otto." Mr. George Allen has also signified his approval of the use of W. Cory's poems, taken from "lonica." TABLE OF CONTENTS SPRING: FOR YOUTH SPRING . SONG ROSALYND'S MADRIGAL THE SHEPHEARD'S DAFFADIL SONG MEETING AT NIGHT ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION . LOVE POEM . IN A SHADED GARDEN SONG SONG SONG STANZAS . SONNETS . ESSAYS XXX AND CCVII . LOVE IN IDLENESS A LYRIC TO MIRTH SONG LOVE POEM . PAGE 2 Ed. Spenser John Fletcher 3 Thomas Lodge 4 Michael Drayton 5 John Dow land 7 R. Browning 8 William Hazlitt 9 Robert Jones 14 Lawence Hinyon 14 Thomas Campion 16 Thomas Campion 17 John Donne 17 W. Shaksperc 19 Michael Dray ton 20 R. SteeJe 22 Thos. Lovell Bediioes 30 A\ Herrick 32 Sir W. Raleigh 33 Thomas Campion 34 PAGE No. Ill W. E. Henley 35 IN THREE DAYS . . . R. Browning 36 YOUTH'S AGITATIONS . . M. Arnold 37 SONG ..... Thomas Carew 38 His DISCOURSE WITH CUPID Btnjonson 39 SONG . . . . . R. Browning 41 THE SHEPHERD BOY . . Samuel Pepys 43 LOVE AMONG THE RUINS . R. Browning 47 LOVE POEMS . . . Nicholas Breton 50 PSYCHE ..... Laurence Binyon 5 1 SONG ..... Thomas Campion 54 SONNET John Keats 55 THREE BROTHERS . . Giovanni Francesco Slraparola 55 ODE . . . Samuel Daniel 60 SONG ..... Sir W. Davenant 6 1 THE SHEPHERD'S WIFE'S SONG Robert Greene 62 DAYBREAK .... William Blake 64 MAY AND DEATH . . . Robert Browning 64 SUMMER: FOR MANHOOD SUMMER .... Ed. Spenser 68 ELEGY ON A LADY . . R. Bridges 69 ENVY ..... Anon 71 THE SCRUTINIE . . . R. Lovelace 72 To EVENING. . W. Collins 73 MAY EVENING . . . Laurence Binyon 76 FROM THE FAERIE QUEEN . Ed. Spenser 77 SONG R- Bridges 77 xii ESSAY X SONNETS . SIREN CHORUS SONG FROM COMUS LETTER A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT THE POET'S SONG THE COUNTRY LIFE . LOVE'S DEITY LYRIC SONNET FEDERIGO AND THE FALCON THE WINDMILL . BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIIS THE POET .... THE MILKMAID . SUMMER TEMPEST A DEDICATION SONNETS . REFLECTIONS ON DEATH JACK AND JOAN . SONG OF A MAID . GREAT GOD PAN . LAST NIGHT .... To CHLORIS .... PRINCESS CINDERELLA . THE LOVER'S Vow MY TRUE LOVE . PAGE Joseph Addison 78 W. Shakspere 83 George Darley 84 Anon 85 /. Milton 85 Tobias Smollet 89 E. B. Browning 95 Lord Tennyson 97 R. Herrick 98 John Donne 100 T. Campion 102 S. Daniel 103 Giovanni Boccaccio 103 R. Bridges ill S. T. Coleridge 112 Lord Tennyson 1 19 Isaac Walton 121 R. Bridges 126 F. W. Bourdillon 126 S. Daniel 127 Thomas de Qu imey 129 Thomas Campion 132 T. Lovell Beddocs 134 J. Fletcher 135 George Darley 135 C. Cotton 136 R. L. Stevenson 137 T. Lodge 150 Sir P. Sidney 151 PAGE PRAISE OF HIS FAIREST LOVE Nicholas Breton 152 To CCELIA . C. Cotton 154 To FLAVIA . . . . Waller 155 WHAT THE VOICES SAID . 7'ke.odort Watts- D union 156 AUTUMN: FOR MATURITY AUTUMN . Ed. Spenser 158 IT is NOT BEAUTY I DEMAND George Darley 159 FROM THE CLIFFS : NOON . D. G. Rossetti 160 THE GARDEN . . . A. Marvell 161 INVOCATION TO PAN . . /. Keats 164 LETTER Horace Walpole 166 ROBIN HOOD . . . /. Keats 171 ON THE RHINE . . . M. Arnold 174 A WOMAN . . . . W. E. Henley 175 HERACLITUS . . . . W. Cory 175 FROM HYDRIOTAPHIA . . Sir T. Browne 176 ISEULT OF IRELAND . . Matthew Arnold 180 A SONG . W. Cory 187 DOWNS AT EVE . . . W. E. Henley 188 THE MESSAGE . . . John Donne 189 LYRICAL MONOLOGUE . . Lord Tennyson 189 ON READING OLD BOOKS . W. Hazlitt 199 A MIND CONTENT . . R. Greene 215 AN INVOCATION . W. Cory 216 THE PHILOSOPHER . . R. Bridges 218 LONGING . . . . M. Arnold 219 THE RED FISHERMAN . . W. M. Praed 220 xiv PAGE KING AND SLAVE . W. E. Henley 229 THE LATEST DECALOGUE A. H. C lough 230 A LEAVE-TAKING . A. C. Swinburne 231 AN INVECTIVE AGAINST LOVE T. Watson 233 WINTER: FOR DECLINE WINTER .... Ed. Spenser 2 3 5 SONG Thomas Campion 237 CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE Sir H. Wot ton 238 SONG Lord Tennyson 239 YOUTH AND CALM M. Arnold 240 THE ROSE .... W. E. Henley 241 COME NOT .... Lord Tennyson 241 ADVANCING AGE . Edward Gibbon 242 THE NAMELESS ONE . J. C. Mangan 246 ALL is WELL . . . A. H. dough 248 OLD AND NEW F. W. Bourdillon 249 To .... Lord Tennyson 249 PARAPHRASE OF HORACE /. Dryden 250 To R. T. H. B. . W. E. Henley 251 CONTENT .... Sir Edward Dyer(?} 252 SIR PETER .... T. L. Peacock 253 A FORSAKEN GARDEN . A. C. Swinburne 254 LIFE Bishop King 258 STANZAS .... John Keats 258 DEATH AND SLEEP Sir T. Browne 259 THE DYING MAN . G. Sewell 264 IN MY OWN ALBUM . C. Lamb 265 MORALITY .... M. Arnold 266 FAERY SONG .... MlMNERMUS IN CHURCH FROM THE FAERIE QUEEN . DECAY A SOLDIER'S LETTER . YOUTH AND AGE . STORM FAREWELL TO ARMS TIME SONNETS .... STANZAS .... DREAM PEDLARY . AMICUS REDIVIVUS DIRGE EPITAPH ON A JACOBITE CHORUS DIRGE FOR THE YEAR . ESSAY CCLXVI . SONNET TIME INVOCATION .... DIRGE DEATH'S SUMMONS REGRETS .... MEN OF GENIUS . A CHRISTMAS CAROL . NEW YEAR'S EVE . PAGE /. Keats 268 W. Cory 269 Ed. Spenser 270 F. W. Bourdillon 270 R. Steel e 271 T. L. Peacock 277 W. . Henley 279 G. Peele 280 P. B. Shelley 281 W. Shakspere 281 /. Mundy 283 T. Z. Beddoes 283 C. Lamb 285 G. Darley 292 Lord Macaulay 293 P. B. Shelley 294 P. B. Shelley 295 R. Steele 296 P. B. Shelley 302 Sir W. Raleigh 303 T. Campion 303 7\ L. Beddoes 304 T. Nashe 304 IV. E. Henley 306 M. Arnold 306 R. Herrick 308 C. Lamb 309 xvi SPRING FOR YOUTH SPRING (From Mutabilitie, Canto vii.) So forth issew'd the Seasons of the yeare. First lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of flowers That freshly budded and new bloosmes did beare, [In which a thousand birds had built their bowres That sweetly sung to call forth Paramours] And in his hand a javelin he did beare, And on his head [as fit for warlike stoures] A guilt engraven morion he did wcare ; That as some did him love, so others did him feare. Ed. Spenser. Song <^y *o *c> ^y (From Vakntinian) "M" OW the lusty Spring is seen ; Golden yellow, gaudy blue, Daintily invite the view. Everywhere upon the green, Roses blushing as they blow And enticing men to pull, Lilies whiter than the snow, Woodbines of sweet honey full : All love's emblems, and all cry, " Ladies, if not plucked, we die.' 1 Yet the lusty Spring hath stayed ; Blushing red and purest white Daintily to love invite Every woman, every maid. Cherries kissing as they grow, And inviting men to taste, Apples even ripe below, Winding gently to the waist : All love's emblems, and all cry, " Ladies, if not plucked, we die." John Fletcher. Rosalynd's Madrigal *o <* T OVE in my bosom like a bee Doth suck his sweet ; Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within mine eyes he makes his nest, His bed amidst my tender breast. My kisses are his daily feast ; And yet he robs me of my rest. "Ah, wanton ! will ye?" And if I sleep, then percheth he With pretty flight, And makes his pillow of my knee The live-long night. Strike I my lute, he tunes the string ; He music plays, if so I sing. He lends me every lovely thing ; Yet, cruel ! he my heart doth sting. Whist, wanton ! still ye ! Else I with roses every day Will whip you hence ! And bind you, when you want to play ; For your offence I'll shut my eyes to keep you in ! Til make you fast it for your sin ! I'll count your power not worth a pin ! Alas ! what hereby shall I win If he gainsay me ? 4 What if I beat the wanton boy With many a rod ? He will repay me with annoy, Because a god. " Then sit thou safely on my knee 1 And let thy bower my bosom be ! Lurk in mine eyes, I like of thee ! O Cupid ! so thou pity me, Spare not but play thee." Thomas Lodge. The Shepheard's Daffadil (From England's Helicon} , as thou cam'st this way By yonder little hill, Or as thou through the fields didst stray, Saw'st thou my daffadil ? She's in a frock of Lincoln-greene, The colour maydes delight ; And never hath her beauty seene But through a vayle of white. Than roses richer to behold That dresse up lovers' bowers ; The pansie and the marygold Are Phoebus' paramours. 5 Thou well describ'st the daffadil ; It is not full an hower Since by the spring near yonder hill I saw that lovely flower. Yet with my flower thou didst not meete, Nor news of her dost bring ; Yet is my daffadil more sweete Than that by yonder spring. I saw a shephearde, that doth keepe In yonder field of lillie, Was making (as he fed his sheepe) A wreath of daffadillie. Yet, Gorbo, thou delud'st me still, My flower thou didst not see ; For know my pretty daffadil Is worne of none but me. To show itself but near her seate No lilly is so bold ; Except to shade her from the heate, Or keepe her from the colde. Through yonder vale as I did passe, Descending from the hill, I met a smerking bonny lasse : They call her Daffadil. 6 Whose presence as along she went The pretty flowers did greete ; As though their heads they downe-ward bent With homage to her feet. And all the shepherds that were nie, From top of every hill, Unto the vallies loud did crie, " There goes sweet Daffodil ! " Aye, gentle shephearde, now with joy Thou all my flock dost fill ; Come, goe with me, thou shepheard's boy, Let us to Daffodil. Michael Dray ton. Song O "> ^^ "Qy (From the First Book of Songs and Airs, 1597) if you change ! I'll never choose again. Sweet, if you shrink ! I'll never think of love. Fair, if you fail ! I'll judge all beauty vain. Wise, if too weak ! mere wits I'll never prove. Dear ! Sweet ! Fair ! Wise ! change, shrink, nor be not weak ; And, on my faith ! my faith shall never break. Earth with her flowers shall sooner heaven adorn ; Heaven her bright stars through earth's dim globe shall move ; Fire heat shall lose ; and frosts of flames be born ; Air made to shine, as black as hell shall prove : Earth, Heaven, Fire, Air, the world transformed shall view, Ere I prove false to faith or strange to you ! John Dowland. Meeting at Night o *^> (From Dramatic Lyrics) H^HE grey sea and the long black land ; And the yellow half-moon large and low ; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach ; Three fields to cross till a farm appears ; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro 3 its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each. R. Browning. 8 On Classical Education o o (From the Round Table] HTHE study of the Classics is less to be regarded as an exercise of the intellect than as "a discipline of humanity." The peculiar advantage of this mode of education consists not so much in strengthening the understanding as in softening and refining the taste. It gives men liberal views ; it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself ; to love virtue for its own sake ; to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches ; and to fix our thoughts on the remote and permanent instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to believe that there is really something great and excellent in the world surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile fear which bows only to present power and upstart authority. Rome and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind which can never be occupied again. They were two cities set on a hill which could not be hid; all eyes have seen them, and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time. " Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Destructive war, and all involving age, Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, Immortal heirs of universal praise ! Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow ! " It is this feeling, more than anything else, which produces a marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages, and which, from the weight and importance of the conse- quences attached to the former, stamps every word with a monumental firmness. By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with know- ledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed either a real love of excellence, or a belief that any excellence exists superior to their own. Every- thing is brought down to the vulgar level of their own ideas and pursuits. Persons without educa- tion certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves or in things immediately within their observation ; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been re- 10 marked as the characteristic of self-taught men, and which degenerates into obstinate prejudice, or petulant fickleness of opinion, according to the natural sluggishness or activity of their minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the first opinions they have struck out for themselves, and inaccessible to conviction ; or else (the dupes of their own vanity and shrewdness) are everlasting converts to every crude suggestion that presents itself, and the last opinion is always the true one. Each successive discovery flashes upon them with equal light and evidence, and every new fact over- turns their whole system. It is among this class of persons, whose ideas never extend beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find partizans, who are very honest men, with a total want of principle, and who unite the most hardened effrontery and intolerance of opinion, to endless inconsistency and self-contradiction. A celebrated political writer of the present day, who is a great enemy to classical education, is a remarkable instance both of what can and what cannot be done without it. It has been attempted of late to set up a dis- tinction between the education of words and the education of things, and to give the preference in all cases to the latter. But, in the first place, the knowledge of things, or of the realities of life, is not easily to be taught except by things themselves, and, even if it were, is not so absolutely indispen- sable as it has been supposed. " The world is too ii much with us, early and late " ; and the fine dream of our youth is best prolonged among the visionary objects of antiquity. We owe many of our most amiable delusions, and some of our superiority, to the grossness of mere physical existence, to the strength of our associations with words. Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmo- sphere gives to naked objects. There can be no true elegance without taste in style. In the next place, we mean absolutely to deny the application of the principle of utility to the present question. By an obvious transposition of ideas, some persons have confounded a knowledge of useful things with useful knowledge. Knowledge is only useful in itself as it exercises or gives pleasure to the mind ; the only knowledge that is of use in a practical sense is professional knowledge. But knowledge, considered as a branch of general education, can be of use only to the mind of the person acquiring it. If the knowledge of language produces pedants, the other kind of knowledge (which is proposed to be substituted for it) can only produce quacks. There is no question but that the knowledge of astronomy, of chemistry, and of agriculture, is highly useful to the world, and absolutely neces- sary to be acquired by persons carrying on certain professions ; but the practical utility of a know- ledge of these subjects ends there. For example, it is of the utmost importance to the navigator to know exactly in what degree of longitude and 12 latitude such a rock lies ; but to us, sitting here at our Round Table, it is not of the smallest con- sequence whatever, whether the map-maker has placed it an inch to the right or to the left ; we are in no danger of running against it. So the art of making shoes is a highly useful art, and very proper to be known and practised by somebody, that is, by the shoemaker. But to pretend that everyone else should be thoroughly acquainted with the whole process of this ingenious handicraft, as one branch of useful knowledge, would be pre- posterous. It is sometimes asked, What is the use of poetry? and we have heard the argument carried on almost like a parody on FalstafiPs reasoning about Honour. " Can it set a leg ? No. Or an arm ? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Poetry hath no skill in surgery, then ? No." It is likely that the most enthusiastic lover of poetry would so far agree to the truth of this state- ment, that if he had just broken a leg, he would send for a surgeon instead of a volume of poems from a library. But " they that are whole need not a physician." The reasoning would be well founded, if we lived in a hospital, and not in the world. William Hazlitt. (From the Second Book of Songs and Airs, 1601) TV/T Y Love is neither young nor old, Nor fiery-hot nor frozen-cold, But fresh and fair as springing briar Blooming- the fruit of love's desire : Not snowy-white nor rosy-red, But fair enough for shepherd's bed : And such a love was never seen On hill or dale or country-green. Robert Jones. In a Shaded Garden ^ *o (From The Praise of Life, 1896) TPvOWN in a shaded garden I laid on earth my head : The deep trees murmured, darkly fresh, Over my bed : I looked through living leaves to the sky, Odours and songs were quivering nigh ; The warm grass touched my cheek as I lay And care from me was far away. As a child to its mother, to Earth I drew ; I felt her true. Of Life, sweet Life, enamoured, I closed my eyes to feel The sweetness pierce to the inmost veins And the whole heart steal ; 14 Sacred Life, more sweet and fair Than all her children of earth and air, Fountain dearer than joy in the breast, In the blue I adored, in the grass I caressed : Then Earth, my mother, leaned to my ear, And spoke me clear. To thee the rose her odour, Her glory dedicates ; And thee the pink's sweet-budded fringe Of snow awaits. For thee is the sprinkled fire of the broom, For thee the azalea burns her bloom ; O child, does thy heart not tell thee how Thy joy is answered from every bough ? In the throat of the bird, in the sap of the tree, Tis all for thee ! Stricken with joy and wonder, I raised my eyes around, And saw what mystery flowered for me In that enchanted ground ! The roses, the roses, rich entwined, Heavy with love to me inclined ; Yearning up from the dusk of death, They trembled towards me with living breath. none that loved me is dead, I knew, And each is true. Now forth to the world attended By the spirits of that hour, 1 bear within me a charm secure As the scent asleep in a flower. 15 Wise men now, profound in care, Pass me with distrustful air : But the child perceives, and the careless boy Now admits me of his joy. And my love in a glory enshrines my bliss In a laughing kiss. Laurence Binyon. Song *> 'Qy 'Q (From the Third Book of Airs} r^OME ! O come, my life's delight 1 Let me not in languor pine ! Love loves no delay ; thy sight, The more enjoyed, the more divine ! O come, and take from me The pain of being deprived of thee I Thou all sweetness dost enclose ! Like a little world of bliss : Beauty guards thy looks ! The rose In them, pure and eternal is. Come then ! and make thy flight As swift to me as heavenly light ! Thomas Campion. 16 Song 1 'Qy "C> -^ <^ (From the Third Book of Airs} Q LEEP, angry beauty, sleep, and fear not me ! For who a sleeping lion dares provoke ? It shall suffice me, here to sit and see, Those lips shut up, that never kindly spoke. What sight can more content a lover's mind Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind ? My words have charmed her, for secure she sleeps ; Though guilty much, of wrong done to my love ; And, in her slumber, see ! she, close-eyed, weeps ! Dreams often, more than waking passions move. Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee! That she, in peace, may wake, and pity me. Thomas Campion. Songf <^y *^ "^> <^y (From Songs and Sonnets) C WEETEST love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in the hope the world can show A fitter love for me : But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, Thus to use myself in jest By feigned deaths to die. C 17 Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here to-day ; He hath no desire nor sense, Nor half so short a way ; Then fear not me, But believe that I shall make Hastier journeys since I take More wings and spurs than he. O how feeble is man's power, That if good fortune fall, Cannot add another hour, Nor a lost hour recall ; But come bad chance, And we join to it our strength, And we teach it art and length, Itself o'er us to advance. When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind, But sigh'st my soul away ; When thou weep'st, unkindly kind, My life's blood doth decay. It cannot be That thou lov'st me as thou say'st, If in thine my life thou waste, That art the best of me. Let not thy divining heart Forethink me any ill ; Destiny may take thy part, And may thy fears fulfil. 18 But think that we Are but turn'd aside to sleep, They who one another keep Alive, ne'er parted be. John Donne. (From the Passionate Pilgrim) Tj* AIR is my love, but not so fair as fickle ; Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty ; Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle ; Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty : A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, None fairer, nor none falser to deface her. Her lips to mine how often hath she join'd, Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing 1 How many tales to please me hath she coin'd, Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing ! Yet in the midst of all her pure pretestings, Her faiths, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings. She burn'd with love, as straw with fire flameth, She burn'd out love, as soon as straw out-burneth ; She fram'd the love, and yet she foil'd the framing, She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning. Was this a lover, or a lecher whether ? Bad in the best, though excellent in neither. 19 Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded, Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring ! Bright orient pearl, alack ! too timely shaded ! Fair creature, kill'd too soon by death's sharp sting ! Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree, And falls, through wind, before the fall should be. I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have ; For why ? thou left'st me nothing in thy will. And yet thou left'st me more than I did crave ; For why ? I craved nothing of thee still : O yes, dear friend, I pardon crave of thee The discontent thou did'st bequeath to me. W. Shakspere. Sonnets <^x -^ ^> *y (From Idea) T OVE banish'd heaven, in earth was held in scorn ; Wand'ring abroad in need and beggary : And wanting friends, though of a goddess born, Yet crav'd the alms of such as passed by. I, like a man devout and charitable, Clothed the naked, lodged this wand'ring guest j With sighs and tears still furnishing his table, With what might make the miserable blest. But this ungrateful, for my good desert, Intic'd my thoughts, against me to conspire ; Who gave consent to steal away my heart, And set my breast, his lodging, on a fire. 20 Well, well, my friends ! when beggars grow thus bold; No marvel then, though Charity grow cold. Dear ! why should you command me to my rest, When now the night doth summon all to sleep ? Methinks this time becometh lovers best ! Night was ordain'd, together friends to keep. How happy are all other living things, Which, though the day disjoin by several flight, The quiet ev'ning yet together brings, And each returns unto his love at night ! O thou that art so courteous else to all, Why should'st thou, Night ! abuse me only thus, That ev'ry creature to his kind dost call, And yet 'tis thou dost only sever us ? Well could I wish it would be ever day, If, when night comes, you bid me go away 1 Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore, My soul-shrin'd saint, my fair IDEA lies, O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore Thy chrystal stream refined by her eyes, Where sweet myrrhe- breathing zephir in the spring Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers, Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing, Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers ; Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen, " Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand'ring years, 21 And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft had been And here to thee he sacrificed his tears : Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone, And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Helicon." 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 for ever, 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 would'st, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover. Michael Dray ton. Essays XXX and CCVII ^> -^ (From The Tatkr) HP HE vigilance, the anxiety, the tenderness which I have for the good people of England, I am persuaded, will in time be much commended : but I doubt whether they will ever be rewarded. How- ever, I must go on cheerfully in my work of reformation : that being my great design, I am studious to prevent my labours increasing upon 22 me ; therefore am particularly observant of the temper and inclinations of childhood and youth, that we may not give vice and folly supplies from the growing generation. It is hardly to be imagined how useful this study is, and what great evils or benefits arise from putting us in our tender years to what we are fit and unfit : therefore on Tuesday last (with a design to sound their inclinations) I took three lads, who are under my guardianship, a rambling in a hackney coach, to shew them the town ; as the Lions, the Tombs, Bedlam, and the other places which are entertainments to raw minds, because they strike forcibly on the fancy. The boys are brothers, one of sixteen, the other of fourteen, the other of twelve. The first was his father's darling, the second his mother's, and the third is mine, who am their uncle. Mr. William is a lad of true genius, but being at the upper end of a great school, and having all the boys below him, his arrogance is insupportable. If I begin to shew a little of my Latin, he immediately interrupts " Uncle, under favour, that which you say is not understood in that manner." " Brother," says my boy Jack, "you do not shew your manners much in contradicting my Uncle Isaac." " You queer cur," says Mr. William, " do you think my uncle takes any notice of such a dull rogue as you are ? " Mr. William goes on " He is the most stupid of all my mother's children : he knows nothing of his book ; when he should mind that he is hiding or hoarding his taws and marbles, or laying up far- 23 things. His way of thinking is, ' Foiir-and-twenty farthings make sixpence, and two sixpences a shil- ling, two shillings and sixpence half a crown, and two half-crowns five shillings.' So within these two months, the close hunks has scraped up twenty shillings, and we will make him spend it all before he comes home. 5? Jack immediately claps his hands into both pockets and turns as pale as ashes. There is nothing touches a parent (and such I am to Jack) so nearly as a provident conduct. This lad has in him the true temper for a good husband, a kind father, and an honest executor. All the great people you see make considerable figures on the Exchange, in court, and sometimes in senates, are such as in reality have no greater faculty than what may be called human instinct, which is a natural tendency to their own preservation and that of their friends, without being capable of strik- ing out of the road for adventures. There is Sir William Scrip who was of this sort of capacity from his childhood ; he has bought up the country round him, and makes a bargain better than Sir Harry Wildfire, with all his wit and humour. Sir Harry never wants money but he comes to Scrip, laughs at him half an hour, and then gives bond for the other thousand. The close men are in- capable of placing merit anywhere but in their pence, and therefore gain it ; while others, who have larger capacities, are diverted from the pur- suit of enjoyments, which can be supported only by that cash which they despise, and therefore are 24 in the end slaves to their inferiors both in fortune and understanding. I once heard a man of excel- lent sense observe, that more affairs in the world failed by being in the hands of men of too large capacities for their business than by being in the conduct of such as wanted abilities to execute them. Jack therefore, being of a plodding make, shall be a citizen : and I design him to be the refuge of the family in their distress, as well as their jest in prosperity. His brother Will shall go to Oxford with all speed ; where, if he does not arrive at being a man of sense, he will soon be informed wherein he is a coxcomb. There is in that place such a true spirit of raillery and humour, that if they cannot make you a wise man they will certainly let you know you are a fool ; which is all my cousin wants, to cease to be so. Thus having taken these two out of the way, I have leisure to look at my third lad. I observe in the young rogue a natural subtlety of mind which discovers itself rather in forbearing to declare his thoughts on any occasion than in any visible way of exerting himself in discourse. For which reason I will place him where, if he commits no faults, he may go farther than those in other stations, though they excel in virtues. The boy is well fashioned, and will easily fall into a graceful manner ; where- fore I have a design to make him a page to a great lady of my acquaintance ; by which means he will be well skilled in the common modes of life, and make a greater progress in the world by that 25 knowledge than with the greatest qualities without it. A good mien in a court will carry a man greater lengths than a good understanding in any other place. We see a world of pains taken, and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life ; and, after all, the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of cloathes, and want com- mon sense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice, and learning, can- not keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. A man endowed with great perfections, without this, is like one who has his pockets full of gold, but always wants change for his ordinary occasions. Will Courtly is a living instance of this truth ; and has had the same education which I am giving my nephew. He never spoke a thing but what was said before, and yet can converse with the wittiest men without being ridiculous. Amongst the learned he does not appear ignorant : nor with the wise indiscreet. Living in conversation from his infancy, makes him nowhere at a loss : and a long familiarity with the persons of men is, in a manner, of the same service to him, as if he knew their arts. As ceremony is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance, so good breeding is an expedient to make fools and wise men equals. ****** 26 Having yesterday morning received a paper ol. Latin verses, written with very much elegance in honour of these my papers, and being informed at the same time, that they were composed by a youth under age, I read them with much delight, as an instance of his improvement. There is not a greater pleasure to old age than seeing young people entertain themselves in such a manner as that we can partake of their enjoyments. On such occasions we flatter ourselves that we are not quite laid aside in the world, but that we are either used with gratitude for what we were, or honoured for what we are. A well-inclined young man and whose good-breeding is founded on the principles of nature and virtue, must needs take delight in being agreeable to his elders, as we are truly delighted when we are not the jest of them. When I say this, I must confess I cannot but think it a very lamentable thing, that there should be a necessity for making that a rule of life which should be, methinks, a mere instinct of nature. If reflection upon a man in poverty, whom we once knew in riches, is an argument of commiseration with generous minds : sure old age, which is a decay from that vigour which the young possess, and must certainly, if not prevented against their will, arrive at, should be more forcibly the object of that reverence which honest spirits are inclined to, from a sense of being themselves liable to what they observe has already overtaken others. My three nephews, whom in June last was 27 twelvemonth, I disposed of according to their several capacities and inclinations ; the first to the university, the second to a merchant, and the third to a woman of quality as her page, by my invitation dined with me to-day. It is my custom often, when I have a mind to give myself a more than ordinary cheerfulness, to invite a certain young gentlewoman of our neighbourhood to make one of the company. She did me that favour this day. The presence of a beautiful woman of honour to minds which are not trivially disposed, displays an alacrity which is not to be communicated by any other object. It was not unpleasant to me, to look into her thoughts of the company she was in. She smiled at the party of pleasure I had thought of for her, which was composed of an old man and three boys. My scholar, my citizen, and myself were very soon neglected ; and the young courtier, by the bow he made to her at her entrance, engaged her observation without a rival. I observed the Oxonian not a little discomposed at this preference, while the trader kept his eye on his uncle. My nephew Will had a thousand secret resolutions to break in upon the discourse of his younger brother, who gave my fair companion a full account of the fashion, and what was reckoned most becoming to their complexion, and what sort of habit appeared best upon the other shape. He proceeded to acquaint her, who of quality was well or sick within the bills of mortality, and named very familiarly all his lady's acquaintance, not forget- 28 ting her very words when he spoke of their char- acters. Besides all this he had a road of flattery ; and upon her enquiring what sort of woman Lady Lovely was in her person, " Really, Madam," says the Jackanapes, " she is exactly of your height and shape ; but as you are fair, she is a brown woman." There was no enduring that this fop should out- shine us all at this unmerciful rate ; therefore I thought fit to talk to my young scholar concerning his studies : and, because I could throw his learn- ing into present service, I desired him to repeat to me the translation he had made of some tender verses of Theocritus. He did so with an air of elegance peculiar to the college to which I sent him. I made some exceptions to the turn of the phrases, which he defended with much modesty, as believing in that place the matter was rather to consult the softness of a swain's passion, than the strength of his expressions. It soon appeared that Will had outstripped his brother in the opinion of the young lady. A little poetry to one who is bred a scholar, has the same effect that a good carriage of his person has on one who is to live in courts. The favour of women is so natural a passion, that I envied both the boys their success in the approbation of my guest ; and I thought the only person invulnerable was my young trader. During the whole meal 1 could observe in the children a mutual contempt and scorn of each other, arising from their different way of life and education, and took that occasion to advertise 29 them of such growing distastes : which might mis- lead them in their future life and disappoint their friends, as well as themselves, of the advantages which might be expected from the diversity of their professions and interests. The prejudices which are growing up between these brothers from the different ways of education, are what create the most fatal misunderstandings in life. But all distinctions of disparagement, merely from our circumstances, are such as will not bear the examination of reason. The courtier, the trader, and the scholar should all have an equal pretention to the denomination of a gentleman. The tradesman who deals with me in a commodity, which I do not understand, with uprightness, has much more right to that character than the cour- tier that gives me false hope, or the scholar who laughs at my ignorance. ^ Steele. Love in Idleness ^> "O (From Poems > 1851) " O HALL I be your first love, lady, shall I be your first ? Oh then I'll fall before you, down on my velvet knee, And deeply bend my rosy head and press it upon thee, And swear that there is nothing more for which my heart doth thirst, But a downy kiss, and pink Between your lips' soft chink." 30 " Yes, you shall be my first love, boy, and you shall be my first, And I will raise you up again unto my bosom's fold; And, when you kisses many one on lip and cheek have told, I'll let you loose upon the grass, to leave me if you durst, And so we'll toy away The night besides the day." " But let me be your second love, let me be your second, For then I'll tap so gently, dear, upon your window pane, And creep between the curtains in, where never man has lain, And never leave thy gentle side till the morning star hath beckoned, Within the silken lace Of thy young arms' embrace." " Well, thou shalt be my second love, yes, gentle boy, my second, And I will wait at eve for thee within my lonely bower, And yield unto thy kisses, like a bud to April's shower, From moon set till the tower-clock the hour of dawn hath reckoned, And lock thee in my arms All silent up in charms." "No, I will be thy third love, lady, ay I will be the third, And break upon thee bathing, in woody place alone, And catch thee to my saddle, and ride o'er stream and stone, And press thee well, and kiss thee well, and never speak a word, Till thou hast yielded up The margin of love's cup." "Then thou shalt not be my first love, boy, nor my second, nor my third ; If thou'rt the first, I'll laugh at thee, and pierce thy flesh with thorns ; If the second, from my chamber pelt with jeer- ing laugh and scorns, And if thou darest be the third, I'll draw my dirk unheard And cut thy heart in two, And then die, weeping you.* Thomas Lovell Beddoes. A Lyric to Mirth ^> ^x (From He s per ides) ILE the milder fates consent, Let's enjoy our merriment : Drink, and dance, and pipe and play ; Kiss our dollies night and day ; 3 2 Crowned with clusters of the vine, Let us sit and quaff our wine. Call on Bacchus, chant his praise, Shake the thyrse and bite the bays : Rouse Anacreon from the dead And return him drunk to bed : Sing o'er Horace, for ere long Death will come and mar the song. .#. Herrick. Song -"^y *O *O- O "M" OW what is love, I pray thee tell ? It is that fountain and that well Where pleasure and repentance dwell. It is perhaps the sauncing bell That tolls all into heaven or hell. And this is love as I hear tell. Yet what is love, I prithee say ? It is a work on holiday, It is December matched with May, When lusty bloods, in fresh array, Hear ten months after of the play. And this is love as I hear say. Yet what is love, good Shepherd sain ? It is a sunshine mixed with rain, It is a toothache or like pain, It is a game where none hath gain. The lass saith No, yet would full fain. And this is love as I hear sain. D 33 Yet, Shepherd, what is love I pray? It is a yes, it is a nay, A pretty kind of sporting fay, It is a thing will soon away ; Then, nymphs, take vantage while ye may. And this is love as I hear say. Yet what is love, good Shepherd, show ? A thing that creeps, it cannot go, A prize that passeth to and fro, A thing for one, a thing for moe, And he that proves shall find it soe. And, Shepherd, this is love I trow. Sir W. Raleigh (f\ (From Campion and RossetcSs Book of Airs , 1601) \\ 7HEN thou must home to shades of under ground, And there arrived, a new admired guest, The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round, White lope, blith Helen, and the rest, To hear the stones of thy finished love From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move. Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights, Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make, Of tourneys and great challenges of knights, And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake ? When thou hast told these honours done to thee, Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me. Thomas Campion. 34 No. Ill -Qy -s^x <^> <^> (From Hawthorn and Lavender] HP HE night dislimns, and breaks Like snows slow thawn ; An evil wind awakes On lea and lawn ; The low East quakes ; and hark ! Out of the kindless dark, A fierce protesting lark, High in the horror of dawn 1 A shivering streak of light, A scurry of rain ; Bleak day from bleaker night Creeps pinched and fain ; The old gloom thins and dies, And in the wretched skies A new gloom, sick to rise, Sprawls like a thing in pain. And yet what matter say 1 The shuddering trees, The Easter stricken day, The sodden leas ? The good bird, wing and wing With Time, finds heart to sing, As he were hastening The swallow o'er the seas. W. E. Henley. 35 In Three Days ^y -^ -Qy (From Dramatic Lyrics) Q O, I shall see her in three days And just one night, but nights are short, Then two long hours, and that is morn. See how I come, unchanged, unworn ! Feel, where my life broke off from thine, How fresh the splinters keep and fine, Only a touch and we combine ! Too long, this time of year, the days ! But nights, at least the nights are short. As night shows where her one moon is, A hand's breadth of pure light and bliss, So life's night gave my lady birth And my eyes hold her ! What is worth The rest of heaven, the rest of earth. O loaded curls, release your store Of warmth and scent, as once before The tingling hair did, lights and darks Outbreaking into fiery sparks, When under curl and curl I pried After the warmth and scent inside, Thro' lights and darks how manifold The dark inspired, the light controlled ! As early art embrowns the gold. W T hat great fear, should one say, " Three days That change the world might change as well Your fortune ; and if joy delays, Be happy that no worse befell 1 " 36 What small fear, if another says, " Three days and one short night beside May throw no shadow on your ways ; But years must teem with change untried, With chance not easily defied, With an end somewhere undescried." No fear ! or if a fear be born This minute, it dies out in scorn. Fear 1 I shall see her in three days And one night ; now the nights are short, Then just two hours, and that is morn. R. Browning. Youth's Agitations ^> ^> (From Early Poems) \17HEN I shall be divorced, some ten years VV hence, From this poor present self which I am now ; When youth has done its tedious vain expense Of passions that for ever ebb and flow ; Shall I not joy youth's heats are left behind, And breathe more happy in an even clime ? Ah no, for then I shall begin to find A thousand virtues in this hated time ! Then shall I wish its agitations back, And all its thwarting currents of desire ; Then shall I praise the heat which then I lack, And call this hurrying fever generous fire ; And sigh that only one thing has been lent To youth and age in common discontent M. Arnold. 37 Song *> ^> 'Qy ^> A SK me no more where Jove bestows, 7^ When June is past, the fading rose ; For in your beauty's orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day ; For in pure love heaven doth prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale, when May is past ; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters, and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more where those stars 'light, That downwards fall in dead of night ; For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become as in their sphere. Ask me no more if east or west The phoenix builds her spicy nest ; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies. Thomas Carew. His Discourse with Cupid <^y (From Underwoods] TVTOBLEST Charis, you that are Both my fortune and my star ! And do govern more my blood, Than the various moon the flood ! Hear, what late discourse of you, Love and I have had ; and true. 'Mongst my Muses finding me, Where he chanc'd your name to see Set, and to this softer strain : Sure said he if I have brain, This, here sung, can be no other By description but my mother ! So hath Homer prais'd her hair ; So Anacreon drawn the air Of her face, and made to rise Just about her sparkling eyes, Both her brows, bent like my bow ; By her looks I do her know, Which you call my shafts. And see ! Such my mother's blushes be, As the bath your verse discloses In her cheeks, of milk and roses ; Such as oft I wanton in : And above her even chin, Have you placed the bank of kisses, Where you say men gather blisses, Ripened with a breath more sweet Than when flowers and west winds meet ? 39 Nay, her white and polished neck, With the lace that doth it deck, Is my mother's ! Hearts of slain Lovers made into a chain ! And between each rising breast, Lies the valley called my nest, Where I sit and proyne my wings After flight ; and put new strings To my shafts ! Her very name, With my mother's is the same. I confess all, I replied, And the glass hangs by her side, And the girdle 'bout her waist, All is Venus, save unchaste. But alas, thou seest the least Of her good, who is the best Of her sex ; but could'st thou, Love, Call to mind the forms that strove For the apple, and those three Make in one, that same were she. For this beauty yet doth hide Something more than thou hast spied. Ben Jonson. Song o ^Qy *c> (From M. Este's Book of Madrigals} T N the merry month of May, In a morn by break of day, Forth I walk'd by the wood-side, When as May was in his pride : There I spied all alone, Phyllida and Corydon. Much ado there was, God wot ! He would love and she would not. She said never man was true ; He said, none was false to you. He said, he had loved her long ; She said, Love should have no wrong. Corydon would kiss her then ; She said, maids must kiss no men, 50 Till they did far good and all ; Then she made the shepherd call All the heavens to witness truth Never loved a truer youth. Thus with many a pretty oath, Yea and nay, and faith and troth, Such as silly shepherds use When they will not Love abuse, Love which had been long deluded, Was with kisses sweet concluded ; And Phyllida, with garlands gay, Was made the lady of the May. Nicholas Breton. Psyche 'Qy *y *s> (From Primavera) O HE is not fair as some are fair, Cold as the snow, as sunshine gay : On her clear brow, come grief what may, She suffers not too stern an air ; But grave in silence, sweet in speech, Loves neither mockery nor disdain ; Gentle to all, to all doth teach The charm of deeming nothing vain. She joined me : and we wandered on ; And I rejoiced. I cared not why, Deeming it immortality To walk with such a soul alone. Primroses pale grew all around, Violets and moss and ivy wild ; Yet, drinking sweetness from the ground, I was but conscious that she smiled. The wind blew all her shining hair From her sweet brows ; and she, the while, Put back her lovely head, to smile On my enchanted spirit there. Jonquils and pansies round her head Gleamed softly ; but a heavenlier hue Upon her perfect cheek was shed, And in her eye a purer blue. There came an end to break the spell ; She murmured something in my ear ; The words fell vague, I did not hear, And ere I knew, I said farewell ; And homeward went, with happy heart And spirit dwelling in a gleam, Rapt to a Paradise apart, With all the world become a dream. Yet now too soon, the world's strong strife Breaks on me pitiless again : The pride of passion, hopes made vain, The wounds, the weariness of life. And losing that forgetful sphere, For some less troubled world I sigh, If not divine, more free, more clear, Than this poor soiled humanity. 52 But when, in trances of the night, Wakeful, my lonely bad I keep, And linger at the gate of sleep, Fearing, lest dreams deny me light ; Her image comes into the gloom, With her pale features moulded fair, Her breathing beauty, morning bloom, My heart's delight, my tongue's despair. With loving hand she touches mine. Showers her soft tresses on my brow, And heals my heart, I know not how, Bathing me with her looks divine. She beckons me ; and I arise : And, grief no more remembering, Wander again with rapturous eyes Through those enchanted lands of spring. Then, as I walk with her in peace, I leave this troubled air below, Where, hurrying sadly to and fro, Men toil, and strain, and cannot cease : Then, freed from tyrannous Fate's control, Untouched by years or grief, I see Transfigured in that childlike soul The soil'd soul of humanity. Laurence Binyon* Song" *^x 'Q* ^o^ ^^ (From the Third Book of Airs] C HALL I come, sweet Love, to thee When the evening beams are set ? Shall I not excluded be, Will you find no feigned let ? Let me not for pity, more Tell the long hours at your door. Who can tell what thief or foe, In the covert of the night, For his prey will work my woe, Or through wicked foul despite ? So may I die unredrest Ere my long love be possest. But to let such dangers pass, Which a lover's thoughts disdain, 1 Tis enough in such a place To attend love's joys in vain : Do not mock me in thy bed, While these cold nights freeze me dead. Thomas Campion. 54 Sonnet ^ <^y <^ "C^ (Written in Shakspere's Poems, facing U A Lover's Complaint") T) RIGHT star, would I were stedfast as thou art- Not in lore spendour hung aloft the night And watching with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like 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 stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender taken breath And so live ever or else swoon to death. John Keats. How Three Brothers, poor men, went out into the World and acquired great riches ^> -^ ^y (From Le Piacevoli Notti Night VII, Fable 5) HPHERE once lived in this excellent city of ours a poor man to whom were born three sons, but by reason of his great poverty he could find no means of feeding and rearing them. On this account the three youths, pressed by need and 55 seeing clearly the cruel poverty of their father and his decaying strength, took counsel amongst themselves, and resolved to lighten the burden which lay upon their father's shoulders by going out into the world and wandering from place to place with a staff and a wallet, seeking in this wise to win certain trifles by the aid of which they might be able to keep themselves alive. Where- fore, having knelt humbly before their father, they begged him to give them leave to go forth into the world in search of their sustenance, promising at the same time that they would come back to the city when ten years should have gone by. The father gave them the desired licence, and with this purpose in their minds they set forth and travelled until they came to a certain place where it seemed to them all that they would do well to part one from another. Now the eldest of the brothers by chance found his way into a camp of soldiers who were on the march to the wars, and straightway agreed to take service with the chief of a band. In a very short time he became highly expert in the art of war, and a powerful man-at-arms and a doughty fighter, so much so that he took a leading place amongst his fellows. So nimble and so dexterous was he, that, with a dagger in each hand he would scale the wall of every fortress they assaulted. The second brother betook himself to a certain seaport where many ships were built, and having entered the service of one of the master ship- 56 wrights, a man greatly skilled in his handicraft, he worked so well and with such diligence that in a little time there was no other of the workmen equal to him in his calling, and the good report of him was spread through all the country. The youngest brother, as it chanced, came one day to a certain wood where a nightingale was singing most sweetly, and so strongly was he charmed and fascinated thereby that he ever went on his way following the traces and the song of the bird through shadowy valleys and thick woods, through lakes, through solitary places, through echoing forests, and through regions desert and unpeopled. So powerfully did the sweetness of the bird's song take hold of him, that, forgetful of the way which led back to the world of men, he continued to dwell in these wild woods ; wherefore, having lived ten whole years in this solitary wise apart from dwelling of any kind, he became, as it were, a wild man of the woods. By the long lapse of time, and by the unvarying and constant usance of the place in which he tarried, he grew skilled in the tongue of all the birds to which he listened with the keenest pleasure, understanding all they had to tell him, and being known by them as if he had been the god Pan amongst the fauns. When the day appointed for the brethren to return to their home had come, the first and the second betook themselves to the place of meeting, and there awaited the third brother. When they saw him approaching, all covered with hair and 57 naked of raiment, they ran to meet him, and, out of the tender love they had for him, broke out into plentiful tears and embraced and kissed him, and set to work to clothe him. Next they betook themselves to an inn to get some food, and, while they sat there, behold ! a bird flew up on to a tree and spake thus as it sang : " Be it known to you, O men that sit and eat, that by the corner-stone of this inn is hidden a mighty treasure, which through many long years has been there reserved for you. Go and take it." And having thus spoken, the bird flew away. Then the brother who had come last to the place of meeting expounded clearly to the other two what was the meaning of the words which the bird had uttered, and straightway they digged in the place which had been described, and took out the treasure which they found therein concealed. In this wise they all became men of great wealth, and went back to their father's home. After they had tenderly greeted and embraced their father, and given rich and sumptuous feastings, it chanced that one day the youngest brother heard the song of another bird, which spake as follows : " In the ^Egean Sea, within the range of about ten miles, is an island known as the isle of Chios, upon which the daughter of Apollo has built a massy castle of marble. At the entrance of this there lies a serpent, as the guardian thereof, spitting out fire and venom from its mouth, and upon the threshold is chained a basilisk. There Aglea, one 58 of the fairest ladies in the world, is kept a prisoner with all the treasure which she has heaped up and collected, together with a vast store of coin. Who- ever shall go to this place and scale the tower, shall be the master of the treasure and of Aglea as well." And when the bird had thus spoken it flew away. As soon as the meaning of its words had been made known, the three brothers deter- mined to go to the place it had described the first brother having promised to scale the tower by the aid of two daggers, and the second to build a swift-sailing ship. This having been accomplished, in a brief time they set forth, and, after crossing the sea without mishap, being wafted along by a favourable breeze, they found themselves one morning just before daybreak close to the isle of Chios. Then the man-at-arms by the aid of two daggers climbed the tower, and, having seized Aglea and bound her with cords, handed her over to his brothers. Next, after he had laid hold on the secret hoard of rubies and precious stones and gold, he descended to the ground rejoicing greatly, and the three adventurers, leaving naked the land by their plundering, returned to their homes safe and sound. But with regard to the lady, seeing that it was not possible to divide her into three parts, there arose a sharp dispute between the three brothers as to which of them should retain her, and the wrangling over this point to decide which had the best claim upon her was very long. Indeed, up to this very day it is 59 still before the court ; wherefore we will each settle the cause as we think right, while the judge keeps us waiting for his decision. Giovanni Francesco Straparola. Ode ^y *Qy <^x ^ (From Delia) "NJOW each creature joys the other, passing happy days and hours ; One bird reports unto another, in the fall of silver showers ; Whilst the Earth, our common mother, hath her bosom decked with flowers. Whilst the greatest Torch of heaven, with bright rays, warms Flora's lap ; Making nights and days both even, cheering plants with fresher sap : My field of flowers quite bereaven, wants refresh of better hap. Echo, daughter of the Air, babbling guest of rocks and hills, Knows the name of my fierce Fair, and sounds the accents of my ills. Each thing pities my despair ; whilst that she her lover kills. 60 Whilst that she, O cruel maid ! doth me and my love despise ; My life's flourish is decayed, that depended on her eyes : But her will must be obeyed ; and well he ends, for love, who dies. Samuel Daniel. Song ^y *y 'Cy "Cy '""PHE lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, And climbing, shakes his dewy wings ; He takes this window for the east, And to implore your light he sings : Awake, awake ! the morn will never rise Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes. The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes ; But still the lover wonders what they are Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake ! break through your veils of lawn, Then draw your curtains and begin the dawn. Sir W. Davenant. 61 The Shepherd's Wife's Song *o (From The Mourning Garment] A H, what is love ? It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king ; And sweeter too, For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, And cares can make the sweetest love to frown : Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain ? His flocks are folded, he comes home at night, As merry as a king in his delight ; And merrier too, For kings bethink them what the state require, Where shepherds careless carol by the fire : Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain ? He kisseth first, then sits as blithe to eat His cream and curds as doth the king his meat ; And blither too, For kings have often fears when they do sup, Where shepherds dread no poison in their cup : Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain? 62 To bed he goes, as wanton then, I ween, As is a king in dalliance with a queen ; More wanton too, For kings have many griefs effects to move, Where shepherds have no greater grief than love : Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain ? Upon his couch of straw he sleeps as sound As doth the king upon his bed of down ; More sounder too, For cares cause kings full oft their sleep to spill, Where weary shepherds lie and snort their fill : Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain ? Thus with his wife he spends the year as blithe As doth the king at every tide or sithe ; And blither too, For kings have wars and broils to take in hand, Where shepherds laugh and love upon the land : Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain ? Robert Greene. Daybreak *^y -^ - ^y (From Dramatic Lyrics] T WISH that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring's delightful things ; Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too. A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps ! There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening ends. 64 So, for their sake, be May still May ! Let their new time, as mine of old, Do all it did for me : I bid Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold. Only one little sight, one plant, Woods have in May, that starts up green Save a sole streak which, so to speak, Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between, That, they might spare ; a certain wood Might miss the plant : their loss were small : But I, when'er the leaf grows there, Its drop comes from my heart, that's all. Robert Browning. SUMMER FOR MANHOOD THEN came the jolly Sommer, being dig-lit In a thin silken cassock coloured greene, That was unlyned all, to be more light ; And on his head a girlond well beseene He wore, from which, as he had chauffed been, The sweat did drop ; and in his hand he bore A boawe and shaftes, as ho in forrest greens Had hunted late the Libbard or the Bore, And now would bathe his limbes with labor heated sore, Ed. Spenser, Mutabilitie t Canto vii. Elegy on a Lady whom grief for the death of her Betrothed killed ^> (From Shorter Poems] A SSEMBLE, all ye maidens, at the door, <** And all ye loves, assemble : far and wide Proclaim the bridal, that proclaimed before Has been deferred to this late eventide : For on this night the bride, The days of her betrothal over, Leaves the parental hearth for evermore ; To-night the bride goes forth to meet her lover. Reach down the wedding vesture, that has lain Yet all unvisited, the silken gown : Bring out the bracelets, and the golden chain Her dearer friends provided : sere and brown Bring out the festal crown And set it on her forehead lightly : Though it be withered, twine no wreath again : This only is the crown she can wear rightly. Cloke her in ermine, for the night is cold, And wrap her warmly, for the night is long. In pious hands the flaming torches hold, While her attendants, chosen from among Her faithful virgin throng, May lay her in her cedar litter, Decking her coverlet with sprigs of gold, Roses and lilies white that best befit her. Sound flute and tabor, that the bridal be Not without music, nor with these alone, But let the viol lead the melody With lesser intervals, and plaintive moan Of sinking semitone ; And all in choir, the virgin voices Rest not from singing in skilled harmony The song that aye the bridegroom's ear rejoices. Let the priests go before, arrayed in white, And let the dark-stoled minstrels follow slow, Next they that bear her, honoured on this night. And then the maidens in a double row, Each singing soft and low, And each on high a torch upstaying : Unto her lover lead her forth with light, With music and with singing and with praying. 'Twas at this sheltering hour he nightly came, And found her trusty window open wide, And knew the signal of the timorous flame, That long the restless curtain would not hide Her form that stood beside ; As scarce she dared to be delighted, Listening to that sweet tale, that is no shame To faithful lovers, that their hearts have plighted. But now for many days the dewy grass Has shewn no markings of his feet at morn : And watching she has seen no shadow pass The moonlit walk, and heard no music borne Upon her ear forlorn. 70 In vain has she looked out to greet him ; He has not come, he will not come, alas ! So let us bear her out where she must meet him. Now to the river bank the priests are come, The bark is ready to receive its freight ; Let some prepare her place therein, and some Embark the litter with its slender weight : The rest stand by in state, And sing her a safe passage over ; While she is oared across to her new home, Into the arms of her expectant lover. And thou, O lover, that art on the watch, Where on the banks of the forgetful streams The pale indifferent ghosts wander, and snatch The sweeter moments of their broken dreams, Thou, when the torch-light gleams, When thou shalt see the slow procession, And when thine ears the fitful music catch, Rejoice ! for thou art near to thy possession. /?. Bridges. Envy 'Qy *^y ^> ^> T T E was first always. Fortune Shone bright in his face. I fought for years : with no effort He conquered the place. We ran : my feet were all bleeding, But he won the race. 7' My home lay deep in the shadow, His full in the sun. Whatever service he called for It straightway was done. Once I staked all my heart's treasure : We played and he won. Spite of his many successes Men loved him the same ; My one pale ray of good fortune Met scoffing and shame. We sinned : and men gave him pity And me only blame. Yes ! and just now I have seen him, Cold, smiling, and blest, Laid in his coffin, God help me 1 While he is at rest I must toil wearily onward. Ev'n Death loved him best. Anon. The Scrutinie ^y ^y *o (From Lucas to) A1THY should you sweare I am forsworn, Since thine I vow'd to be ? Lady, it is already Morn, And 'twas last night I swore to thee That fond impossibility. 72 Have I not lov'd thee much and long, A tedious twelve hours space ? I must all other beauties wrong, And rob thee of a new imbrace ; Could I still dote upon thy face. Not but all joy in thy browne haire By others may be found ; But I must search the black and faire, Like skilfulle minerallists that sound For treasure in unplow'd up ground. Then if when I have lov'd my round, Thou prov'st the pleasant she ; With spoyles of meaner beauties crown'd, I laden will returne to thee, Ev'n sated with varietie. /?. Lovelace. To Evening *Qy <^ -o> T F aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs, and dying gales ; O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed ; 73 Now air is hushed, save when the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing ; Or when the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum Now teach me, maid composed, To breathe some softened strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale May not unseemly with its stillness suit . As musing slow I hail Thy genial loved return ! For when thy folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours and Elves Who slept in flowers the day, And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, Then pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car ; Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile, Or upland fallows grey Reflect its last cool gleam. 74 But when chill blustering winds or driving rain Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut That from the mountain's side Views wilds and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve ; While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light. While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves ; Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes. So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose -lipped Health, Thy gentlest influence own, And hymn thy favourite name ! W. Collins. May Evening ^> >^y ^ <^ (From Poems > 1895) Q O late the rustling shower was heard ; Yet now the open West is still. The wet leaves flash, and lightly stirred Great drops out of the lilac spill. Peacefully blown the ashen clouds Uncurtain heights of colder sky. Here as I wander, beauty crowds With freshness keen upon my eye. Now the shorn turf a lustrous green Takes in the massy cedar's shade ; And through the poplars showery screen Fires of the evening blush and fade. Each way my marvelling senses feel Swift odour, light and luminous hue Of leaf and flower upon them steal ; The songs of birds pierce my heart through. The tulip clear, like yellow flame, Burns upright from the gloomy mould ; As though for passion forth they came, Red hearts of peonies unfold ; And perfumes, tender, sweet, intense, Enter me like a delicate blade ; The lilac odour wounds my sense ; Of the rich rose I am afraid. Laurence Binyon. The Faerie Queen ^> *o "Qy (Book II, chap, ix '"PHE whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay: Ah ! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see, In springing flowre the image of thy day. Ah ! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee Doth just peepe foorth with bashfull modestie, That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may. Lo ! see soone after how more bold and free Her bared bosome she doth broad display ; Lo ! see soone after how she fades and falls away. So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre ; Ne more doth florish after first decay, That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre. Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime, For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre ; Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time, Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime. Ed. Spenser. Song ^> *^x ^y -^> (From Shorter Poems] r ~P HE hill pines were sighing, O'ercast and chill was the day, A mist in the valley lying Blotted the pleasant May. 77 But deep in the glen's bosom Summer slept in the fire Of the odorous gorse-blossom And the hot scent of the briar. A ribald cuckoo clamoured. And out of the copse the stroke Of the iron axe that hammered At the iron heart of the oak. R, Bridges. Essay X. *^y "^ -Qy ^y (From The Spectator} TT is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city enquiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me, that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day ; so that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I may reckon about threescore thousand disciples in London and Westminster, who I hope will take care to dis- tinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and unattentive brethren. Since I have raised myself to so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient and intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till 1 have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day, sprouts up follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among men : and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell at clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses. I would therefore in a very particular manner recommend these my speculations to all well- regulated families, that set apart one hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter : and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as part of the tea equipage. Sir Francis Bacon observes that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses' serpent that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the ^Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as to think, that where The Spectator appears, the other public prints will vanish, but shall leave it to my reader's consideration, whether it is not much better to be let into the knowledge 79 of one's self, than to hear what passes in Muscovy or Poland, and to amuse ourselves with such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion and prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to inflame hatreds and make enmities irreconcilable. In the next place, I would recommend this paper to the daily perusal of those whom I cannot but consider as my good brothers and allies. I mean the fraternity of spectators, who live in the world without having anything to do in it ; and either by the affluence of their fortunes, or the laziness of their dispositions, have no other business with the rest of mankind but to look upon them. Under this class of men are comprehended all contemplative tradesmen, titular physicans, Fellows of the Royal Society, Templars that are not given to be contentious, and Statesmen that are out of business ; in short, every one that considers the world as a theatre, and desires to form a right judgment of those who are the actors on it. There is another set of men that I must like- wise lay a claim to, whom I have lately called the Blanks of society, as being altogether unfurnished with ideas, till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often con- sidered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration, when I have heard them asking the first man they meet with, whether there was any news stirring? and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy 80 persons do not know what to talk of, till about twelve o'clock in the morning ; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sits, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly intreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper, and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours. But there are none to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in rinding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are reasonable creatures ; and are more adapted to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjusting of their hair the principal employ- ment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good morning's work ; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's, or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their mere serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparation of G Si jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women : though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation, that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as love, into their male beholders. I hope to increase the number of them by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an inno- cent if not an improving entertainment, and by that means at least divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles. At the same time, as I would fain give some finishing touches to those which are already the most beautiful pieces in human nature, I shall endeavour to point out all those imperfections that are blemishes, as well as those virtues which are the embellishments, of the sex. In the meanwhile I hope these, my gentle readers, who have so much time on their hands, will not grudge throwing away a quarter of an hour in a day on this paper, since they may do it without any hindrance to business. I know several of my friends and well-wishers are in great pain for me, lest I should not be able to keep up the spirit of a paper which I oblige myself to furnish every day ; but to make them easy in this particular, I will promise them faith- fully to give it over as soon as I grow dull. This I know will be matter of great raillery to the small wits ; who will frequently put me in mind of my 82 promise, desire me to keep my word, assure me that it is high time to give over, with many other little pleasantries of the like nature, which men of a little smart genius cannot forbear throwing out against their best friends, when they have such a handle given them of being witty. But let them remember that I do hereby enter my caveat against this piece of raillery. Joseph Addison. Sonnets cxxviii., cxxx. ^> "v> ^y T T OW oft, when thou, my music, music play'st, Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet ringers, when thou gently sway'st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand ! To be so tickled, they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips, O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more bless'd than living lips. Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ; Coral is far more red than her lips' red : If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun ; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. 83 I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks ; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound : I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks, treads on the ground; And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. W. Shakspere. Siren Chorus *s> At this sweet hour all things beside In amorous pairs to covert creep, The swans that brush the evening tide Homeward in snowy couples keep. In his green den the murmuring seal Close by his sleek companion lies, While singly we to bedward steal, And close in fruitless sleep our eyes. In bowers of love men take their rest, In loveless bowers we sigh alone, With bosom-friends are others blest, But we have none but we have none. George Darley. Song ^> ^y ^y ^y (From Orlando Gibbons' first set of Madrigals, 1612) T^AIR is the rose, yet fades with heat or cold ; Sweet are the violets, yet soon grown old : The lily's white, yet in one day 'tis done ; White is the snow, yet melts against the sun : So white, so sweet was my fair mistress' face, Yet altered quite in one short hour's space : So short-lived beauty a vain gloss doth borrow, Breathing delight to-day, but none to-morrow. Anon. (From Comus) HP HE star that bids the shepherd fold Now the top of heaven doth hold ; And the gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream : And the slope sun his upward beam Shoots against the dusky pole, Pacing toward the other goal Of his chamber in the east. Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast, 85 I Midnight shout and revelry, Tipsy dance and jollity. Braid your locks with rosy twine, Dropping odours, dropping wine. Rigour now has gone to bed ; And Advice with scrupulous head, Strict Age and sour Severity, With their grave saws in slumber lie. We, that are of purer fire, Imitate the starry quire, Who, in their knightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move ; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep : What hath night to do with sleep ? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rites begin ; 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, Which these dun shades will ne'er report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns ! mysterious dame, That ne'er art called but when the dragon-womb Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the air 1 86 Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out Ere the babbling eastern scout, The nice Morn on the Indian steep, From her cabined loophole peep, And to the tell-tale Sun descry Our concealed solemnity. Come, knit hands, and beat the ground In a light fantastic round. * * * * To the Ocean now I fly, And those happy climes that lie Where day never shuts his eye, Up in the broad fields of the sky. There I suck the liquid air, All amidst the gardens fair Of Hesperus, and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree. Along the crisped shades and bowers Revels the spruce and jocund Spring : The Graces and the rosy bosomed Hours Thither all their bounties bring. There eternal Summer dwells, And west-winds with musky wing About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and Cassia's balmy smells. Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks, that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew, And drenches with Elysian dew List, mortals, if your ears be true Beds of hyacinth and roses, Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound, In slumber soft ; and on the ground Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. But far above, in spangled sheen, Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced, Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced, After her wandering labours long, Till free consent the gods among Make her his eternal bride, And from her fair unspotted side Two blissful twins are to be born, Youth and Joy : so Jove hath sworn. But now my task is smoothly done : I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the earth's green end, Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend : And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Love Virtue ; she alone is free. She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime : Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her. /. Milton. 88 Letter *o *^x *^ <^> (From Humphry Clinktr) To DR. LEWIS. DEAR DOCTOR, London is literally new to me : new in its streets, houses, and even in its situation ; as the Irishman said, " London is now gone out of town." What I left open fields, producing hay and corn, I now find covered with streets and squares, and palaces and churches. I am credibly informed, that, in the space of seven years, eleven thousand new houses have been built in one quarter of Westminster, exclusive of what is daily added to other parts of this unwieldy metropolis. Pimlico and Knightsbridge are now almost joined to Chelsea and Kensington ; and if this infatuation lasts for half a century, I suppose the whole county of Middlesex will be covered with brick. It must be allowed, indeed, for the credit of the present age, that London and Westminster are much better paved and lighted than they were formerly. The new streets are spacious, regular, and airy : and the houses are generally convenient. The bridge at Blackfriars is a noble monument of taste and public spirit. I wonder how they stumbled upon a work of such magnificence and utility. But, notwithstanding these improvements, the capital is now become an overgrown monster, which, like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support. The absurdity will appear in its full force when we consider that one-sixth part of the natives of this whole extensive kingdom is crowded within the bills of mortality. What wonder that our villages are depopulated and our farms in want of day-labourers? The abolition of small farms is but one cause of the decrease of popula- tion. Indeed, the incredible increase of horses and black cattle, to answer the purposes of luxury, requires a prodigious quantity of hay and grass, which are raised and managed without much labour ; but a number of hands will always be wanted for the different branches of agriculture, whether the farms be large or small. The tide of luxury has swept all the inhabitants from the open country. The poorest squire, as well as the richest peer, must have his house in town, and make a figure with an extraordinary number of domestics. The ploughboys, cowherds, and lower hinds are debauched and seduced by the appearance and discourse of those coxcombs in livery, when they make their summer excursions. They desert their dirt and drudgery, and swarm up to London, in hopes of getting into service, where they can live luxuriously, and wear fine clothes, without being obliged to work ; for idleness is natural to man. Great numbers of these, being disappointed in their expectation, become thieves and sharpers ; and London being an immense wilderness, in which there is neither watch nor ward of any signification, nor any order or police, affords them lurking-places as well as prey. 90 There are many causes which contribute to the daily increase of this enormous mass ; but they may be all resolved into the grand source of luxury and corruption. About five and twenty years ago, very few, even of the most opulent citizens in London, kept any equipage, or even any servants in livery. Their tables produced nothing but plain boiled and roasted, with a bottle of port and a tankard of beer. At present, every trader in any degree of credit, every broker and attorney, main- tains a couple of footmen, a coachman and postil- lion. He has his town-house and his country- house, his coach, and his post-chaise. His wife and daughters appear in the richest stuffs, be- spangled with diamonds. They frequent the court, the opera, the theatre and the masquerade. They hold assemblies at their own houses ; they make sumptuous entertainments, and treat with the richest wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Cham- pagne. The substantial tradesman, who was wont to pass his evenings at the ale-house for fourpence halfpenny, now spends three shillings at the tavern, while his wife keeps card-tables at home ; she must likewise have fine clothes, her chaise, or pad, with country lodgings, and go three times a week to public diversions. Every clerk, apprentice, and even waiter of tavern and coffee-house, maintains a gelding by himself, or in partnership, and assumes the air and apparel of a petit maitre. The gayest places of public entertainment are filled with fashionable figures, which, upon enquiry, will be 91 found to be journey-men tailors, serving-men, and Abigails, disguised like their betters. In short, there is no distinction or subordination left. The different departments of life are jumbled together. The hod-carrier, the low mechanic, the tapster, the publican, the shopkeeper, the petti- fogger, the citizen, the courtier, all tread on the kibes of one another : actuated by the demons of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen every- where, rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, jostling, mixing, bouncing, cracking, and crashing, in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption. All is tumult and hurry ; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder of the brain that will not suffer them to be at rest. The foot-passengers run along as if they were pursued by bailiffs. The porters and chairmen trot with their burdens. People who keep their own equipages, drive through the streets at full speed. Even citizens, physicians, and apothecaries, glide in their chariots like lightning. The hackney coachmen make their horses smoke, and the pavement shakes under them ; and I have actually seen a waggon pass through Piccadilly at the hand-gallop. In a word, the whole nation seems to be running out of their wits. The diversions of the times are not ill-suited to the genius of this incongruous monster called the public. Give it noise, confusion, glare, and glitter, it has no idea of elegance and propriety. What are the amusements of Ranelagh? One half of 92 the company are following the other's tails in an eternal circle ; like so many blind asses in an olive-mill, where they can neither discourse, dis- tinguish, or be distinguished ; while the other half are drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea, till nine or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake for the rest of the evening. As for the orchestra, the vocal music especially, it is well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly. Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, overcharged with paltry ornaments, ill-conceived and poorly executed, without any unity of design, or propriety of disposition. It is an unnatural assemblage of objects, fantastically illuminated in broken masses, seemingly combined to dazzle the eyes and divert the imagination of the vulgar. Here is a wooden lion, there a stone statue ; in one place a range of things like coffee-house boxes, covered at top ; in another a parcel of ale-house benches ; in a third, a puppet-show representation of a tin cascade ; in a fourth, a gloomy cave of a circular form, like a sepulchral vault, half lighted ; in a fifth, a scanty slip of grass plot, that would not afford pasture sufficient for an ass's colt. The walks which nature seems tp have intended for solitude, shade, and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the nocturnal rheums of an aguish climate : and through these gay scenes a few lamps glimmer, like so many farthing candles. When I see a number of well-dressed people, of both sexes, sitting on the covered benches, exposed 93 to the eyes of the mob, and, which is worse, to the cold raw night air, devouring sliced beef, and swilling port, and punch, and cyder, I cannot help compassionating their temerity, while I despise their want of taste and decorum ; but when they course along their damp and gloomy walks, or crowd together upon the wet gravel, without any other cover than the cope of heaven, listening to a song which one half of them cannot possibly hear, how can I help supposing they are actually possessed by a spirit more absurd and pernicious than anything we meet with in the precincts of Bedlam ? In all probability the proprietors of this, and other public gardens of inferior note, in the skirts of the metropolis, are, in some shape, connected with the faculty of physic, and the company of under- takers : for considering that eagerness in the pursuit of what is called pleasure which now predominates through every rank and denomination of life, I am persuaded that more gouts, rheumatisms, catarrhs and consumptions, are caught in these nocturnal pastimes sub dio than from all the risks and acci- dents to which a life of toil and danger is exposed. These, and other observations which I have made in this excursion, will shorten my stay at London, and send me back with a double relish to my solitude and mountains ; but I shall return by a different route than that which brought me to town. I have seen some old friends who con- stantly resided in this virtuous metropolis ; but they are so changed in manners and disposition that 94 we hardly know or care for one another. In our journey from Bath my sister Tabby provoked me into a transport of passion ; during which, like a man who has drunk himself pot valiant, I talked to her in such a style of authority and resolution, as produced a most blessed effect. She and her dog have been remarkably quiet and orderly ever since this expostulation. How long this agreeable calm will last Heaven above knows. I flatter myself the exercise of travelling has been of service to my health : a circumstance which encourages me to proceed in my projected expedition to the North. But I must, in the meantime, for the benefit and amusement of my pupils, explore the depths of this chaos : this misshapen and monstrous capital, without head or tail, members or proportion. Yours always, MATT. BRAMBLE. Tobias Smollet. A Musical Instrument "O *o "\17HAT is he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river ? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon fly on the river ? He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river. The limpid water turbidly ran, 95 And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river. High on the shore sate the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river, And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river. He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river !) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, Then notched the poor dry empty thing In holes as he sate by the river. "This is the way," laughed the great god Pan (Laughed while he sate by the river !) " The only way since gods began To make sweet music they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan, Piercing sweet by the river ! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan ! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon fly Came back to dream on the river. Q6 Yet half a beast is the great god Pan To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain, For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds in the river. E. B. Browning. The Poet's Song ^>y ^ From Hesperides) O WEET country life, to such unknown Whose lives are others, not their own ! But serving courts and cities, be Less happy, less enjoying thee. Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam To seek and bring rough pepper home ; Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove To bring from thence the scorched clove ; Nor, with the loss of thy lov'd rest, Bringst home the ingot from the West. No, thy ambition's masterpiece Flies no thought higher than a fleece ; Or how to pay thy hinds, and clear All scores, and so to end the year : But walk'st about thine own dear bounds, Not envying others' larger grounds : For well thou know'st 'tis not th' extent Of land makes life, but sweet content. When now the cock (the ploughman's horn) Calls forth the lily-wristed morn, Then to thy cornfields thou dost go, Which though well soyl'd, yet thou dost know That the best compost for the lands Is the wise master's feet and hands. There at the plough thou find'st thy team With a hind whistling there to them ; And cheer'st them up by singing how The kingdom's portion is the plough. This done, then to th' enamelled meads Thou go'st, and as thy foot there treads, Thou see'st a present God-like power Imprinted in each herb and flower ; And smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine Sweet as the blossoms of the vine. Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat Unto the dewlaps up in meat ; And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer, The heifer, cow, and ox draw near To make a pleasing pastime there. These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox, And find'st their bellies there as full Of short sweet grass as backs with wool, And leav'st them, as they feed and fill, A shepherd piping on a hill. For sports, for pageantry and plays Thou hast thy eves and holidays ; On which the young men and maids meet To exercise their dancing feet ; Tripping the comely country round, With daffodils and daisies crowned. Thy wakes, thy quintels here thou hast, Thy May-poles, too, with garlands grac'd ; Thy morris dance, thy Whitsun ale, Thy shearing feast which never fail ; Thy harvest home, thy wassail bowl, That's toss'd up after fox i' th' hole ; Thy mummeries, thy twelvth-tide Kings And Queens, thy Christmas revellings, 99 Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit, And no man pays too dear for it. To these thou hast thy times to go And trace the hare i' the treacherous snow ; Thy witty wiles to draw, and get The lark into the trammel net ; Thou hast thy cock-rood and thy glade To take the precious pheasant made ; The lime-twigs, snares and pit-falls then To catch the pilfering birds, not men. O happy life ! if that their good The husbandmen but understood ! Who all the day themselves do please, And younglings, with such sports as these, And lying down have nought t'affright Sweet sleep, that makes more short the night. /?. Herrick. Love's Deity ^> ^x ^y ^> (From Song s and Sonnets) T LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born. I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produced a destiny, And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be, I must love her that loves not me. 100 Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much, Nor he in his young godhead practiced it. But when an even flame two hearts did touch, His office was indulgently to fit Actives to passives. Correspondencey Only his subject was : it cannot be Love, till I love her, who loves me. But every modern god will now extend His vast prerogative as far as Jove. To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love. O ! were we waken'd by this tyranny To ungod this child again, it could not be, I should love her who loves not me. Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I, As though I felt the worst that love could do ? Love may make me leave loving, or might try A deeper plague, to make her love me too ; Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see. Falsehood is worse than hate ; and that must be, If she whom I love, should love me. John Donne. 101 Lyric ^Qy "C> ^y *O (From Book of Airs % 1601) TIpOLLOW thy fair sun ! unhappy shadow ! Though thou be black as night, And she made all of light ; Yet follow thy fair sun ! unhappy shadow 1 Follow her ! whose light thy light depriveth ; Though here thou liv'st disgraced, And she in heaven is placed : Yet follow her, whose light the world reviveth ! Follow these pure beams ! where beauty burneth, That so have scorched thee As thou still black must be, Till her kind beams, thy black to brightness turneth. Follow her ! while yet her glory shineth : There comes a luckless night, That will dim all her light ; And this, the black unhappy shade divineth. Follow still ! since to thy fates ordained, The sun must have his shade, Till both at once do fade ; The sun still proved, the shadow still disdained. T. Campion. 102 Sonnet xlix. ^> >^> ^^ (From Delia) C* ARE-CHARMER Sleep! Son of the sable ** Night ! Brother to Death ! In silent darkness born ! Relieve my anguish, and restore the light ! With dark forgetting of thy cares return ! And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth ! Let waking eyes suffice to vail their scorn, Without the torment of the night's untruth ! Cease Dreams ! th' imagery of our 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. S. Daniel. The story of Federigo and the Falcon ^> From The Decameron^ Day V. Novel 9) r T A HERE was once in Florence a young man called Federigo, son of Messer Filippo Al- berighi, and renowned for deeds of arms and courtesy over every other bachelor in Tuscany, who, as most gentlemen know, fell in love with a gentlewoman named Madonna Giovanna, in her day held to be one of the most winsome ladies that 103 were in Florence : and to gain her love, he held jousts and tournaments and made presents and spent his substance without stint ; but she, being no less virtuous than fair, cared naught for these things done for her, nor for him who did them. Federigo, spending thus far beyond his means and earning nothing, his goods came duly to an end, so that naught was left thereof but a little farm, on the rent of which he lived very poorly, and a falcon, one of the finest in the world. Wherefore, being more than ever enamoured, and rinding that he could no longer live according to his taste in the city, he retired to Campi where his farm was, and patiently bore his poverty, hawking now and then and asking favours of no man. After Federigo had thus been brought to want, it happened that Monna Giovanna's husband fell sick ; and, seeing that he was near death, made his will, whereby he left his wealth, which was great, to his son, now grown up, and in case the youth should die without issue, to his well-loved wife. After his death Monna Giovanna, following the custom of our ladies, went in the summer time to a country estate of hers which lay near that of Ser Federigo. Now the youth soon became acquainted with Federigo and took keen delight in hawks and hounds. Having seen the falcon of his neighbour flown several times, he was amazingly delighted therewith and desired it for himself, but he had not the heart to ask for it, seeing what store the owner set upon it. The upshot was that the youth 104 fell sick, whereupon his mother, who loved him exceedingly well, as she could love naught else, was sorely grieved, tending him continually, asking him again and again if there was anything he fancied, and assuring him that if this thing were possible she would procure it for him. The boy having listened to her words, said at last, " Mother, if you could get for me Federigo's falcon, I believe I should quickly recover." When the lady heard this she fell a-thinking, and began to lay her plans. She knew that Federigo had loved her long and had never won even a glance of her eye, wherefore she said to herself, " How can I go or send to him to ask this falcon, which by report is the best that ever flew, and furthermore is his only means of support ; and knowing this, how can I be so graceless as to offer to rob this gentleman of his only remaining pleasure?" She was perplexed with this thought and uncertain what to say albeit she was sure she might have the bird for the asking and answered naught to her son. But being overcome at last by mother's love, she determined to satisfy him, come what might, and not to send but to go herself for the falcon and fetch it. Thus she addressed him : " My son, take courage, and have a care to get well again, for I promise you that I will go to-morrow and bring you the falcon." Whereupon the youth was pleased and straightway grew easier. The next morning Madonna Giovanni, taking another lady as companion, strolled out to the 105 cottage of Federigo and enquired for him. He, because the weather was unfit for hawking, was at home doing some work in his garden, and hearing Monna Giovanni's voice at the door, hastened thither in great joy. When she saw him she went to meet him with womanly graciousness ; and, having answered his respectful salutation with " Give you good-day, Federigo," went on to say, " I am come to make amends for the pain you have suffered through loving me more than you need. This I will do by asking you to let me and this lady, my friend, dine with you this day in friendly fashion?" "Madonna," said Federigo with much respect, " I cannot remember to have received any ill at your hands. I have rather fared well, seeing that any merit I may possess has come through your many excellencies and the love they have inspired in me. And indeed this welcome visit of yours albeit made to a poverty-stricken house gives me more pleasure than would the lavishing of all the money I have spent aforetime." With this speech he bashfully ushered her into the house, and thence into the garden, and said, "Madonna, as there is no one else here save this good woman, the wife of a labourer, I will leave you in her company while I go to set the table." Poor as he was, Federigo had never yet felt so painfully the strait into which he had been brought from lack of the wealth he had squandered so foolishly. When he found he had nothing where- with he might entertain the lady for whose sake 106 he had feasted people without limit in the past, his trouble came home to him ; he ran hither and thither like a man possessed, cursing his ill fortune, but found nothing he could either sell or pawn. It was now growing late, and Federigo, wishful as he was to give the fair lady some entertainment, was reluctant to borrow of his husbandman or of any other, and in this mood his eye fell upon the falcon perched inside the little room. Having naught else he took the bird, which seemed fat and meat fit for such a lady, and having wrung its neck he handed it over to his young servant and bade her pluck and truss it and roast it carefully on the spit. Then when the table was laid, and covered with fair white linen of which he kept some store, he returned gaily to the lady in the garden and told her that dinner, the best he could furnish, was ready. Whereupon the lady and her friend sat down in company with Federigo, who served them with the utmost care, and, without knowing what they did, ate the falcon. After they had risen from table, and had talked pleasantly together for some time, the lady, deem- ing she might now lay bare the reason of her coming, addressed Federigo in friendly wise : " Federigo, when you call to mind your carriage towards me, and my rigid display of virtue there- anent virtue which you doubtless rate as cruelty I am assured that you will marvel at my presump- tion, after you have heard what object has brought me hither. But if you had children of your own, 107 and knew how strong is the love of a parent, you might find some excuse for me. You are childless, but I have one, and must yield to the laws which bind all mothers ; and these laws, whose bidding I must needs obey, urge me against my will, against all fair usage and duty, to ask you to give me something which is, I know, very dear to you and with good reason, seeing that your ill fortune has left you no other pleasure or recreation or solace. I mean that falcon of yours, for which my son has taken so strong a fancy that, if I carry it not back to him, I fear lest his sickness should grow heavier and farther ill ensue which may make an end of him. Wherefore I beg you not by your love towards me, which lays no obligation on you but by your own nobility, which in courteous deeds has shewn you superior to all others to grant me this boon, so that I may be able to say that I have therewith kept my son alive and made him your lasting debtor." Federigo, hearing what the lady asked, and knowing that this boon was beyond his power because he had given her the bird to eat, wept openly before he could say a word in reply. The lady at first thought he wept through grief at hav- ing to give up his fair bird, and was on the point of saying that this was not her desire. But she kept silence and awaited the reply of Federigo, who, after weeping awhile, thus answered : " Ma- donna, since God has willed that I should set my love on you, I have in many ways deemed Fortune 108 unkind to me and complained of her, but all her plagues have been as naught compared with her present malice, with regard to which I must ever hereafter be at odds with her. For she has so wrought that now you are come to my poor house whereas you never came to me when I was rich to ask of me a boon. I cannot grant you this, and why I cannot I will tell you briefly. When I heard that, of your kindness, you desired to dine with me, I deemed it right and becoming, con- sidering your worth and noble station, to honour your visit by a repast rarer than usual, and taking thought of my falcon, which you now ask of me, and of his excellence, I deemed him a dish worthy of you. To-day I set him before you roasted on a trencher, and I reckoned he was being used most worthily ; but now that I learn you would have liked him alive, I am so heavily grieved I cannot oblige you herein, that I feel I shall never forgive myself for what I have done." And to prove his words he shewed the lady the feathers and feet and beak of the falcon. When the lady saw and heard what had been done, she first blamed him for having slain such a falcon to feast any woman, but in her heart she soon began to praise his nobility of soul, which poverty had in no way diminished. Then, being disappointed of getting the falcon, and doubting of her son's recovery, she departed and returned dis- consolate to the youth, who in the course of a few days, either from vexation that the falcon could 109 not be his or because his malady was mortal from the beginning, died, leaving his mother in the deepest grief. She, after spending some time in weeping and bitterness, was pressed by her brothers to marry again, seeing that she was very rich and still a young woman ; and though she was not greatly inclined to this course, yet when she was besought by many, and when she remembered the virtue of Federigo and his last magnificent deed when he killed his beautiful falcon for her enter- tainment, she said to her brothers : "If you would permit me I would sooner be as I am, but if you will have me married, I tell you that I will take no other than Federigo degli Alberighi." Then her brothers, laughing at her, cried out, "Silly fool, what are you talking about ? How can you choose a man without a coin in his purse?" "My brothers," she replied, " I know what you say is true, but let me tell you I would rather have a man without riches than riches without a man." The brothers understood her resolution, and were at the same time satisfied that Federigo, though poor, was a man of great merit. So they let her take all her wealth to Federigo as his wife accord- ing to her desire : and Federigo, when he found himself the husband of such a charming lady one he had loved so dearly and a rich man as well, managed his goods in wise fashion, and lived long with his wife in joy and happiness. Giovanni Boccaccio. no The Windmill <^y ^y ^> (From Shorter Poems] n^HE green corn waving in the dale, The ripe grass waving on the hill : I lean across the paddock pale And gaze upon the giddy mill. Its hurtling sails a mighty sweep Cut thro' the air : with rushing sound Each strikes in fury down the steep, Rattles and whirls in chase around. Beside his sacks the miller stands On high within the open door : A book and pencil in his hands, His grist and meal he reckoneth o'er. His tireless merry slave the wind Is busy with his work to-day : From whence soe'er he comes to grind ; He hath a will and knows a way. He gives the creaking sails a spin, The circling millstones faster flee, The shuddering timbers groan within, And down the shoots the meal runs free. The miller giveth him no thanks, And doth not much his work o'erlook : He stands beside the sacks, and ranks The figures in his dusty book. R. Bridges. ill The Ballad of the Dark Ladle r\ LEAVE the lily on its stem ; O leave the rose upon the spray ; O leave the elder bloom, fair maids ! And listen to my lay. A cypress and a myrtle bough This morn around my harp you twined, Because it fashioned mournfully Its murmurs in the wind. And now a tale of love and woe, A woeful tale of love I sing ; Hark, gentle maidens ! hark it sighs And trembles on the string. But most, my own dear Genevieve, It sighs and trembles most for thee 1 O come and hear the cruel wrongs, Befel the Dark Ladie ! All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o'er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay, Beside the ruined tower. 112 The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve ; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve. She lean'd against the armed man, The statue of the armed knight ; She stood and listened to my lay, Amid the lingering light. For sorrows hath she of her own, My hope, my joy, my Genevieve ; She loves me best, whene'er I sing The songs that make her grieve. I played a soft and doleful air, I sang an old and moving story An old rude song that suited well That ruin wild and hoary. She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace ; For well she knew I could but choose But gaze upon her face. I told her of the knight that wore Upon his shield a burning brand ; And that for ten long years he wooed The Lady of the Land. I told her how he pined ; and ah ! The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sang another's love, Interpreted my own. I 113 She listened with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace ; And she forgave me, that I gazed Too fondly on her face. But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lonely knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night ; And sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once f In green and sunny glade There came and looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright ; And that he knew it was a Fiend, This miserable knight. And that unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The Lady of the Land ; And how she wept, and clasped his knees ; And how she tended him in vain And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain ; And that she nursed him in a cave ; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest leaves A dying man he lay ; 114 His dying words but when I reached That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity ! All impulses of soul and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve ; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve ; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng, And gentle wishes long subdued, Subdued and cherished long ! She wept with pity and delight, She blushed with love and virgin shame ; And like the murmur of a dream, I heard her breathe my name. Her bosom heaved she stepped aside, As conscious of my look she stept Then suddenly, with timorous eye She fled to me and wept. She half inclosed me with her arms, She pressed me with a meek embrace ; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face. 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly 'twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel, than see The swelling of her heart. "5 I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride ; And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous bride. But now, once more a tale of woe, A woeful tale of love I sing ; For thee, my Genevieve, it sighs, And trembles on the string. When last I sang the cruel scorn That crazed this bold and lovely knight, And how he roamed the mountain woods, Nor rested day nor night ; I promised thee a sister tale, Of man's perfidious cruelty : Come then and hear what cruel wrong Befell the Dark Ladie. Beneath yon birch with silver bark, And boughs so pendulous and fair, The brook falls scattered down the rock : And all is mossy there ! And there upon the moss she sits, The Dark Ladie in silent pain ; The heavy tear is in her eye, And drops and swells again. 116 Three times she sends her little page Up the castled mountain's breast, If he might find the knight that wears The Griffin for his crest. The sun was sloping down the sky, And she had lingered there all day, Counting moments, dreaming fears O wherefore can he stay ? She hears a rustling o'er the brook, She sees far off a swinging bough ! "'Tis he ! 'Tis my betrothed knight ! Lord Falkland, it is thou." She springs and clasps him round the neck, She sobs a thousand hopes and fears, Her kisses glowing on his cheeks She quenches with her tears. " My friends with rude ungentle words, They scoff and bid me fly to thee. give me shelter in thy breast ! O shield and shelter me ! " My Henry, I have given thee much. 1 gave what I can ne'er recall, I gave my heart, I gave my peace, O Heaven ! I gave thee all." The Knight made answer to the Maid, While to his heart he held her hand : " Nine castles hath my noble sire, None statelier in the land. 117 " The fairest one shall be my love's, The fairest castle of the nine ! Wait only till the stars peep out, The fairest shall be thine : " Wait only till the hand of eve Hath wholly closed yon western bars, And through the dark we too will steal Beneath the twinkling stars ! " " The dark ? the dark ? No ! not the dark ? The twinkling stars ? How, Henry ? How ? O God ! 'twas in the eye of noon He pledged his sacred vow ! " And in the eye of noon, my love Shall lead me from my mother's door, Sweet boys and girls all clothed in white Strewing flowers before : " But first the nodding minstrels go With music meet for lordly bow'rs, The children next in snow-white vests, Strewing buds and flow'rs ! " And then my love and I shall pace, My jet black hair in pearly braids, Between our comely bachelors And blushing bridal maids." S. T. Coleridge. 118 The Poet *^ "^ ^ ^ (From Early Poems} r ~PHE poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above ; Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill He saw thro' his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay : with echoing feet he threaded The secretest walks of fame : The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing'd with flame, Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, And of so fierce a flight, From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, Filling with light And vagrant melodies the winds which bore Them earthward till they lit ; Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flowers, The fruitful wit Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew Where'er they fell, behold, Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew A flower all gold, 119 And bravely furnished all abroad to fling The winged shafts of truth, To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring Of Hope and Youth. So many minds did gird their orbs with beams, Tho' one did fling the fire. Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams Of high desire. Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world Like one great garden show'd, And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurl'd, Rare sunrise glow'd. And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise Her beautiful bold brow, When rites and forms before his burning eyes Melted like snow. There was no blood upon her maiden robes, Sunn'd by those orient skies ; But round about the circles of the globes Of her keen eyes And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame Wisdom, a name to shake All evil dreams of power a sacred name. And when she spake, Her words did gather thunder as they ran, And as the lightning to the thunder Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, Making earth wonder, 120 So was their meaning to her words. No sword Of wrath her right arm whirl'd, But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world. Lord Tennyson. Isaac Walton *^ ^y ^ (The Complete Angler, Chap. II) TDUT turn out of the way a little, good Scholer, towards yonder high hedg : We'l sit whilst this showr falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives a sweeter smel to the lovley flowers that adorn the verdant Meadows. Look, under that broad Beech tree I sate down when I was last this way a fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an Echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow cave, near to the brow of that Primrose hil ; there I sate viewing the Silver streams glide silenty towards their center, the tempestuous Sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pibble stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into some : and sometimes viewing the harmless Lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful Sun ; and others were craving comfort from the swolne udders of their bleating Dams. As I thus sate, these and other sighs had 121 so fully possest my soul that I thought as the Poet has happily exprest it : / was for that time lifted above earth; And possest joyes not pro mi? din my birth. As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me, 'twas a handsome Milk-maid, that had cast away all care, and sang like a Nightingale; her voice was good, and the Ditty fitted for it ; 'twas that smooth Song which was made by Kit Marlow^ now at least fifty years ago ; and the Milk-maid's mother sang an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger dayes. They were old fashioned poetry but choicely good, I think much better then that now in fashion in this Critical age. Look yonder, on my word, yonder they be both a milking again : I wil give her the Chub and perswade them to sing those two songs to us. Pise. God speed, griod woman, I have been a fishing, and am going to Bleak Hall to my bed, and having caught more fish than wil sup myself and friend, wil bestow this upon you and your daughter, for I use to sel none. Milkuv. Marry, God requite you, Sir, and we'l eat it cheerfully : wil you drink a draught of red Cow's milk ? Pise. No, I thank you : but I pray do us a courtesie that shal stand you and your daughter in nothing, and we wil think ourselves stil something 122 in your debt ; it is but to sing us a song, that was sung by you and your daughter, when I last past over this Meadow, about eight or nine dayes since. Milk. What song was it, I pray? was it Come Shepherds deck your heads: or As at noon Dulcina rested: or Phillida flouts me f Pise. No it is none of those : it is a Song that your daughter sung the first part, and you sung the answer to it. Milk. O I know it now, I learn'd the first part in my golden age, when I was about the age of my daughter ; and the later part, which indeed fits me best, but two or three years ago : you shal, God willing, hear them both. Come Maudlin, sing the first part to the Gentlemen with a merrie heart, and He sing the second. The Milkmaid^s Song. Come live with me, and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That vallies, groves, or hils, or fields, Or woods and steepie mountains yields. Where we will sit upon the Rocks, And see the Shepherds feed our flocks, By Shallow Rivers, to where falls Mellodious birds sing madrigals. And I wil make thee beds of Roses, And then a thousand fragrant posies, A Cap of flowers and a Kirtle, Imbroidered all with leaves of Mirtle. 123 A Gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty Lambs we pull, Slippers lin'd choicely for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold. A belt of straw and ivie buds, With Coral clasps, and Amber studs : And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my Love. The Shepherds Swains shal dance and sing For thy delight each May morning : If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my Love. Via. Trust me Master, it is a choice Song, and sweetly sung by honest Maudlin : Pie bestow Sir Thomas Overbuys milkmaid's wish upon her. That she may die in the Spring, and have good store of flowers stuck round about her winding sheet. The Milkmaid } s mother's answer. If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherds tongue ? These pretty pleasures might me move, To live with thee, and be thy love. But time drives flocks from field to fold : When rivers rage and rocks grow cold. And Philomel becometh dumb, And Rest complains of cares to come. 124 The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward Winter reckoning yeilds. A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancies spring, but sorrows fall. Thy gowns, thy shooes, thy beds of Roses, Thy Cap, thy Kirtle, and thy Posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, In folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw and I vie buds, Thy Coral clasps and Amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee, and be thy Love. But could youth last, and love still breed, Had joyes no date, nor age no need : Then these delights my mind might move To live with thee, and be thy love. Pise. Wei sung, good woman, I thank you, PI give you another dish of fish one of these dayes, and then beg another Song of you. Come, Scholer, let Maudlin alone, do not you offer to spoil her voice. Look yonder comes my Hostis to cal us to supper. How now ? is my brother Peter come ? Host. Yes, and a friend with him, they are both glad to hear you are in these parts, and long to see you, and are hungry, and long to be at Supper. Isaac Walton. 125 Summer Tempest "v> ^> *^y (From Shorter Poems] HTHE summer trees are tempest torn, The hills are wrapped in a mantle wide Of folding rain by the mad wind borne Across the country side. His scourge of fury is lashing down The delicate-ranked golden corn, That never more shall rear its crown And curtsey to the morn. There shews no care in heaven to save Man's pitiful patience, or provide A season for the season's slave, Whose trust hath toiled and died. So my proud spirit is in me sad, A wreck of fairer fields to mourn, The ruin of golden hopes she had, My delicate-ranked corn. R. Bridges. A Dedication -Oy *^y < (From Confessions of an English Opium Eater] T HAVE had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contemplation of death generally, is (cceteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite ; the clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles ; secondly, the light and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are much more fitted to be types and K 129 characters of the Infinite ; and, thirdly, which is the main reason, the exuberant and riotous prodi- gality of life naturally forces the mind more power- fully upon the antagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be ob- served generally, that wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer : and any particular death, if not more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit might have been the immediate occasions of the following dream ; to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed in my mind ; but having been once roused, it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often suddenly reunited and composed again the original dream. I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by the power of dreams. There were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet ; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was 130 interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest lawns ; the hedges were rich with white roses ; and no living creature was to be seen, except- ing that in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed upon the well- known scene, and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself: "It yet wants much of sun-rise; and it is Easter Sunday ; and that is the day on which they celebrate the first-fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad : old griefs shall be forgotten to-day ; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, and stretch away to heaven ; and the forest glades are as quiet as the churchyard ; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer." I turned as if to open my garden gate : and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different ; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony with the other. The scene was an Oriental one ; and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from some picture of Jeru- salem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman ; and I looked ; and it was Ann ! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly : and I said to her at length : " So then I have found you at last." I waited : but she answered me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last, and yet again how different ! Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears : the tears were now wiped away ; she seemed more beautiful than she was at that time, but in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression : and I now gazed upon her with some awe ; but suddenly her countenance grew dim, and, turning to the mountains, I perceived vapours rolling between us : in a moment, all had vanished ; thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling of an eye, I was far away from mountains, and by lamplight in Oxford Street, walking again with Ann just as we had walked seventeen years before, when we were both children. Thomas de Quincey. Jack and Joan -^ *s> "Qy (From Two Books of Airs, 1613) TACK and Joan, they think no ill, J But loving live, and merry still : Do their week-day's work, and pray Devoutly on the holy day : 132 Skip and trip it on the green, And help to choose the summer Queen : Lash out at a country feast Their silver penny with the best. Well can they judge of nappy ale, And tell at large a winter's tale ; Climb up to the apple loft, And turn the crabs till they be soft. Tib is all the father's joy, And little Tom the mother's boy. All their pleasure is Content : And care to pay their yearly rent. Joan can call by name her cows, And deck her windows with green boughs ; She can wreaths and tutties make, And trim with plums a bridal cake. Jack knows what brings gain or loss, And his long flail can stoutly toss : Makes the hedge which others break, And ever thinks what he doth speak. Now you courtly dames and knights, That study only strange delights ; Though you scorn the homespun gray And revel in your rich array ; Though your tongues dissemble deep, And can your heads from danger keep ; Yet, for all your pomp and train, Securer lives the silly swain. Thomas Campion. 133 Song of a Maid whose love is dead *^y (From Poems of 1851) ERRY, merry little stream, Tell me, hast thou seen my dear ? I left him with an azure dream, Calmly sleeping on his bier But he has fled ! " I passed him in his churchyard bed A yew is sighing o'er his head, And grass-roots mingle with his hair." What doth he there ? O cruel ! can he lie alone ? Or in the arms of one more dear ? Or hides he in that bower of stone, To cause and kiss away my fear ? " He doth not speak, he doth not moan Blind, motionless he lies alone ; But, ere the grave snake fleshed his sting, This one warm tear he bade me bring And lay it at thy feet Among the daisies sweet." Moonlight whisperer, summer air, Songster of the groves above, Tell the maiden rose I wear, Whether thou hast seen my love. "This night in heaven I saw him lie, Discontented with his bliss ; And on my lips he left this kiss, For thee to taste and then to die." Thomas Lovell Beddoes. 134 Great God Pan ^> ^> -^ (From Ths Faithful Shepherdess) C ING his praises that doth keep Our flocks from harm, Pan, the father of our sheep ; And arm in arm Tread we softly in a round, Whilst the hollow neighbouring ground Fills the music with her sound. Pan, oh great god Pan, to thee Thus do we sing ! Thou that keep'st us chaste and free As the young spring ; Ever be thy honour spoke, From the place the morn is broke, To that place day doth unyoke. /. Fletcher. Last Night ^y *o "O *^> T SAT with one I love last night, She sang to me an olden strain ; In former times it woke delight, Last night but pain. Last night we saw the stars arise, But clouds soon dimm'd the ether blue : And when we sought each other's eyes Tears dimm'd them too ! 135 We paced alone our fav'rite walk, But paced in silence broken-hearted ; Of old we used to smile and talk, Last night we parted. George Darley. To Chloris ^y ^y ^x *^y 17 ARE WELL, my sweet, until I come, Improved in merit, for thy sake, With characters of honour, home, Such as thou canst not then but take. To loyalty my love must bow, My honour too calls to the field, When, for a lady's busk, I now Must keen and sturdy iron wield. Yet when I rush into those arms, Where death and danger do combine, I shall less subject be to harms, Than to these killing eyes of thine. Since I could live in thy disdain, Thou art so far become my fate, That I by nothing can be slain, Until thy sentence speaks my date. But if I seem to fall in war, T' excuse the murder you commit, Be to my memory just, so far As in thy heart t' acknowledge it. 136 That's all I ask, which thou must give To him that, dying, takes a pride It is for thee ; that would not live Sole prince of all the world beside. C. Cotton. Princess Cinderella *y ^> *^> (From Prince Otto) ^HE Princess scaled the long garden, skimming like a bird the starlit stairways : crossed the Park, which was in that place narrow ; and plunged upon the farther side into the rude shelter of the forest. So, at a bound, she left the discretion and the cheerful lamps of Palace evenings ; ceased utterly to be a sovereign lady ; and, falling from the whole height of civilization, ran forth into the woods, a ragged Cinderella. She went direct before her through an open tract of the forest, full of brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her ; and beyond that again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining overhead the thatch of its long branches. At that hour the place was breathless : a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of the wood ; and she went groping, knocking against the boles her ear, between whiles, strained to aching and yet unrewarded. But the slope of the ground was upward, and encouraged her ; and presently she issued on a rocky hill that stood forth above the sea of forest. All around were other hill tops, big and little : J 37 sable vales of forest between ; overhead the open heaven and the brilliancy of countless stars ; and along the western sky the dim forms of mountains. The glory of the great night laid hold upon her : her eyes shone with stars ; she dipped her sight into the coolness and brightness of the sky, as she might have dipped her wrist into a spring : and her heart, at that ethereal shock, began to move more soberly. The sun that sails overhead, ploughing into gold the fields of daylight azure and uttering the signal to man's myriads, has no word apart for man the individual ; and the moon, like a violin, only praises and laments our private destiny. The stars above, cheerful whisperers, confer quietly with each of us like friends ; they give ear to our sorrows smilingly, like wise old men, rich in tolerance ; and by their double scale, so small to the eye, so vast to the imagination, they keep before the mind the double character of man's nature and fate. There sate the Princess, beautifully looking upon beauty, in council with these glad advisers. Brightlike pictures, clear like a voice in the porches of her ear, memory re-enacted the tumult of the evening. She looked towards Mittwalden ; and above the hill-top, which already hid it from her view, a throbbing redness hinted of fire. Better so : better so, that she should fall with tragic greatness, lit by a burning palace ! She felt not a trace of pity for Gondremark or of con- cern for Griinewald : that period of her life was 138 closed for ever, a wrench of wounded vanity alone surviving. She had but one clear idea : to flee and another, obscure and half- rejected, although still obeyed : to flee in the direction of the Felsen- burg. She had a duty to perform, she must free Otto so her mind said, very coldly ; but her heart embraced the notion of that duty even with ardour, and her hands began to yearn for the grasp of kindness. She rose with a start of recollection, and plunged down the slope into the covert. The woods received and closed upon her. Once more she wandered and hasted in a blot, uncheered, unpiloted. Here and there, indeed, through rents in the wood roof, a glimmer attracted her ; here and there, a tree stood out among its neighbours by some force of outline ; here and there, a brush- ing among the leaves, a notable blackness, a dim shine, relieved, only to exaggerate, the solemn oppression of the night and silence. And between whiles, the unfeatured darkness would redouble and the whole ear of night appear to be gloating on her steps. Now she would stand still, and the silence would grow and grow, till it weighed upon her breathing ; and then she would address herself again to run, stumbling, falling, and still hurry- ing the more. And presently the whole wood rocked and began to run along with her. The voice of her own mad passage through the silence spread and echoed, and filled the night with terror. Panic hunted her : Panic from the trees reached 139 forth with clutching branches ; the darkness was lit up and peopled with strange forms and faces. She strangled and fled before her fears. And yet in the last fortress, reason, blown upon by these gusts of terror, still shone with a troubled light. She knew, yet could not act upon her knowledge ; she knew that she must stop, and yet she still ran. She was already near madness, when she broke suddenly into a narrow clearing. At the same time the din grew louder, and she became conscious of vague forms and fields of whiteness. And with that the earth gave way ; she fell and found her feet again with an incredible shock to her senses, and her mind was swallowed up. When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in an icy eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from which it poured. The spray had wet her hair. She saw the white cascade, the stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high overhead the tall pines on either side serenely drinking starshine : and in the sudden quiet of her spirit, she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in the pool. She scrambled forth dripping. In the face of her proved weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of blackness in the groves were a suicide of life or reason. But here, in the alley of the brook, with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into sight, she could await the coming of day without alarm. This lane of pine trees ran very rapidly down 140 hill and wound among the woods ; but it was a wider thoroughfare than the brook needed, and here and there were little dimpling lawns and coves of the forest, where the starshine slumbered. Such a lawn she paced, taking patience bravely ; and now she looked up the hill and saw the brook coming down to her in a series of cascades ; and now approached the margin, where it welled among the rushes silently : and now gazed at the great company of heaven with an enduring wonder. The early evening had fallen chill, but the night was now temperate ; out of the recesses of the wood there came mild airs as from a deep and peaceful breathing ; and the dew was heavy on the grass and the tight-shut daisies. This was the girl's first night under the naked heaven ; and now that her fears were overpast, she was touched to the soul by its serene amenity and peace. Kindly the host of heaven blinked down upon that wandering Princess : and the honest brook had no words but to encourage her. At last she began to be aware of a wonderful re volu- tion, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a percussion cap . The countenance with which the pines regarded her be- gan insensibly to change ; the grass too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook's course, began to wear a solemn freshness of ap- pearance. And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked all about ; the 141 whole face of nature looked back brimful of meaning, finger on lip, leaking its glad secret. She looked up. Heaven was almost emptied of stars. Such as still lingered shone with a changed and waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations. And the colour of the sky itself was the most wonderful : for the rich blue of the night had now melted and softened and brightened ; and there had succeeded in its place a hue that has no name, and that is never even seen but as the herald of morning. " O ! " she cried, joy catching at her voice, " O ! it is the dawn ! " In a breath she passed over the brook, and looped up her skirts and fairly ran in the dim alleys. As she ran her ears were aware of many pipings more beautiful than music : in the small dish-shaped houses in the fork of giant arms, where they had lain all night, lover by lover, warmly pressed, the bright -eyed, big-hearted singers began to awaken for the day. Her heart swelled and flowed forth to them in kindness. And they, from their small and high perches in the clere-stories of the wood cathedral, peered sidelong at the ragged Princess as she flitted below them on the carpet of moss and tassel. Soon she had struggled to a certain hill-top, and saw before her the silent inflooding of the day. Out of the East it welled and whitened ; the darkness trembled into light, and the stars were extinguished like the street lamps of a human city. The whiteness brightened into silver, the silver warmed 142 into gold, and the gold kindled into pure and living fire ; and the face of the East was barred with elemental scarlet. The day drew its first long breath, steady and chill ; and for leagues around the woods sighed and shivered. And then at one bound, the sun had floated up ; and her startled eyes received day's first arrow, and quailed under the buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and fell prone. The day was come, plain and garish ; and up the steep and solitary eastern heaven the sun, victorious over his competitors, continued slowly and royally to mount. Seraphina drooped for a little, leaning on a pine, the shrill joy of the woodlands mocking her. The shelter of the night, the thrilling and joyous changes of the dawn, were over ; and now, in the hot eye of the day, she turned uneasily and looked sighingly about her. Some way off among the lower woods, a pillar of smoke was mounting and melting in the gold and blue. There, surely enough, were human folk, the hearth surrounders. Man's fingers had laid the twigs ; it was man's breath that had quickened and encouraged the baby flames ; and now, as the fire caught, it would be playing ruddily on the face of its creator. At the thought, she felt a-cold and little and lost in that great out-of-doors. The electric shock of the young sunbeams and the unhuman beauty of the woods began to irk and daunt her. The covert of the house, the decent privacy of rooms, the swept and regulated fire, all that denotes or beautifies the home life of man, began to draw her as with cords. The pillar of smoke was now risen into some stream of moving air ; it began to lean out sideways in a pennon : and thereupon, as though the change had been a summons, Seraphina plunged once more into the labyrinth of the wood. She left day upon the high ground. In the lower groves there still lingered the blue early twilight and the seizing freshness of the dew. But here and there, above this field of shadow, the head of a great outspread pine was already glorious with day ; and here and there, through the breaches of the hills, the sunbeams made a great and luminous entry. Here Seraphina hastened along forest paths. She had lost sight of the pilot smoke, which blew another way, and conducted herself in that great wilderness by the direction of the sun. But presently fresh signs bespoke the neighbour- hood of man ; felled trunks, white slivers from the axe, bundles of green boughs, and stacks of fire- wood. These guided her forward : until she came forth at last upon the clearing whence the smoke arose. A hut stood in the clear shadow, hard by a brook which made a series of inconsiderable falls ; and on the threshold the Princess saw a sun- burnt and hard-featured woodman, standing with his hands behind his back and gazing skyward. She went to him directly : a beautiful, bright- eyed, and haggard vision : splendidly arrayed and pitifully tattered ; the diamond ear-drops still glit- tering in her ears, and with the movement of her 144 coming, one small breast showing and hiding among the ragged covert of the laces. At that ambiguous hour, and coming as she did from the great silence of the forest, the man drew back from the Princess as from something elfin. " I am cold," she said, "and weary. Let me rest beside your fire." The woodman was visibly commoved, but answered nothing. " I will pay," she said, and then repented of the words, catching perhaps a spark of terror from his frightened eyes. But, as usual, her courage re- kindled brighter for the check. She put him from the door and entered, and he followed her in super- stitious wonder. Within the hut was rough and dark ; but on the stone that served as hearth, twigs and a few dry branches burned with the brisk sounds and with all the variable beauty of fire. The very sight of it composed her : she crouched hard by on the earth floor and shivered in the glow, and looked upon the eating blaze with ad- miration. The woodman was still staring at his guest : at the wreck of the rich dress, the bare arms, the bedraggled laces and the gems. He found no word to utter. " Give me food," said she, "here by the fire." He set down a pitcher of coarse wine, bread, a piece of cheese, and a handful of raw onions. The bread was hard and sour, the cheese like leather ; even the onion, which ranks with the truffle and the nectarine in the chief place of L 145 honour of earth's fruits, is not perhaps a diet for princesses when raw. But she ate, if not with appetite, with courage ; and when she had eaten, did not disdain the pitcher. In all her life before, she had not tasted of gross food nor drunk after another : but a brave woman far more readily accepts a change of circumstances than the bravest man. All that while, the woodman continued to observe her furtively, many low thoughts of fear and greed contending in his eyes. She read them clearly, and she knew she must be-gone. Presently she arose and offered him a florin. " Will that repay you ? " she asked. But here the man found his tongue. " I must have more than that," said he. " It is all I have to give you," she returned, and passed him by serenely. Yet her heart trembled, for she saw his hand stretched forth as if to arrest her, and his unsteady eyes wandering to his axe. A beaten path led westward from the clearing, and she swiftly followed it. She did not glance behind her. But as soon as the least turning of the path had concealed her from the woodman's eyes, she slipped among the trees and ran till she deemed herself in safety. By this time the strong sunshine pierced in a thousand places the pine thatch of the forest, fired the red boles, irradiated the cool aisles of shadow, and burned in jewels on the grass. The gum of these trees was clearer to the senses than the gums of Araby ; each pine, in the lusty morning sunlight, 146 burned its own wood-incense ; and now and then a breeze would rise and toss these rooted censers, and send shade and sun -gem flitting, swift as swallows, thick as bees ; and waken brushing bustle of sounds that murmured and went by. On she passed, and up and down, in sun and shadow ; now aloft on the bare ridge among the rocks and birches, with the lizards and the snakes ; and anon in the deep grove among sunless pillars. Now she followed wandering wood -paths in the maze of valleys ; and again from a hill-top, beheld the distant mountains and the great birds circling under the sky. She would see afar off a nestling hamlet, and go round to avoid it. Below she traced the course of the foam of mountain torrents. Nearer hand, she saw where the tender springs welled up in silence, or oozed in green moss : or in the more favoured hollows a whole family of infant rivers would combine, and tinkle in the stones, and lie in pools to be a bathing-place for sparrows, or fall from the sheer rock in rods of crystal. Upon all these things, as she still sped along in the bright air, she looked with a rapture of surprise and a joyful fainting of the heart ; they seemed so novel, they touched so strangely home, they were so hued and scented, they were so beset and canopied by the dome of the blue air of heaven. At length, when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow pool. Stones stood in it, like islands ; bullrushes fringed the coast : the floor was paved with pine-needles ; and the pines themselves, whose roots made promontories, looked silently down on their green images. She crept to the margin and beheld herself with wonder, a hollow and bright-eyed phantom, in the ruins of her palace robe. The breeze now shook her image ; now it would be marred with flies ; and at that she smiled ; and from the fading circles, her counterpart smiled back to her and looked kind. She sat long in the warm sun, and pitied her bare arms that were all bruised and marred with falling, and marvelled to see that she was dirty, and could not grow to believe that she had gone so long in such a strange disorder. Then with a sigh, she addressed herself to make a toilet by that forest mirror, washed herself pure from all stains of her adventure, took off her jewels and wrapped them in her handkerchief, re-arranged the tatters of her dress and took down the folds of her hair. She shook it round her face, and the pool repeated her thus veiled. Her hair had smelt like violets, she remembered Otto saying : and so now she tried to smell it, and then shook her head, and laughed a little, sadly, to herself. The laugh was returned upon her in a childish echo. She looked up, and lo ! two children looking on, a small girl and a yet smaller boy, standing like playthings by the pool, below a spreading pine. Seraphina was not fond of children, and now she was startled to the heart. 148 " Who are you ? " she cried, hoarsely. The mites huddled together and drew back : and Seraphina's heart reproached her that she should have frightened things so quaint and little, and yet alive with senses. She thought upon the birds and looked again at her two visitors ; so little larger and so far more innocent. On their clear faces, as in a pool, she saw the reflection of their fears. With gracious purpose she arose. " Come," she said, " do not be afraid of me," and took a step towards them. But alas ! at the first moment, the two poor babes in the wood turned and ran helter-skelter from the Princess. The most desolate pang was struck into the girl's heart. Here she was, twenty-two soon twenty-three and not a creature loved her : none but Otto ; and would even he forgive ? If she began weeping in these woods alone, it would mean death or madness. Hastily she trod the thoughts out like a burning paper ; hastily rolled up her locks, and with terror dogging her, and her whole bosom sick with grief, resumed her journey. Past ten in the forenoon, she struck a high-road, marching in that place uphill between two stately groves, a river of sunlight : and here, dead weary, careless of consequences, and taking some courage from the human and civilized neighbourhood of the road, she stretched herself on the green margin in the shadow of a tree. Sleep closed on her, at first 149 with a horror of fainting, but when she ceased to struggle, kindly embracing her. So she was taken home for a little, from all her toils and sorrows, to her Father's arms. R. L. Stevenson. The Lover's Vow *o *^> *^> THIRST shall the heavens want starry light, The seas be robbed of their waves : The day want sun, the sun want bright, The night want shade, the dead men graves ; The April flowers and leaf and tree, Before I false my faith to thee. First shall the tops of highest hills By humble plains be over-pried : And poets scorn the Muses' quills, And fish forsake the water-glide ; And Iris lose her coloured weed, Before I fail thee at thy need. First direful hate shall turn to peace, And love relent in deep disdain ; And death his fatal stroke shall cease, And envy pity every pain ; And pleasure mourn, and sorrow smile, Before I talk of any guile. First Time shall stay his stayless race, And winter bless his boughs with corn : And snow bemoisten July's face, And winter spring, and summer mourn, Before my pen by help of fame Cease to recite thy sacred name. T. Lodge. My true love hath my Heart *o> ^o JV/T Y true love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange one for the other given : I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss : There never was a better bargain driven. His heart in me keeps me and him in one ; My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides : He loves my heart, for once it was his own ; I cherish his because in me it bides. His heart his wound received from my sight ; My heart was wounded with his wounded heart : For as from me on him his hurt did light, So still methought in me his hurt did smart. Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss : My true love hath my heart and I have his. Sir P. Sidney. 15* The description and praise of his Fairest Love -^ "Qy *o A T shearing time she shall command The finest fleece of all my wool : And if her pleasure but demand The fattest from the lean to cull, She shall be mistKess of my store : Let me alone to work for more. My cloak shall lie upon the ground, From wet and dust to keep her feet : My pipe with his best measure's sound, Shall welcome her with music sweet : And in my script some cates at least Shall bid her to a shepherd's feast. My staff shall stay her in her walk, My dog shall at her heels attend her ; And I will hold her with such talk As I do hope shall not offend her : My ewes shall bleat, my lambs shall play, To show her all the sport they may. Why, I will teach her twenty things. That I have heard my mother tell ; Of plucking of the buzzard's wings For killing of her cockerel, And hunting Reynard to his den For frightening of her sitting hen. 152 How she would say, when she was young, That lovers were ashamed to lie, And truth was so on every tongue, That love meant naught but honesty ; " And sirrah (quoth she then to me), Let ever this thy lesson be : Look when thou lovest, love but one, And let her worthy be thy love ; Then love her in thy heart alone, And let her in thy passions prove." And I will tell her such fine tales, As for the nonce I will devise : Of lapwings and of nightingales, And how the swallow feeds on flies ; And of the hare, the fox, the hound, The pasture and the meadow ground. And of the springs, and of the wood, And of the forests, and the deer, And of the rivers and the floods, And of the mirth and merry cheer, And of the looks and of the glances Of maids and young men in their dances : Of clapping hands, and drawing gloves, And of the tokens of love's truth, And of the pretty turtle-doves, That teach the billing tricks of youth. Nicholas Breton. 'S3 To Ccelia *^ -Qy ^> ^Qy \\7 HEN Coelia must my old day set, And my young morning rise, In beams of joy so bright as yet Ne'er blessed a lover's eyes ? My state is more advanc'd, than when I first attempted thee ; I sued to be a servant then, But now to be made free. I've serv'd my time faithful and true, Expecting to be plac'd In happy freedom, as my due, To all the joys thou has't : 111 husbandry in love is such A scandal to Love's power, We ought not to mis-spend so much As one poor short-lived hour. Yet think not sweet, I'm weary grown, That I pretend such haste ; Since none to surfeit e'er was known, Before he had a taste ; My infant Love could humbly wait. When young it scarce knew how To plead ; but grown to man's estate, He is impatient now. C. Cotton. 154 To Flavia ^y *^x -^x *^y ' nriS not your beauty can engage My wary heart ; The sun in all his pride and rage, Has not that art : And yet he shines as bright as you, If brightness could our souls subdue. 'Tis not the pretty things you say, Nor those you write, Which can make Thyrsis' heart your prey : For that delight, The graces of a well-taught mind, In some of our own sex we find. No, Flavia ! 'tis your love I fear : Love's surest darts, Those which so seldom fail him, are Headed with hearts. Their very shadows make us yield, Dissemble well and win the field. E. Waller. 155 What the Voices said <^ <>y (From The Silent Voices) "DEYOND the sun, beyond the furthest star, Shines still the land which poets still may win, Whose poems are their lives whose souls within Hold naught in dread save Art's high conscience bar Who have for muse a maiden free from scar Who know how beauty dies at touch of sin Who love mankind, yet, having gods for kin, Breathe zephyrs, in the street, from climes afar. Heedless of phantom Fame heedless of all Save pity and love to light the life of Man True poets work, winning a sunnier span For Nature's martyr Night's ancestral thrall : True poets work, yet listen for the call Bidding them join their country and their clan. Theodore Watts-Dunton. 156 AUTUMN FOR MATURITY THEN came the Autumne all in yellow clad, As though he joyed in his plentious store, Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad That he had banisht hunger, which to-fore Had by the belly oft him pinched sore : Upon his head a wreath, that was enrold With ears of corne of every sort, he bore ; And in his hand a sickle he did holde, To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yolde. Ed. Spenser. Mutabilitie^ Canto vii. It is not Beauty I demand ^y - (From Miscellaneous Poems} T T is not Beauty I demand, A crystal brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair. Tell me not of your starry eyes, Your lips that seem on roses fed, Your breasts where Cupid trembling lies, Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed. A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks, Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours, A breath that softer music speaks, Than summer winds a-wooing flowers. These are but gauds ; nay, what are lips ? Coral beneath the ocean-stream, Whose brink when your adventurer sips Full oft he perisheth on them. And what are cheeks but ensigns oft That wave hot youth to fields of blood ? Did Helen's breast though ne'er so soft Bring Greece or Ilium any good ? Eyes can with baleful ardour burn, Poison can breath that erst perfumed, There's many a white hand holds an urn With lovers' hearts to dust consumed. 159 For crystal brows there's naught within, They are but empty cells for pride : He who the Siren's hair would win Is mostly strangled in the tide. Give me, instead of beauty's bust, A tender heart, a loyal mind, Which with temptation I could trust, Yet never linked with error find. One in whose gentle bosom I Could pour my secret heart of woes, Like the care-burdened honey-fly That hides his murmurs in the rose. My earthly comforter ! whose love So indefeasible might be, That when my spirit won above Hers could not stay for sympathy George Darley. From the Cliffs : Noon ' < Qy "O n^HE sea is in its listless chime : Time's lapse it is, made audible, The murmur of the earth's large shell. In a sad blueness beyond rhyme It ends : sense, without thought, can pass No stadium further : Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time. 160 No stagnance that death winsit hath The mournfulness of ancient life, Always enduring at dull Strife. As the world's heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is in the sands. Last utterly, the whole sky stands, Grey and not known, along its path. D. G. Rossetti. The Garden *^x o <^ T T OW vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays : And their incessant labours see Crowned from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid ; While all the flowers and trees do close, To weave the garlands of repose ! Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear? Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men. Your sacred plants, if here below, Only amongst the plants will grow : Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green. M 161 Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name : Little, alas, they know or heed, How far these beauties hers exceed ! Fair trees ! wheres'e'er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passions heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. The Gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race ; Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow ; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wondrous life is this I lead ! Ripe apples drop about my head ; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine ; The nectarine and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach ; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness : The mind, that Ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find ; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas, 162 Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide : There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and combs its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy Garden-state, While man there walked without a mate : After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet he meet ? But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there : Two paradises 'twere in one, To live in Paradise alone. How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ; Where, from above, the milder sun Does thro' a fragrant zodiac run. And as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers. A. Marvell. Invocation to Pan <^ <^K <^ (From Endymion) C\ THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; Who lov'st to see the hamadryad's dress Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken ; And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken The dreary melody of bedded reeds In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth ; Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth Thou wast to love fair Syrinx do thou now, By thy love's milky brow ; By all the trembling mazes that she ran, Hear us, great Pan ! O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, What time thou wanderest at eventide Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side Of thine enmossed realms : O thou, to whom Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom Their ripened fruitage : yellow girted bees Their golden honeycombs : our village leas Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn ; The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, 164 To sing for thee : low creeping strawberries Their summer coolness : pent-up butterflies Their freckled wings : yea, the fresh budding year All its completions, be quickly near, By every wind that nods the mountain-pine, O forester divine ! Thou to whom every faun and satyr flies For willing service : whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit : Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to their path again ; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, And gather up all fancifullest shells For thee to humble into Naiads' cells, And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping ; Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping, The while they pelt each other on the crown With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown By all the echoes that about thee ring, Hear us, O satyr king ! O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers A ram goes bleating : Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsmen : Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms . 165 Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow grounds, And wither drearily on barren moors : Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledge see Great son of Dryope, The many that are come to pay their vows With leaves about their brows ! /. Keats. Letter "s> "v> 'Qy ^y (From Walpok's Letters] To GEORGE MONTAGU. Houghton, March 2 Jf 1761. T T ERE I am at Houghton ! and alone ! in this spot, where (except two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen years ! Think what a crowd of reflections ! no, Gray and forty church- yards could not furnish so many ; nay, I know one must feel them with greater indifference than I possess, to have patience to put them into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time of my life, though not for the last time every clock that strikes tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church that church into which I have not yet had courage to enter, where lies that mother on whom I doted, and who doted on me ! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it ! There too lies he who 166 founded its greatness, to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled there he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets. The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed accustomed for many years to see nothing but wretched daubs and varnished copies at auc- tions, I look at these as enchantment. My own description of them seems poor but shall I tell you truly the majesty of Italian ideas almost sinks before the warm nature of Flemish colouring ! Alas ! don't I grow old ? My young imagination was fired with Guide's ideas must they be plump and prominent as Abishag to warm me now? Does great youth feel with poetic limbs, as well as see with poetic eyes? In one respect I am very young : I cannot satiate myself with looking an incident contributed to make me feel this more strongly. A party arrived, just as I did, to see the house, a man and three women in riding dresses, and they rode past through the apartments I could not hurry before them fast enough they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being often diverted with this kind of seers they come, ask what such a room is called, in which Sir Robert lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a market-piece, dispute whether the last room 167 was green or purple, and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be over-dressed how different my sensations ! Not a picture here but recalls a history : not one, but I remember in Downing Street or Chelsea, where queens and crowds admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers ! When I had drunk tea, I strolled into the garden they told me it was now called the pleasure ground what a dissonant idea of pleasure those groves, those allees, where I have passed so many charming moments, are now stripped up or over- grown ; many fond paths I could not unravel, though with a very exact clue in my memory I met two gamekeepers and a thousand hares ! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity (and you will think, perhaps, it is far from being out of tune yet) I hated Houghton and its solitude yet I loved this garden ; as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton Houghton, I know not what to call it, a monument of grandeur or ruin ! how I have wished this evening for Lord Bute ! how I could preach to him ! For myself, I do not want to be preached to I have long considered, how every Balbec must wait for the chance of a Mr. Wood. The servants wanted to lay me in the great apartment what, to make me pass my night as I have done my evening ! It were like proposing to Margaret Roper to be a duchess in the court that cut off her father's head, and imagining it would 168 please her. I have chosen to sit in my father's little dressing-room, and am now by his scrutoire, where, in the height of his fortune, he used to receive the accounts of his farmers, and deceive himself or us, with the thoughts of his economy how wise a man at once, and how weak ! For what has he built Houghton ? for his grandson to annihilate, or for his son to mourn over ! If Lord Burleigh could rise and view his representative driving the Hatfield stage, he would feel as I feel now poor little Strawberry ! at least it will not be stripped to pieces by a descendant ! You will think all these fine meditations dictated by pride, not by philosophy pray consider through how many mediums philosophy must pass before it is purified , . . how often must it weep, how often burn ! My mind was extremely prepared for all this gloom by parting with Mr. Conway yesterday morning moral reflections on commonplaces are the livery one likes to wear, when one has just had a real misfortune. He is going to Germany I was glad to dress myself up in transitory Houghton, in lieu of very sensible concern. To-morrow I shall be distracted with thoughts at least images, of very different complexion I go to Lynn, and am to be elected on Friday. I shall return hither on Saturday, again alone to expect Burleighides on Sunday, whom I left at Newmarket I must once in my life see him on his grandfather's throne. 169 Epping Forest, Monday night, thirty-first. No, I have not seen him, he loitered on the road, and I was kept at Lynn till yesterday morning. It is plain I never knew for how many trades I was formed, when at this time of day I can begin elec- tioneering, and succeed in my new vocation. Think of me, the subject of a mob, who was scarce ever before in a mob, addressing them in the town hall, riding at the head of two thousand people through such a town as Lynn, dining with above two hun- dred of them, amid bumpers, huzzas, songs, and tobacco, and finishing with country dancing at a ball and sixpenny whisk ! I have borne it all cheerfully ; nay, have sat hours in conversation, the thing upon earth that I hate, have been to hear misses play on the harpsichord, and to see an alderman's copies of Reubens and Carlo Marat. Yet to do the folks justice, they are sensible, and reasonable, and civilized ; their very language is polished since I lived among them. I attribute this to their more frequent intercourse with the world and the capital, by the help of good roads and postchaises, which, if they have abridged the king's dominions, have at least tamed his subjects : well ! how comfortable it will be to-morrow, to see my perroquet, to play at loo, and not to be obliged to talk seriously The Heraclitus at the beginning of this letter will be overjoyed on finish- ing it to sign himself your old friend, DEMOCRITUS. 170 P.S. I forgot to tell you that my ancient aunt Hammond came over to Lynn to see me not from any affection, but curiosity the first thing she said to me, though we have not met these sixteen years was, " Child, you have done a thing to-day, that your father never did in all his life ; you sat as they carried you ; he always stood the whole time." " Madam " said I, " when I am placed in a chair, I conclude I am to sit in it besides, as I cannot imitate my father in great things, I am not at all ambitious of mimicking him in little ones." I am sure she proposes to tell her remark to my uncle Horace's ghost, the instant they meet. Horace Walpole. Robin Hood *^y ^^ "^ "M" O ! those days are gone away, And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years : Many times have winter's shears, Frozen North and chilling East, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forests' whispering fleeces, Since men knew nor rent nor leases. 171 No, the bugle sounds no more, And the twanging bow no more ; Silent is the ivory shrill Past the heath and up the hill ; There is no mid-forest laugh, Where lone Echo gives the half To some wight, amaz'd to hear Jesting, deep in forest drear. On the fairest time in June You may go with sun or moon, Or the seven stars to light you, Or the polar ray to right you ; But you never may behold Little John, or Robin bold ; Never one, of all the clan, Thrumming on an empty can Some old hunting ditty, while He doth his green way beguile To fair hostess merriment, Down beside the pasture Trent ; For he left the merry tale Messenger for spicy ale. Gone, the merry morris din ; Gone, the song of Gamelyn ; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "gren shawe" ; All are gone away and past ! And if Robin could be cast 172 Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze : He would swear ; for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas : She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her strange ! that honey Can't be got without hard money ! So it is : yet let us sing, Honour to the old bow string ! Honour to the bugle-horn ! Honour to the woods unshorn ! Honour to the Lincoln green ! Honour to the archer keen ! Honour to tight little John ! And the horse he rode upon ! Honour to bold Robin Hood, Sleeping in the underwood ! Honour to Maid Marian, And to all the Sherwood-clan ! Though their days have hurried by Let us two a burden try. /. Keats. 173 On the Rhine *y "Cy -Cv (From Lyric Poems) WAIN is the effort to forget, Some day I shall be cold, I know, As is the eternal moon-lit snow Of the high Alps, to which I go : But ah, not yet ! not yet ! Vain is the agony of grief. 'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot Ties straitly up from mine thy lot, And were it snapt thou lov'st me not I But is despair relief? Awhile let me with thought have done ; And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine, And that far purple mountain line, Lie sweetly in the look divine Of the slow sinking sun ; So let me lie, and, calm as they, Let beam upon my inward view Those eyes of deep soft lucent hue Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be grey. Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm ! Those blue hills too, this river's flow, Were restless once, but long ago. Tam'd is their turbulent youthful glow : Their joy is in their calm. M. Arnold. 174 (From Echoes) f~\ HAVE you blessed, behind the stars, ^^^ The blue sheen in the skies, When June the roses round her calls ? Then do you know the light that falls From her beloved eyes. And have you felt the sense of peace That morning meadows give ? Then do you know the spirit of grace, The angel abiding in her face, Who makes it good to live. She shines before me, hope and dream, So fair, so still, so wise, That winning her, I seem to win Out of the dust and drive and din A nook of Paradise. W. E. Henley. Heraclitus * ^ ^> *s> (From lonica) HP HEY told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. 175 And now that them art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake ; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. W. Cory. (From Hydriotaphid] / T^O be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan ; disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrate's patients, or Achilles's horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the entelechia and soul of our subsistencies ? To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history. The Canaan- itish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief than Pilate ? But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids ? Hero- stratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the 176 epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time ? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methusaleth's long life had been his only chronicle. Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox ? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die ; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes ; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration ; diuturnity is a drearn and folly of expectation. N 177 Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings : we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or them- selves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities : miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repeti- tions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls a good way to continue their memories, while, having advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were con- tent to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the common souls of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now con- sumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon : men have been deceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmogony of that part hath already varied the names of continued constellations ; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth : durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts ; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's favour, would make clear conviction. There is nothing strictly immortal but immor- tality. Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end ; which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of itself: all others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our ressurection, either of our bodies 179 or names, hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustra- tion : and to hold long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infimy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus ; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn. Sir T. Browne. Iseult of Ireland * *o O (From Narrative Poems} Tristan. "D AISE the light, my page ! that 1 may see XV her, Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen ! Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever : Late thou comest, cruel thou hast been. 180 Iseult. Blame me not, poor sufferer ! that I tarried : I was bound, I could not break the band. Chide not with the past, but feel the present ! I am here we meet I hold thy hand. Tristan. Thou art come indeed thou hast rejoin'd me ; Thou hast dar'd it but too late to save. Fear not now that men should tax thy honour ! I am dying : build thou may'st my grave. Iseult. Tristan, for the love of Heaven speak kindly ! What, I hear these bitter words from thee ? Sick with grief I am, and faint with travel Take my hand dear Tristan look on me ! Tristan. I forgot, thou comest from thy voyage Yes, the spray is on thy cloak and hair. But thy dark eyes are not dimm'd, proud Iseult ! And thy beauty never was more fair. Iseult. Ah, harsh flatterer ! let alone my beauty ! I, like thee, have left my youth afar. Take my hand, and touch these wasted fingers See my cheek and lips, how white they are ! Tristan. Thou art paler but thy sweet charm, Iseult ! Would not fade with the dull years away. Ah, how fair thou standest in the moonlight ! I forgive thee Iseult ! thou wilt stay ? 181 Iseult. Fear me not, I will be always with thee ; I will watch thee, tend thee, soothe thy pain ; Sing thee tales of true, long-parted lovers, Joined at evening of their days again. Tristan. No, thou shalt not speak ! I should be finding Something alter'd in thy courtly tone. Sit sit by me ! I will think we've liv'd so In the green woods, all our lives, alone. Iseult. Alter'd, Tristan ? Not in courts, believe me, Love like mine is alter'd in the breast ; Courtly life is light and cannot reach it Ah ! it lives, because so deep suppress'd ! Royal state with Marc, my deep-wronged hus- band That was bliss to make my sorrows flee ! Silken courtiers whispering honied nothings Those were friends to make me false to thee ! What, thou think'st men speak in courtly chambers Words by which the wretched are consoPd ? What, thou think'st this aching brow was cooler, Circled, Tristan, by a band of gold ? Ah, on which, if both our lots were balanc'd, Was indeed the heaviest burden thrown Thee, a weeping exile in thy forest, Me, a smiling queen upon my throne ? 182 Vain and strange debate, where both have suflfer'd, Both have pass'd a youth constrained and sad, Both have brought their anxious day to evening, And have now short space for being glad ! Join'd we are henceforth ; nor will thy people, Nor thy younger Iseult take it ill That a former rival shares her office, When she sees her humbled, pale, and still. I, a faded watcher by thy pillow, I, a statue on thy chapel floor, Pour'd in grief before the Virgin-Mother, Rouse no anger, make no rivals more. She will cry : " Is this the foe I dreaded ? This his idol ? this his royal bride ? Ah, an hour of health would purge his eyesight I Stay, pale queen ! for ever by my side." Hush, no words ! that smile, I see, forgives me. I am now thy nurse, I bid thee sleep. Close thine eyes this flooding moonlight blinds them ! Nay, all's well again ! thou must not weep. Tristan. I am happy ! yet I feel, there's something Swells my heart, and takes my breath away. Through a mist I see thee : near come nearer 1 Bend bend down ! I yet have much to say. 183 Iseult. Heaven ! his head sinks back upon the pillow Tristan ! Tristan ! let thy heart not fail ! Call on God and on the holy angels ! What, love, courage? Christ ! he is so pale. Tristan. Hush, 'tis vain, I feel my end approaching ! This is what my mother said should be, When the fierce pains took her in the forest, The deep draughts of death in bearing me. " Son," she said, " thy name shall be of sorrow ; Tristan art thou called for my death's sake." So she said, and died in the drear forest. Grief since then his home with me doth make. I am dying. Start not, nor look wildly ! Me, thy living friend, thou canst not save. But since living we were ununited, Go not far, O Iseult ! from my grave. Rise, go hence and seek the princess Iseult : Speak her fair, she is of royal blood ! Say, I charg'd her that ye live together She will grant it she is kind and good. Now to sail the seas of death I leave thee One last kiss upon the living shore ! 184 Iseult. Tristan ! Tristan ! stay receive me with thee ! Iseult leaves thee, Tristan ! never more. You see them clear the moon shines bright. Slow, slow, and softly, where she stood, She sinks upon the ground ; her hood Had fallen back ; her arms outspread Still hold her lover's hands ; her head Is bow'd, half-buried, on the bed. O'er the blanch'd sheet her raven hair Lies in disorder'd streams : and there, Strung like white stars, the pearls still are, And the golden bracelets, heavy and rare, Flash on her white arms still. The very same which yesternight Flash'd in the silver sconce's light, When the feast was gay and the laughter loud In Tyntagel's palace proud. But then they deck'd a restless ghost With hot-flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes, And quivering lips on which the tide Of courtly speech abruptly died, And a glance which over the crowded floor, The dancers and the festive host Flew ever to the door, That the knights eyed her in surprise, And the dames whisper'd scoffingly : " Her moods," good lack, they pass like showers 1 185 But yesternight and she would be As pale and still as wither'd flowers, And now to-night she laughs and speaks And has a colour in her cheeks : Christ keep us from such fantasy ! " The air of the December night Steals coldly around the chamber bright, Where those lifeless lovers be ; Swinging with it, in the light Flaps the ghostlike tapestry. And on the arras wrought you see A Stately Huntsman, clad in green, And round him a fresh forest scene. On that clear forest-knoll he stays, With his pack round him, and delays. He stares and stares, with troubled face, At this huge gleam-lit fireplace, At that bright iron figur'd door, And those blown rushes on the floor. He gazes down into the room With heated cheeks and flurried air, And to himself he seems to say " What place is this, and who are they f Who is that kneeling lady fair ? And on his pillows that pale knight Who seems of marble on a tomb f How comes it here, this chamber bright, Through whose mulliorfd windows clear The castle-court all wet with rain, The drawbridge and the moat appear 186 And then the beach, and, marked with spray, The sunken reefs, and far away The unquiet bright Atlantic plain ? What, has some glamour made me sleep, And sent me with my dogs to sweep, By night, with boisterous bugle-peal, Through some old sea-side knightly hall, Not in the free greenwood at all ? That knight's asleep, and at her prayer That Lady by the bed doth kneel Then hush, thou boisterous bugle-peal /" The wild boar rustles in his lair : The fierce hounds snuff the tainted air ; But lord and hounds keep rooted there. Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O Hunter ! and without a fear Thy golden-tasselled bugle blow, And through the glades thy pastime take For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here ! For these thou seest are unmoved ; Cold, cold as those who liv'd and lov'd A thousand years ago. Matthew Arnold. A Song ^> *^> ^> ^> (From lonica) /^\H, earlier shall the rosebuds blow, In after years, those happier years, And childen weep, when we lie low, Far fewer tears, far softer tears. Oh, true shall boyish laughter ring, Like tinkling chimes in kinder times I And merrier shall the maiden sing : And I not there, and I not there. Like lightning in the summer night Their mirth shall be, so quick and free ; And oh I the flash of their delight I shall not see, I may not see. In deeper dream, with wider range, Those eyes shall shine, but not on mine Unmoved, unblest, by worldly change, The dead must rest, the dead shall rest. W. Cory. (From Hawthorn and Lavender] HTHE downs like uplands in Eden Gleam in an afterglow Like a rose-world ruining earthwards Mystical, wistful, slow ! Near and afar in the leafage, That glad last call to the nest ! And the thought of you hangs and triumphs With Hesper low in the west ! Till the song and the light and the colour, The passion of earth and sky, Are blent in a rapture of boding Of the death we should one day die. W. E. Henley. 188 The Message o <^ <^ OEND back my long-stray'd eyes to me, ^ Which O ! too long have dwelt on thee : But if from you they've learnt such ill, To sweetly smile, And then beguile, Keep the deceivers, keep them still. Send home my harmless heart again, Which no unworthy thought could stain ; But if it has been taught by thine To forfeit both Its word and oath, Keep it, for then 'tis none of mine. Yet send me back my heart and eyes, For I'll know all thy falsities ; That I one day may laugh, when thou Shalt grieve and mourn Of one the scorn, Who proves as false as thou art now. John Donne. Will. Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue < (From Early Poems] /^V PLUMP head-waiter at the Cock, ^^ To which I most resort, How goes the time ? 'Tis five o'clock. Go fetch a pint of port : 189 But let it not be such as that You set before chance comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers. No vain libation of the Muse, But may she still be kind, And whisper lovely words, and use Her influence on the mind, To make me write my random rhymes, Ere they be half forgotten ; Nor add and alter, many times Till all be ripe and rotten. I pledge her, and she comes and dips Her laurel in the wine, And lays it thrice upon my lips, Those favoured lips of mine ; Until the charm have power to make New life blood warm the bosom. And barren commonplaces break In full and kindly blossom. I pledge her silent at the board ; Her gradual fingers steal And touch upxm the master chord Of all I felt and feel. Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble ; And that child's heart within the man's Begins to move and tremble. 190 Thro' many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Against its fountain upward runs The current of my days : I kiss the lips I once have kissed ; The gas-light wavers dimmer ; And softly, through a vinous mist, My college friendships glimmer. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men Who hold their hands to all and cry For that which all deny them Who sweep the crossings wet or dry, And all the world go by them. Ah yet, tho' all the world forsake, Tho' fortune clip my wings, I will not cramp my heart, nor take Half views of men and things. Let Whig and Tory stir their blood ; There must be stormy weather ; But for some true result of good All parties work together. Let there be thistles, there are grapes ; If old things, there are new ; Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, Yet glimpses of the true. 191 Let raffs be ripe in prose and rhyme, We lack not rhymes and reasons, As on this whirligig of Time We circle with the seasons. The earth is rich in man and maid j With fair horizons bound : This whole wide earth of light and shade Comes out, a perfect round. High over soaring Temple-bar, And set in Heaven's third story, I look at all things as they are, But thro' a kind of glory. * * * * * Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest Half-mused, or reeling ripe, The pint you gave me was the best That ever came from pipe. But tho' the port surpasses praise, My nerves have dealt with stifFer. Is there some magic in the place ? Or do my peptics differ ? For since I came to live and learn, No pint of white or red Had ever half the power to turn This wheel within my head, Which bears a season'd brain about, Unsubject to confusion, Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out, Thro' every convolution. 192 For I am of a numerous house, With many kinsmen gay, Where long and largely we carouse As who shall say me nay : Each month a birthday coming on, We drink defying trouble, Or sometimes two would meet in one, And then we drank it double. Whether the vintage, yet unkept, Had relish fiery-new, Or, elbow deep in sawdust, slept, As old as Waterloo ; Or stow'd, when classic Canning died, In musty bins and chambers, Had cast upon its crusty side The gloom of ten Decembers. The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is ! She answer'd to my call, She changes with that mood or this, Is all-in-all to all : She lit the spark within my throat, To make my blood run quicker, Used all her fiery will, and smote Her life into the liquor. And hence this halo lives about The waiter's hands, that reach To each his perfect pint of stout, His proper chop to each. O 193 He looks not like the common breed That with the napkin dally ; I think he came like Ganymede, From some delightful valley. The Cock was of a larger egg Than modern poultry drop. Stept forward on a firmer leg, And cramm'd a plumper crop ; Upon an ampler dunghill trod, Crow'd lustier late and early, Sipt wine from silver, praising God, And raked in golden barley. A private life was all his joy, Till in a court he saw A something-pottle-bodied boy That knuckled at the taw ; He stoop'd and clutch'd him, fair and good, Flew over roof and casement : His brothers of the weather stood Stock-still for sheer amazement. But he, by farmstead, thorpe and spire, And followed with acclaims, A sign to many a staring shire Came crowing over Thames. Right down by smoky Paul's they bore, Till, where the street grew straiter, One fix'd for ever at the door, And one became head waiter. ***** 194 But whither would my fancy go ; How out of place she makes The violet of a legend blow Amongst the chops and steaks ! 'Tis but a steward of the can, One shade more plump than common ; As just and mere a serving-man As any born of woman. I ranged too high : what draws me down Into the common day ? Is it the weight of that half-crown, Which I shall have to pay ? For, something duller that at first, Nor wholly comfortable, I sit, my empty glass reversed, And thrumming on the table. Half fearful that, with self at strife, I take myself to task ; Lest of the fullness of my life I leave an empty flask : For I had hope, by something rare, To prove myself a poet : But while I plan and plan, my hair Is grey before I know it. So fares it since the years began, Till they be gathered up ; The truth, that flies the flowing can, Will haunt the vacant cup : And others' follies teach us not, Nor much their wisdom teaches ; And most, of sterling worth, is what Our own experience preaches. Ah, let the rusty theme alone ! We know not what we know, But for my pleasant hour, 'tis gone : 'Tis gone, and let it go. Tis gone : a thousand such have slipt Away from my embraces, And fallen into dusty crypt Of darken'd forms and faces. Go, therefore, thou ! thy betters went Long since, and came no more ; With peals of genial clamour sent From many a tavern door, With twisted quirks and happy hits, From misty men of letters ; The tavern-hours of mighty wits Thine elders and thy betters. Hours when the Poet's words and looks Had yet their native glow : Nor yet the fear of little books Had made them talk for show ; But all his vast heart sherris-warm'd, He flashed his random speeches, Ere days, that deal in ana, swarm'd His literary leeches. 196 So mix for ever with the past, Like all good things on earth ! For should I prize thee, couldst thou last, At half thy real worth ? I hold it good, good things should pass : With time I will not quarrel : It is but yonder empty glass That makes me maudlin-moral. Head-waiter of the chop house here, To which I most resort, I too must part : I hold thee dear For this good pint of port. For this thou shalt from all things suck Marrow of mirth and laughter ; And where so'er thou move, good luck Shall fling her old shoe after. But thou wilt never move from hence, The sphere thy fate allots : Thy latter days, increased with pence Go down amongst the pots : Thou battenest by the greasy gleam In haunts of hungry sinners, Old boxes, larded with the steam Of thirty thousand dinners. We fret, we fume, would shift our skins, Would quarrel with our lot ; Thy care is under polished tins, To serve the hot-and-hot ; 197 To come and go, and come again, Returning like the pewit, And watched by silent gentlemen, That trifle with the cruet. Live long, ere from thy topmost head The thick-set hazel dies ; Long, ere the hateful crow shall tread The corners of thine eyes : Live long, nor feel in head or chest Our changeful equinoxes, Till mellow death, like some late guest, Shall call thee from the boxes. But when he calls, and thou shalt cease To pace the gritted floor, And, laying down an unctuous lease Of life, shalt earn no more : No carved cross-bones, the types of Death, Shall show thee past to Heaven ; But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath, A pint pot neatly graven. Lord Tennyson. 198 On Reading Old Books <^y ^> -^v (From the Plain Speaker) T HATE to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring myself to sit down to the "Tales of my Landlord," but now that author's works have made a considerable addition to my scanty library. I am told that some of Lady Mor- gan's are good, and have been recommended to look into " Anastatius," but I have not yet ventured upon that task. A lady, the other day, could not refrain from expressing her surprise to a friend, who said he had been reading "Delphine": she asked, If it had not been published some time back? Women judge of books as they do of fashions, or complexions, which are admired only " in their newest gloss." That is not my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers for mail- coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say that I am greatly addicted to black letter, but I profess myself well versed in the marble bindings of "Andrew Millar" in the middle of the last century : nor does my taste revolt at "Thurloe's State Papers," in Russia leather, or an ample impression of " Sir William Temple's Essays," with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller 199 in front. I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers may generally be divided into two classes ones friends or ones foes. Of the first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge fairly of the merits of either. One candidate for literary fame, who happens to be of our acquaintance, writes finely, and like a man of genius : but unfortunately has a foolish face, which spoils a delicate passage ; another inspires us with the highest respect for his personal talents and character, but does not quite come up to our expectations in print. All these contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm current of our reflections. If you want to know what any of the authors were who lived before our time, and are still objects of anxious inquiry, you have only to look into their works. But the dust and smoke and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with the pure silent air of immortality. When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish. turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like made dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes and rifaccimentos of what has been served up entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in turning thus to a well-known author, there is not only the assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests dearer, alas ! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations which I had in first reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are landmarks and guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on which we hang up, or from which we can take down at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. 201 They are like Fortunatus' Wishing- Cap they give us the best riches those of Fancy : and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice. My father Shandy solaced himself with Brus- cambille. Give me for this purpose a volume of "Perigrine Pickle" or "Tom Jones." Open either of them anywhere at the memoirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay sometimes the sight of an odd volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among others on the shelves of a library, answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and "sets the puppets dallying." Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am a child again. A sage philosopher (Godwin), who was not a very wise man, said, that he would like very well to be young again, if he could take his ex- perience with him. This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being young is to be without this weight of experience, which he would fain place on the shoulders of youth, and which never comes too late with years. Oh ! what a 202 privilege to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and transport one's-self, by the aid of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when " ignorance was bliss," and when we first got a peep at the raree show of the world, through the glass of fiction gazing at mankind as we do at beasts in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages, or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not touch ! For myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old associa- tions of the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they were in their lifetime the place where I sat to read the volume, the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky return, and all my early impressions with them. This is better to me those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page, are to me better than the wet sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall Street. It is like visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the time "when I was at my father's house, and my path ran down with butter and honey'' when I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no other wish or care but to con my daily task and be happy ! "Tom Jones," I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. It came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket edition, embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read 203 only in school-books, and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the exception of Mrs. Radcliffe's " Romance of the Forest ") : but this had a different relish with it "sweet in the mouth" though not "bitter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in, and in which I was to live and showed me groups, "gay creatures" not "of the element" but of the earth ; not "living in the clouds " but travelling the same road that I did ; some that had passed on before me, and others that might soon overtake me. My heart had palpitated at the thoughts of a boarding-school ball, or gala-day at Midsummer or Christmas ; but the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala- day. The sixpenny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom Jones discovers Square behind the blanket ; or where Parson Adams, in the in- extricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slipslop. Let me caution the reader against this impression of "Joseph Andrews " ; for there is a picture of Fanny in it which he should not set his heart on, lest he should never meet with anything like it ; or if he should, it would, perhaps, be better for him if he had not. It was just like ! With what eagerness I used to look forward to the next number, and open the prints ! Ah ! never again shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which I 204 gazed at the figures, and anticipated the stories and adventures of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Bias and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did they give rise, with what airy delights I filled up the outlines, as I hung in silence over the page ! Let me still recall them, that they may breathe fresh life into me, and that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure over again ! Talk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float on the springtide of human life. Oh ! Memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife, And give those scenes thine everlasting life ! The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling than it was : the reader will, by this time, have been let into my secret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather earlier, I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a high gusto of polemical divinity in them ; and you fancy you hear a club of shoemakers at Salisbury debating a disputable text from one of St. Paul's Epistles in a workman- like style, with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with great 205 ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently entangled in briars and thorns of subtle distinctions, of " fate, free - will, foreknowledge absolute," though I cannot add that "in their wandering mazes I found no end " ; for I did arrive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions : nor will I go so far, however ungrateful the subject may seem, as to exclaim with Marlowe's Faustus " Would I had never seen Wittenburg, never read book," that is, never studied such authors as Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, &c. Locke's " Essay on the Human Understanding" is, however, a work from which I never derived either pleasure or profit ; and Hobbes, dry and powerful as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, which did not much hit my taste, for I would have the reader understand, I am deficient in the faculty of imagination ; but I fell early upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured them tooth and nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the " New Eloise," the description of the kiss ; the excursion on the water ; the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first loves : and the account of Julia's death ; these I read over and over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years after, when I met with this work again, I found I had lost nearly my whole relish for it (except some few parts) and was, I remember, very much mortified with the change in my taste, which I sought to attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of the edition I had 206 bought, and its being perfumed with rose-leaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, the solemnity with which I carried home and read the "Dedica- tion of the Social Contract," with some other pieces of the same author, which I picked up at a stall in a coarse leathern cover. Of the Con- fessions I have spoken elsewhere, and may repeat what I have said " Sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleasant the balm of their recollec- tion." Their beauties are not " scattered like stray- gifts o'er the earth," but sown thick on the page, rich and rare. I wish I had never read the "Emilius," or read it with less implicit faith. I had no occasion to pamper my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, by romantic and artificial means. I had better have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class of persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, and are concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and reserve ; and such a one I do, without vanity, profess myself. Now these are the very persons who are likely to attach themselves to the character of Emilius, and to whom it is sure to be the bane. This dull, phlegmatic, retiring humour is not in a fair way to be corrected, but confirmed and rendered desperate, by being in that work held up as an object of imitation, as an example of simplicity and magnanimity by coming upon us with all the recommendations of novelty, surprise, and superi- ority to the prejudices of the world by being 207 stuck upon a pedestal, made amiable, dazzling, a leurre de dupe! The reliance on solid worth which it inculcates, the preference of sober truth to gaudy tinsel, hangs like a mill-stone round the necks of imagination "a load to sink a navy" impedes our progress, and blocks up every prospect in life. A man, to get on, to be successful, conspicuous, applauded, should not retire upon the centre of his conscious resources, but be always at the circumference of appearances. He must envelope himself in a halo of mystery he must walk with a train of self-conceit following him he must not strip himself to a buff jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac he must seem any- thing but what he is, and then he may pass for anything he pleases. The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of halluci- nation ; and can forgive everything but the plain, simple, downright honest truth such as we see it chalked out in the character of Emilius. To return from this digression, which is a little out of place here. Books have in a great measure lost their power over me : nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. I perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true " Marcian Colonna " is a dainty book 208 and the reading of Mr. Keats' "Eve of Saint Agnes " lately made one regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, "come like shadows so de- part." The "tiger-moth's wings" which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy ; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over and over again in his verse, to me " blushes " almost in vain " with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should have felt at one time in reading such passages ; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine aroma is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left. If anyone were to ask me what I read now, I might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play "Words, words, words." "What is the matter ? " " Nothing ! "They have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. There was a time when to my thinking, every word was a flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from the mouth of the little peasant-girl in the fairy-tale, or like those which fall from the great preacher in the Caledonian Chapel. I drank of the stream of knowledge that tempted, but did not mock my lips, as of the river of life, freely. How eagerly I slaked my thirst of German sentiment, "as the hart that panteth for the water-springs " ; how I bathed and revelled, and added my floods of tear to Goethe's "Sorrows of Werter," and to " Schiller's "Robbers" Giving my stock of more to that which had too much ! P 209 I read, and attended with all my mind to Cole- ridge's fine Sonnet, beginning Schiller ! that hour I would have wished to die, If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time-rent, That fearful voice, a famish' d father's cry ! I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of poetry from the commencement of my acquaintance with the authors of the " Lyrical Ballads " ; at least my discriminaton of the higher sorts not my predilection for such writers as Goldsmith or Pope : nor do I imagine they will say I got my liking for the Novelists, or the comic writers, for the character of Valentine, Tattle, or Miss Prue from them. If so, I must have got from them what they never had them- selves. In points where poetic diction and con- ception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and liable to be imposed upon : but in forming an estimate of passages relating to common life and manners, I cannot think I am a plagiarist from any man. I there "know my cue without a prompter." I may say of such studies Intus et in cute. I am just able to admire those literal touches of observation and description, which per- sons of loftier pretensions overlook and despise. I think I comprehend something of the character- istic part of Shakspere ; and in him, indeed, all is characteristic, even the nonsense and poetry. I believe it was the celebrated Sir Humphry Davy 210 who used to say, that Shakspere was rather a meta- physician than a poet. At any rate, it was not ill said. I wish that I had sooner known the dra- matic writers contemporary with Shakspere ; for in looking them over about a year ago, I almost revived my old passion for reading, and my delight in old books, though they were very nearly new to me. The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The Spectator I liked extremely, but the Tatler took my fancy most. I read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, the World, the Connoisseur ; I was not sorry to get to the end of them, and have no desire to go regularly through them again. I consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. I like the longest of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious : nor should I ask to have anything better to do than to read them from beginning to end, to take them up when I choose, and lay them down when I was tired, in some old family mansion in the country, till every word and every syllable relating to the bright Clarissa, the divine Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, " with every trick and line of their sweet favour," were once more "graven in my heart's table." I have a sneaking kindness for Mackenzie's " Julia de Rou- bigne*" for the deserted mansion, and straggling gilliflowers on the mouldering garden wall ; and still more for his " Man of Feeling " ; not that it is better, nor so good ; but at the time I read it I sometimes thought of the heroine, Miss Walton, 211 and Miss Railton together, and "that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken." One of the poets that I have always read with most pleasure, and can wander about in for ever with a sort of voluptuous indolence is Spenser ; and I like Chaucer even better. The only writer among the Italians I can pretend to any knowledge of is Boccaccio, and of him I cannot express half my admiration. His story of the Hawk I could read and think of from day to day, just as I would look at a picture of Titian's ! I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the plot of his " Recruiting Officer") and bringing home with me, "at one proud swoop," a copy of Milton's " Paradise Lost," and another of Burke's " Reflections on the French Revolution " both of which I have still ; and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the pleasure with which I dipped into them as I returned with my double prize. I was set up for one while. That time is past, " with all its giddy raptures " : but I am still anxious to preserve its memory, "embalmed with odours." With respect to the first of these works, I would be permitted to remark here in passing, that it is a sufficient answer to the German criticism which has since been started against the character of Satan (viz. that it is not one of disgusting deformity, or pure, defecated malice) to say that Milton has there drawn, not the abstract principle of evil, not a devil 212 incarnate, but a fallen angel. This is the scriptural account, and the poet has followed it. We may safely retain such passages as that well-known one His form had not yet lost All her original brightness : nor appeared Less than archangel ruin'd : and the excess Of glory obscur'd for the theory, which is opposed to them "falls flat upon the grunsel edge, and shames its wor- shippers." Let us hear no more then of this monkish cant, and bigoted outcry for the restora- tion of the horns and tail of the devil ! Again as to the other work, Burke's "Reflections," I took a particular pride and pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this author. To understand an adversary is some praise : to admire him is more. I thought I did both : I knew I did one : From the first time I ever cast my eyes on anything of Burke's I said to myself, " This is true eloquence : this is a man pouring out his mind on paper." All other style seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts ; and even Junius's (who was at that time a favourite with me) with all his terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic points and well trimmed sentences. But Burke's style was forked and playful as the lightning, crested like the ser- pent. He delivered plain things on a plain ground ; but when he rose, there was no end of his flights 213 and circumgyrations and in this Letter to a Noble Lord " he like an eagle in a dove-cot, fluttered his Volscians" (The Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale) "in Corioli." I did not care for his doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof against their contagion ; but I admired the author, and was considered as not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing a masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I con- ceived too that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. I remember Coleridge assur- ing me, as a poetical set off to my sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth had written an Essay on Marriage, which, for manly thought and nervous expression, he deemed incomparably superior. As I had not, at that time, seen any specimens of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could not express my doubts on the subject. If there are greater prose writers than Burke, they either lie out of my course of study, or are beyond my sphere of compre- hension. I am too old to be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches are occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admiration of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence : when I regarded the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of one who is dumb and a changeling : and when, to be able to 214 convey the slightest conception of my meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hope- less ambition ! But I never measured others 1 excellencies by my own defects : though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the steep impassable ascent from me to them, made me regard them with greater awe and fondness. I have thus run through most of my early studies and favourite authors, some of whom I have since criticised more at large. Whether those observations will survive me, I neither know, nor do I much care : but to the works themselves, " worthy of all acceptation,' 1 and to the feelings they have always excited in me, since I could distinguish a meaning in language, nothing shall ever prevent me from looking back with gratitude and triumph. To have lived in the cultivation of an intimacy with such works, and to have familiarly relished such names, is not to have lived quite in vain. W. Hazlitt. A Mind Content -^y ^> ^> (From The Farewell to Folly] C WEET are the thoughts that savour of content ; The quiet mind is richer than a crown * Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent ; The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown : Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss, Beggars enjoy when princes oft do miss. 215 The homely house that harbours quiet rest ; The cottage that affords no pride nor care ; The mean that 'grees with country music best : The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare : Obscured life sets down a type of bliss : A mind content both crown and kingdom is. jR. Greene. An Invocation <^ ^> <^ (From lonica) T NEVER prayed for Dryads, to haunt the woods again ; More welcome were the presence of hungering thirsting men, Whose doubts we could unravel, whose hopes we could fulfil, Our wisdom tracing backward, the river to the rill ; Were such beloved forerunners one summer day restored, Then, then we might discover the Muse's mystic hoard. O dear divine Comatas, I would that thou and I Beneath this broken sunlight this leisure day might lie ; Where trees from distant forests, whose names were strange to thee, Should bend their amorous branches within thy reach to be, 216 And flowers thy Hellas knew not, which art hath made more fair, Should shed their shining petals upon thy fragrant hair. Then thou shouldst calmly listen with ever chang- ing looks To songs of younger minstrels and plots of modern books And wonder at the daring of poets later born, Whose thoughts are unto thy thoughts as noon- tide is to morn ; And little shouldst thou grudge them their greater strength of soul, Thy partners in the torch race though nearer to the goal. As when ancestral portraits look gravely from the walls Upon the youthful baron who treads their echoing halls ; And whilst he builds new turrets, the thrice en- nobled heir Would gladly wake his grandsire his home and feast to share ; So from /Egean laurels that hide thine ancient urn I fain would call thee hither, my sweeter lore to learn. Or in thy cedarn prison thou waitest for the bee : Ah, leave that simple honey, and take thy food from me. 217 My sun is stooping westward. Entranced dreamer haste : There's fruitage in my garden, that I would have thee taste. Now lift the lid a moment ; now, Dorian shepherd, speak : Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek. W. Cory. The Philosopher to his Mistress (From Shorter Poems] "DECAUSE thou canst not see, Because thou canst not know, The black and hopeless woe That hath encompassed me : Because, should I confess The thought of my despair, My words would wound thee less Than swords can hurt the air : Because with thee I seem As one invited near To taste the faery cheer Of spirits in a dream ; Of whom he knoweth nought Save that they vie to make All motion, voice and thought A pleasure for his sake : 218 Therefore more sweet and strange Has been the mystery Of thy long love to me, That doth not quit nor change, Nor tax my solemn heart, That kisseth in a gloom, Knowing not who thou art That givest, nor to whom. Therefore the tender touch Is more : more dear the smile : And thy light words beguile My wisdom overmuch : And O with swiftness fly The fancies of my song To happy worlds where I Still in thy love belong. /?. Bridges. Longing Cy "^> *y "v^x (From Lyric Poems) /^OME to me in my dreams, and then, By day I shall be well again ! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, A messenger from radiant climes, And smile on thy new world, and be As kind to others as to me ! 219 Or as thou never cam'st in sooth, Come now, and let me dream it truth ; And part my hair and kiss my brow, And say My love ! why sufferest thou ? Come to me in my dreams and then By day I shall be well again I For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. M. Arnold. The Red Fisherman *y *y '"PHE Abbot arose, and closed his book, And donned his sandal shoon, And wandered forth alone to look Upon the summer moon : A starlight sky was o'er his head, A quiet breeze around ; And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed, And the waves a soothing sound ; It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught But love and calm delight ; Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought On his wrinkled brow that night. He gazed on the river that gurgled by, But he thought not of the reeds ; He clasped his gilded rosary, But he did not tell the beads : 220 If he looked to Heaven, 'twas not to invoke The Spirit that dwelleth there : If he opened his lips, the words they spoke Had never the tone of prayer. A pious priest might the Abbot seem, He had swayed the crosier well ; But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream, The Abbot were loth to tell. Companion-less for a mile or more, He traced the windings of the shore. Oh, beauteous is that river still, As it winds by many a sloping hill, And many a dim o'erarching grove, And many a flat and sunny cove, And terraced lawns whose bright arcades The honey-suckle sweetly shades, And rocks whose very crags seem bowers, So gay they are with grass and flowers. But the Abbot was thinking of scenery, About as much, in sooth, As a lover thinks of constancy, Or an advocate of truth. He did not mark how the skies in wrath Grew dark above his head ; He did not mark how the mossy path Grew damp beneath his tread ; And nearer he came, and still more near, To a pool, in whose recess The water had slept for many a year, Unchanged and motionless ; From the river stream it sped away, The space of half a rood ; The surface had the hue of clay, And the scent of human blood : The trees and herbs that round it grew Were venomous and foul ; And the birds that through the bushes flew Were the vulture and the owl : The water was dark and rank As ever a company pumped ; And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank Grew rotten while it jumped : And bold was he who thither came At midnight, man or boy ; For the place was cursed with an evil name, And that name was " The Devil's Decoy ! " The Abbot was weary as Abbot could be, And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree ; When suddenly rose a dismal tone Was it a song or was it a moan ? " Oh, ho ! Oh, ho ! Above, below, Lightly and brightly they glide and go : The hungry and keen to the top are leaping, The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping : Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy, Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy ! " In a monstrous fright, by the murky light, He looked to the left and he looked to the right, 222 And what was the vision close before him That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him ? 'Twas a sight to make his hair uprise, And the life blood colder run : The startled Priest struck both his thighs, And the Abbey clock struck one. All alone, by the side of the pool, A tall man sat on a three-legged stool, Kicking his heels in the dewy sod, And putting in order his reel and rod. Red were the rags his shoulders wore, And a high red cap on his head he bore ; His arms and his legs were long and bare ; And two or three locks of long red hair Were tossing about his scraggy neck, Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck. It might be time or it might be trouble, Had bent that stout back nearly double : Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets That blazing couple of Congreve rockets : And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin Till it hardly covered the bones within. The line the Abbot saw him throw Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago : And the hands that worked his foreign nest, Long ages ago had gone to their rest : You would have sworn, as you looked on them, He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem ! There was turning of keys and creaking of locks As he took forth a bait from his iron box. 223 Minnow or gentle, worm or fly It seemed not such to the Abbot's eye : Gaily it glittered with jewel and gem, And its shape was the shape of a diadem. It was fastened a gleaming hook about, By a chain within, and a chain without ; The Fisherman gave it a kick and a spin, And the water fizzed as it tumbled in. From the bowels of the earth, Strange and varied sounds had birth : Now the battle's bursting peal, Neigh of steed, and clang of steel : Now an old man's hollow groan Echoed from the dungeon stone : Now the weak and wailing cry Of a stripling's agony. Cold by this, was the midnight air ; But the Abbot's blood ran colder, When he saw a gasping knight lie there, With a gash beneath his clotted hair, And a hump upon his shoulder. And the loyal churchman strove in vain To mutter a paternoster : For he who writhed in mortal pain, Was camped that night on Bosworth plain, The cruel Duke of Glo'ster ! There was turning of keys and creaking of locks As he took forth a bait from his iron box. 224 It was a haunch of princely size, Filling with fragrance earth and skies. The corpulent Abbot knew full well The swelling form and the steaming smell ; Never a monk that wore a hood Could better have guessed the very wood Where the noble hart had stood at bay, Weary and wounded at close of day. Sounded then the noisy glee, Of a revelling company ; Sprightly story, wicked jest, Rated servant, greeted guest, Flow of wine and flight of cork, Stroke of knife and thrust of fork : But where'er the board was spread, Grace I ween was never said ! Pulling and tugging, the Fisherman sate ; And the Priest was ready to vomit, When he hauled out a gentleman, fine and fat, With a belly as big as a brimming vat, And a nose as red as a comet. (< A capital stew )? the Fisherman said, " With cinnamon and sherry ! " And the Abbot turned away his head, For his brother was lying before him dead, The Mayor of St. Edmund's Bury ! There was turning of keys and creaking of locks As he took forth a bait from his iron box. Q 225 It was a bundle of beautiful things, A peacock's tail, and a butterfly's wings, A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl, A mantle of silk, and a bracelet of pearl, And a packet of letters from whose sweet fold Such a stream of delicate odours rolled, That the Abbot fell on his face and fainted, And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted. Sounds seemed dropping from the skies, Stifled whispers, smothered sighs. And the breath of vernal gales, And the voice of nightingales : But the nightingales were mute, Envious, when an unseen lute Tuned the music of its chords Into passion's thrilling words. " Smile, lady, smile ! I will not set Upon thy brow the coronet, Till thou wilt gather roses white, To wear around its gems of light. Smile, lady, smile ! I will not see Rivers and Hastings bend the knee, Till those bewitching lips of thine Will bid me rise in bliss from mine. Smile, lady, smile ! for who would win A loveless throne through guilt and sin ? Or who would reign o'er vale and hill, If woman's heart were rebel still ?" 226 One jerk, and there a lady lay, A lady wondrous fair ; But the rose of her lip had faded away, And her cheek was as white and cold as clay, And torn was her raven hair. " Ah, ah," said the Fisher, in merry guise, " Her gallant was hooked before " ; And the Abbot heaved some piteous sighs, For oft he had bless'd those deep blue eyes, The eyes of Mistress Shore. There was turning of keys and creaking of locks As he took forth a bait from his iron box. Many the cunning sportsman tried, Many with a frown he flung aside : A minstrel's harp, and a miser's chest, A hermit's cowl, and a baron's crest, Jewels of lustre, robes of price, Tomes of heresy, loaded dice, And golden cups of the brightest wine That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine. There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre, As he came at last to a bishop's mitre ! From top to toe the Abbot shook As the Fisherman armed his golden hook ; And awfully were his features wrought By some dark dream or wakened thought. Look how the fearful felon gazes On the scaffold his country's vengeance raises, When the lips are cracked, and the jaws are dry, With the thirst that only in death shall die : 227 Mark the mariner's frenzied frown, As the swaling wherry settles down, When peril has numbed the sense and will, Though the hand and the foot may struggle still : Wilder far was the Abbot's glance, Deeper far was the Abbot's trance : Fixed as a monument, still as air, He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer ; But he signed he knew not why or how, The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow. There was turning of keys and creaking of locks As he stalked away with his iron box. Oh ho! Oh ho! The cock doth crow ; It is time for the Fisher to rise and go. Fair luck to the Abbot, fair luck to the shrine ; He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line ; Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south, The Abbot will carry my hook in his mouth. The Abbot had preached for many years, With as clear articulation As ever was heard in the House of Peers Against emancipation : His words had made battalions quake, Had roused the zeal of martyrs ; Had kept the court an hour awake And the king himself three quarters : 228 But ever, from that hour, 'tis said, He stammered and he stuttered As if an axe went through his head, With every word he uttered. He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban, He stuttered, drunk or dry, And none but he and the Fisherman Could tell the reason why ! W. M. Pracd. (From Echoes) C\& ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon And you were a Christian slave. I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride ; You loved me well, or I heard them lie, But your longing was denied. Surely I knew that by and by You cursed your gods and died. And a myriad suns have set and shone Since then upon the grave Decreed by the King in Babylon To her that had been his slave. 229 The pride I trampled is now my scathe, For it tramples me again. The old resentment lasts like death, For you love, yet you refrain. I break my heart on your hard unfaith, And I break my heart in vain. Yet not for an hour do I wish undone The deed beyond the grave, When I was a King in Babylon And you were a virgin slave. W. E. Henley. The Latest Decalogue ^> "O (From Poems on Life and Duty) nTHOU shalt have one God only : who Would be at the expense of two ? No graven images may be Worshipped, except the currency : Swear not at all ; for, for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse : At Church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world thy friend : Honour thy parents ; that is, all From whom advancement may befall : Thou shalt not kill ; but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive : Do not adultery commit ; Advantage rarely comes of it : 230 Thou shalt not steal ; an empty feat When 'tis so lucrative to cheat : Bear not false witness ; let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly : Thou shalt not covet ; but tradition Approves all forms of competition. A. H. Clough. A Leave-taking -o ^> *o (From Poems and Ballads) T ET us go hence, my songs ; she will not hear. Let us go hence together without fear ; Keep silence now, for singing time is over, And over all old things and all things dear. She loves not you nor me as all we love her, Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear She would not hear. Let us rise up and part ; she will not know. Let us go seaward as the great winds go, Full of blown sand and foam : what help is here ? There is no help, for all these things are so, And all the world is bitter as a tear. And how these things are, though ye strove to show, She would not know. Let us go home and hence ; she will not weep. We gave love many dreams and days to keep, 231 Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow, Saying, * If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.' All is reaped now ; no grass is left to mow ; And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep, She would not weep. Let us go hence, and rest ; she will not love. She shall not hear us if we sing hereof, Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep. Come hence, let be, lie still ; it is enough Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep ; And though she saw all heaven in flower above, She would not love. Let us give up, go down ; she will not care. Though all the stars made gold of all the air, And the sea moving saw before it move One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair ; Though all those waves went over us, and drove Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair, She would not care. Let us go hence, go hence ; she will not see. Sing all once more together : surely she, She too, remembering days and words that were, Will turn a little toward us, sighing ; but we, We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there. Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me, She would not see. A. C. Swinburne. 232 An Invective Against Love ^> ^> (From Davidsorfs Poetical Rhapsody) T OVE is a sour delight, a sugared grief, A living death, an ever-dying life, A breach of reason's law, a secret thief, A sea of tears, an everlasting strife : A bait for fools, a scourge of noble wits, A deadly wound, a shot that ever hits. Love is a blinded god, a wayward boy, A labyrinth of doubts, an idle lust ; A slave to beauty's will, a witless toy, A ravenous bird, a tyrant most unjust : A burning heat in frost, a flattering foe, A private hell, a very world of woe. Yet mighty Love regard not what I say, Who in a trance do lie, reft of my wits ; But blame the light that leads me thus astray, And makes my tongue thus rave by frantic fits : Yet hurt me not, lest I sustain the smart, Which am content to lodge her in my heart. T. Watson. 233 WINTER FOR DECLINE LASTLY, cam.? Winter cloathed all in frize, Chattering 1 his teeth for cold that did him chill ; Whil'st on his hoary beard his breath did freese, And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill As from a limbeck did adown distill. In his right hand a tipped staffe he held, With which his feeble steps he stayed still : For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld, That scarse his loosed limbes he hable was to weld. Ed. Spenser. Mutabilitie t Canto vii. Song "^ <^ <^- -^ (From Third Book of Airs, 1617) "M" OW. winter nights enlarge The number of their hours, And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze, And cups o'erflow with wine ; Let well tuned words amaze With harmony divine, Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love, While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep's leaden spells remove. This time doth well dispense With lovers' long discourse ; Much speech hath some defense Though beauty no remorse. All do not all things well : Some measures comely tread, Some knotted riddles tell, Some poems smoothly read. The summer hath its joys And winter his delights ; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, They shorten tedious nights. Thomas Camp on, 237 The Character of a Happy Life <^ (From Poems] TLJ OW happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will ! Whose Armour is his honest thought : And simple Truth his utmost Skill ! Whose Passions not his masters are, Whose soul is still prepar'd for Death ; Untide unto the world, by care Of Publick fame, or private breath. Who envies none that Chance doth raise, Nor Vice hath ever understood : How deepest wounds are giv'n by praise, Nor rules of State, but rules of good. Who hath his life from rumours freed. Whose Conscience is his strong retreat : Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make Oppressors great. Who God doth late and early pray, More of his grace, than gifts to lend : And entertains the harmless day With a Religious Book, or Friend. This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall : Lord of himself, though not of Lands, And having nothing : yet hath all. Sir H. Wotton. 238 Song -Qy ^y O <^> (From Early Poems) A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours *^ Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers : To himself he talks : For at eventide listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks : Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers : Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly ; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger lily. The air is damp and hush'd and close, As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death ; My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly ; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger lily. Lord Tennyson. 239 Youth and Calm <^y ^y "O (From Early Poems) ' n"MS death ! and peace indeed is here, And ease from shame, and rest from fear. There's nothing can dismarble now The smoothness of that limpid brow. But is a calm like this, in truth, The crowning end of life and youth, And when this boon rewards the dead, Are all debts paid, has all been said ? And is the heart of youth so light, Its step so firm, its eyes so bright, Because on its hot brow there blows A wind of promise and repose From the far grave, to which it goes ; Because it hath the hope to come, One day to harbour in the tomb ? Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one For daylight, for the cheerful sun, For feeling nerves and living breath Youth dreams a bliss on this side death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, More grateful than this marble sleep ; It hears a voice within it tell : Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. ; Tis all perhaps which man acquires But 'tis not what our youth desires. M. Arnold. 240 The Rose <^ *^ <^- ^y (From Echoes) r\ GATHER me the rose, the rose, ^^^ While yet in flower we find it, For summer smiles, but summer goes, And winter waits behind it ! For with the dream foregone, foregone, The deed forborne for ever, The worm regret will canker on, And Time will turn him never. So well it were to love, my love, And cheat of any laughter The fate beneath us and above, The dark before and after. The myrtle and the rose, the rose, The sunshine and the swallow, The dream that comes, the wish that goes, The memories that follow. W. E. Henley. (From Early Poems) /^OME not when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou woulds't not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry, But thou, go by. R 241 Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest : Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie, Go by, go by. Lord Tennyson, Advancing Age *cy o ^^x -^ (From Miscellaneous Poems) "D OLL forth my soul like the rushing river, That sweeps along to the mighty sea, God will inspire me while I deliver My soul of thee. Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening Amid the last homes of youth and eld, That there was once one whose veins ran lightning, No eye beheld. Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour, How shone for him through his griefs and gloom No star of all heaven sends to light our Path to the tomb. Roll on my song, and to after ages Tell how, disdaining all earth can give, He would have taught men from wisdom's pages The way to live. And tell how trampled, derided, hated, And worn by weakness, disease and wrong, He fled for shelter to God who mated His soul with song. With song which always, sublime or vapid, Flowed like a rill in the morning beam : Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid, A mountain stream. 246 Tell how this nameless, condemned for years long To herd with demons from Hell beneath, Saw things which made him with groans and tears long For even death. Go on to tell how with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love, With spirit shipwrecked and young hopes blasted, He still, still strove. Till spent with toil, dreeing death for others, And some whose hands should have wrought for him, (If children live not for sires and mothers), His mind grew dim. And he fell far through that pit abysmal, The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns, And pawned his soul for the devil's dismal Stock of returns. But yet redeemed it in days of darkness, And shapes and signs of the final wrath, When death in hideous and ghastly starkness Stood on his path. And tell how now amid wreck and sorrow, And want and sickness and houseless nights, He bides in calmness the silent morrow That no ray lights. 247 And lives he still then ? Yes, old and hoary At thirty-nine, from despair and woe. He lives enduring what future story Will never know. Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble, Deep in your bosoms, there let him dwell, He too had tears for all souls in trouble Here and in Hell. J. C. Mangan. All is Well ^ -<^y <^x (From Ailes d'AIouette) VX7HERE are they hidden all the vanished years? Ah, who can say ! Where is the laughter flown to, and the tears ? Perished ? Ah, nay ! Beauty and strength are born of sun and showers, These too shall surely spring again in flowers. Yet let them sleep, nor seek herein to wed Effect to cause, For Nature's subtlest influences spread By viewless laws. This only seek, that each new year may bring, Born of past griefs and joys, a fairer spring. F. W. Bourdillon. To - *Cy ^> <^y " (From Juvenilia) A LL good things have not kept aloof, Nor wander'd into other ways : I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, Nor golden largess of thy praise. But life is full of weary days. And now shake hands across the brink Of that deep grave to which I go : Shake hands once more : I cannot sink So far far down, but I shall know Thy voice and answer from below. 249 Then in the darkness over me The four-handed mole shall scrape. Plant thou no dusky cypress-tree, Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape, But pledge me in the flowing grape. And when the sappy field and wood Grow green beneath the showery gray, And rugged barks begin to bud, And through damp holts new-flushed with may Ring sudden scritches of the jay, Then let wise Nature work her will, And on my clay her darnel grow ; Come only, when the days are still, And at my headstone whisper low, And tell me if the woodbines blow. Lord Tennyson. Paraphrase of Horace *o -^y (From Book III, Ode 29) IT APPY the man and happy he alone, He who can call To-day his own ; He who secure within can say, To-morrow do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day ; Be fair or foul or rain or shine. The joys I have possess'd in spite of Fate are mine. Not Heaven itself upon the Past has Power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my Hour. 250 Fortune, that with malicious joy, Does Man, her Slave oppress, Proud of her office to destroy, Is seldom pleas'd to bless. Still various, and unconstant still, But with an Inclination to be ill ; Promotes, degrades, delights in Strife, And makes a lottery of Life. I can enjoy her while she's kind ; But when she dances in the Wind, And shakes her wings and will not stay, I puff the Prostitute away : The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned. Content with Poverty, my Soul I arm : And Virtue, tho' in Rags, will keep me warm. J. Drydcn. To R. T. H. B. <^x <^x -^ (From Echoes] /^\UT of the night that covers me, ^^^ Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud ; Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. 251 Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate : I am the captain of my soul. W. . Henley. Content *^> x c> -^ ^> (From Lyrics, Elegies, etc. Ed. : W. Byrcl, 1587) TV/TY mind to me a kingdom is. Such perfect joy therein I find, That it excels all other bliss, That God or Nature hath assigned. Though much I want, that most would have ; Yet still my mind forbids to crave. No princely port, nor wealthy store, No force to win a victory, No wily wit to salve a sore, No shape to win a loving eye : To none of these I yield as thrall. For why ! My mind despise them all. I see that plenty surfeits oft, And hasty climbers soonest fall ; I see that such as are aloft, Mishap doth threaten most of all : These get with toil, and keep with fear. Such cares my mind can never bear. 252 I press to bear no haughty sway, I wish no more than may suffice. I do no more than well I may. Look, what I want, my mind supplies ! So thus I triumph ! like a king : My mind content with anything. I laugh not at another's loss, Nor grudge not at another's gain, No worldly waves my mind can toss, I brook that is another's bane. I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend : I loath not life, nor dread mine end. My wealth is health, and perfect ease ; And conscience clear, my chief defence : I never seek, by bribes to please, Nor by desert, to give offence : Thus do I live ! thus will I die ! Would all did so, as well as I. Sir Edward Dyer (?) Sir Peter ^> *^> -^y *o (From Headlong Hall) T N his last binn Sir Peter lies, Who knew not what it was to frown : Death took him mellow, by surprise, And in his cellar stopp'd him down. Thro' all our land we could not boast A knight more gay, more prompt than he, To rise and fill a bumper toast, And pass it round in three times three. 253 None better knew the feast to sway, Or keep mirth's boat in better trim ; For nature had but little clay Like that of which she moulded him. The meanest guest that graced his board Were there the freest of the free, His bumper toast when Peter pour'd, And pass'd it round with three times three. He kept at true good humour's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide : He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear but when he died. No sorrow round his tomb should dwell : More pleased his gay old ghost would be, For funeral song, and passing bell, To hear no sound but three times three. T. L. Peacock. A Forsaken Garden -Qy ^y (From Poems and Ballads. Second Series) TN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorns encloses The steep square slope of its blossomless bed, Where the weeds that grew green on the graves of its roses Now lie dead. 254 The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless, Through branches and briers if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day. The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain. Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not ; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song, Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long. 2 55 The sun burns sere and the wind dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, " Look thither" Did he whisper ? " Look forth from the flowers to the sea ; For the foam flowers endure when the rose- blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die but we ?" And the same wind sang, and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead. Or they lived their life through, and then went whither ? And were one to the end, but what end who knows ? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thmght for the dead to love them ? 256 What love was ever as deep as a grave ? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave. All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons here- after Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter We shall sleep. Here death may deal not again for ever ; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be : Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea. Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink. S 257 Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead. A. C. Swinburne. Life *^y *v> / Q> ^^ T IKE to the falling of a star, Or as the flights of eagles are, Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, Or silver drops of morning dew, Or like a wind that chafes the flood, Or bubbles which on water stood : E'en such is man, who borrowed light Is straight called in and paid to-night. The wind blows out, the bubble dies ; The spring entombed in autumn lies ; The dew's dried up, the star is shot, The flight is past, the man forgot. Bishop King. Stanzas *^x ^> <^ (From Posthumous Poems'] T N a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity : 258 The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them ; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look : But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah ! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy ! But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy ? To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steal it, Was never said in rhyme. John Keats. Death and Sleep ^> *o> ^y (From Religio Medici] TVT OW for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in. 259 The world that I regard is myself; it is the micro- cosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on : for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude : for I am above Atlas's shoulders. The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me that I have any. I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Though the number of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity within us ; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his intro- duction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man. Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any. " Ruat cesium^ fiat voluntas tua" salveth all ; so that, whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire. In brief, I am content ; and what should Providence add more ? Surely this is it we call happiness, and this do I enjoy ; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy a 260 happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is surely a nearer appre- hension of anything that delights us, in our dreams, than in our waked senses. Without this I were unhappy ; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest ; for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion in both ; and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps ; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason ; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpio. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company ; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my 261 memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I chose for my devotions : but our grosser memories have then so little hold on our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath psssed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not methinks thoroughly defined it : nor yet Galen, though he seems to have corrected it ; for those noctambales and night- walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus, and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk alout in their own corpses, as spirits with bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality. We term sleep a death ; and yet it is waking that kills us, and distroys those spirits that are the house of life. Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth death ; for every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes 262 good the faculties of himself. Themistocles there- fore, that slew his soldier in his sleep, was a merciful executioner, 'tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented ; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily : a death which Adam died before his mortality ; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death. In fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God : The night is come, like to the day ; Depart not thou, great God, away. Let not my sins, black as the night, Eclipse the lustre of thy light. Keep still in my horizon ; for to me The sun makes not the day, but thee. Thou whose nature cannot sleep, On my temples sentry keep ; Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes, Whose eyes are open while mine close. Let no dreams my head infest, But such as Jacob's temples blest. While I do rest, my soul advance : Make my sleep a holy trance : That I may, my rest being wrought, Awake into some holy thought, And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble sun. Sleep is a death : O make me try, By sleeping, what it is to die ! 263 And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed. Howe'er I rest, great God, let me Awake again at last with thee. And thus assured, behold I lie Securely, or to wake or die. These are my drowsy days ; in vain I do now wake to sleep again : Oh come that hour, when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever ! This is the dormitive I take to bedward ; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep ; after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection. Sir T. Browne. The Dying Man in his Garden -^y "\ 1 7HY Damon with the forward day Dost thou thy little spot survey, From tree to tree with doubtful cheer, Pursue the progress of the year, What winds arise, what rains descend, When thou before that year shalt end ? What do thy noontide walks avail, To clear the leaf, and pick the snail, Then wantonly to death decree An insect usefuller than thee ? Thou and the worm are brother kind, As low, as earthly, and as blind. 264 Vain wretch ! cans't thou expect to see The downy peach make court to thee ? Or that thy sense shall ever meet The bean-flower's deep embosomed sweet Exhaling with an evening blast ? Thy evening then will all be past. Thy narrow pride, thy fancied green (For vanity ; s in little seen) All must be left when Death appears, In spite of wishes, groans, and tears; Nor one of all thy plants that grow But Rosemary will with thee go. G. Sewell. In My Own Album *v> *o THRESH clad from heaven in robes of white, A young probationer of light, Thou wert my soul, an Album bright A spotless leaf : but thought and care, And friend and foe, in foul or fair, Have " written strange defeatures " there ; And Time with heaviest hand of all, Like that fierce writing on the wall, Hath stamped sad dates he can't recall j And error gilding worse designs Like speckled snake that strays and shines Betrays his path by crooked lines ; 265 And vice hath left his ugly blot ; And good resolves, a moment hot, Fairly begun but finished not ; And fruitless, late remorse doth trace Like Hebrew lore a backward pace Her irrecoverable race. Disjointed members : sense unknit ; Huge reams of folly, shreds of wit ; Compose the mingled mass of it. My scalded eyes no longer brook Upon this ink-blurred thing to look Go, shut the leaves and clasp the book. C. Lamb. Morality <^> <^ ^> (From Lyric Poems) \ \ 7E cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides ; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill d. With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern. 266 Then when the clouds are off the soul, When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, Ask how she viewed thy self-controul, Thy struggling, task'd morality Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. And she, whose censure thou dost dread, Whose eye thou wert afraid to seek, See, on her face a glow is spread, A strong emotion on her cheek ! " Ah, child ! " she cries, " that strife divine, Whence was it, for it is not mine ? " There is no effort on my brow I do not strive, I do not weep : I rush with the swift spheres and glow In joy, and when I will, I sleep. Yet that severe, that earnest air, I saw, I felt it once but where ? " I knew not yet the gauge of Time, Nor wore the manacles of Space : I felt it in some other clime, I saw it in some other place. 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And lay upon the breast of God." M. Arnold. 267 Faery Song* *^x -^y o (From Posthumous Poems) OH ED no tear oh shed no tear ! The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more oh weep no more ! Young buds sleep in the root's white core. Dry your eyes oh dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies Shed no tear. Overhead look overhead 'Mong the blossoms white and red Look up, look up I flutter now On this flush pomegranate bough. See me 'tis this silvery bill Ever cures the good man's ill. Shed no tear oh shed no tear ! The flower will bloom another year. Adieu ! Adieu ! I fly, adieu ! I vanish in the heaven's blue Adieu ! Adieu ! /. Keats. 268 Mimnermus in Church ^> ^> (From lonica) Y'OU promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will ; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still ; Your chilly stars I can forego,. This warm kind world is all I know. You say there is no substance here, One great reality above : Back from that void I shrink in fear, And child-like hide myself in love : Shew me what angels feel. Till then, I cling, a mere weak man, to men. You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains : My mind with fonder welcome owns One dear dead friend's remembered tones. Forsooth the present we must give To that which cannot pass away ; All beauteous things for which we live By laws of time and space decay. But O, the very reason why I clasp them, is because they die. W. Cory. 269 (From The Fatric Queene, B, I., Canto 9) O travailes by the wearie wand'ring way, To come unto his wished home in haste, And meetes a flood that doth his passage stay, Is not great grace to help him overpast, Or free his feet that in the myre sticke fast ? Most envious man, that grieves at neighbours good ; And fond, that joyest in the woe thou hast ! Why wilt not let him passe, that long hath stood Upon the bancke, yet wilt thy selfe not pas the flood ? " He there does now enjoy eternall rest And happy ease, which thou doest want and crave, And further from it daily wanderest ; What if some little payne the passage have, That makes frayle flesh to fear the bitter wave, Is not short payne well borne, that bringes long ease. And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave ? Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please." Ed. Spenser. Decay *o "C> ^> (From Aihs d'Alouette) r\ LUSTRE of decay! ^^^ The daylight glides away In glow of richer glory than at noon ; Autumn that steals the flower, Gives the tree golden dower, And crimson walls that will be leafless soon. 270 O dimness of decay ! The sunset hastes away, And leaves the world the lone and darkling night ; And autumn when he flies Leaves only howling skies, And trees that toss their naked boughs in fright. F. W. Bourdillon. A Soldier's Letter ^y ^> (From The Taller) '"PHERE is nothing I contemplate with greater pleasure than the dignity of human nature, which often shews itself in all conditions of life. For notwithstanding the degeneracy and meanness that is crept into it, there are a thousand occasions in which it breaks through its original corruption, and shews what it once was, and what it will be hereafter. I consider the soul of man as the ruin of a glorious pile of building ; where, amidst great heaps of rubbish, you meet with noble fragments of sculpture, broken pillars and obelisks, and a magnificence in confusion. Virtue and wisdom are continually employed in clearing the ruins, removing their disorderly heaps, recovering the noble pieces that lie buried under them, and adjusting them as well as possible according to their ancient symmetry and beauty. A happy education, conversation with the finest spirits, looking abroad into the works of nature, and observations upon mankind, are the great assistances to this necessary and glorious work. 271 But even among those who have never had the happiness of any of these advantages, there are sometimes such exertions of the greatness that is natural to the mind of man, as shew capacities and abilities, which only want these accidental helps to fetch them out, and shew them in a proper light. A plebeian soul is still the ruin of this glorious edifice, though encumbered with all its rubbish. This reflection rose in me from a letter which my servant dropped as he was dressing me, and which he told me was communicated to him, as he is an acquaintance of some of the persons mentioned in it. The epistle is from one Sergeant Hall of the Foot-guards. It is directed " To Sergeant Cabe, in the Coldstream regiment of Foot-guards, at the Red Lettice, in the Butcher Row, near Temple Bar." I was so pleased with several touches in it, that I could not forbear shewing it to a cluster of critics, who, instead of considering it in the light I have done, examined it by the rules of epistolatory writing. For as these gentlemen are seldom men of any great genius, they work altogether by mechanical rules, and are able to discover no beauties that are not pointed out by Bouhours and Rapin. The letter is as follows : " From the Camp before Mons, 26th September. " COMRADE, " I received yours, and am glad yourself and your wife are in good health, with all the rest of my friends. Our battalion suffered more than I 272 could wish in the action. But who can withstand fate ? Poor Richard Stevenson had his fate with a good many more. He was killed dead before we entered the trenches. We had above two hundred of our battalion killed and wounded. We lost ten sergeants, six are as followeth Jennings, Castles, Roach, Sherring, Meyrick and my son Smith. The rest are not your acquaintance. I have received a very bad shot in the head myself, but am in hopes, and please God, I shall recover. I continue in the field, and lie at my colonel's quarters. Arthur is very well ; but I can give you no account of Elms ; he was in the hospital before I came into the field. I will not pretend to give you an account of the battle, knowing you have a better in the prints. Pray give my service to Mrs. Cook and her daughter, to Mr. StofTet and his wife, and to Mr. Lyver, and Thomas Hogsdon and to Mr. Ragdell, and to all my friends and acquaintance in general who do ask after me. My love to Mrs. Stevenson. I am sorry for the sending such ill news. Her husband was gathering a little money together to send to his wife, and put it into my hands. I have seven shillings and three pence, which I shall take care to send her. Wishing both of you all happiness, rest " Your assured friend and comrade, "JOHN HALL. " We had but an indifferent breakfast ; but the Mounseers never had such a dinner in all their lives. "My kind love to my comrade Hinton, and Mrs. Morgan, and to John Brown and his wife. T 273 I sent two shillings, and Stevenson sixpence, to drink with you at Mr. Cook's ; but I have heard nothing from him. It was by Mr. Edgar. " Corporal Hartwell desires to be remembered to you, and desires you to enquire of Edgar, what is become of his wife Pegg ; and when you write, to send word in your letter what trade she drives. " We have here very bad weather, which I doubt will be an hindrance to the siege ; but I am in hopes we shall be masters of the town in a little time, and then, I believe, we shall go to garrison." I saw the critics prepared to nibble at my letter ; therefore examined it myself, partly in their way, and partly my own. This is, said I, truly a letter, and an honest representation of the cheerful heart which accompanies the poor soldier in his warfare. Is not there in this all the topic of submitting to our destiny as well discussed as if a greater man had been placed, like Brutus, in his tent at mid- night, reflecting on all the occurrences of past life, and saying fine things on being itself? What Sergeant Hall knows of the matter is, that he wishes there had not been so many killed ; and he had himself a very bad shot in the head, and should recover if it pleased God. But, be that as it will, he takes care, like a man of honour, as he certainly is, to let the widow Stevenson know, that he had seven and threepence for her, and that, if he lives, he is sure he shall go into garrison at last. I doubt not but all the good company at the Red Lettice drank his health with as much real esteem 274 as we do of any of our friends. All that I am con- cerned for is, that Mrs. Peggy Hartwell may be offended at showing this letter, because her con- duct in Mr. Hartwell's absence is a little inquired into. But I could not sink that circumstance, because you critics would have lost one of the parts which I doubt not but you have much to say upon, whether the familiar way is well hit in this style or not ? As for myself, I take a very particu- lar satisfaction in seeing any letter that is fit only for those to read who are concerned in it, but especially on such a subject. If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and such great things executed by them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet in the battle of Coldstream in Scotland, when Monk charged at the head of the regiment, now called Coldstream, from the victory of that day ; I remember it as well as if it was yesterday ; I stood on the left of old West, who I believe is now at Chelsea ; I say, to me, who know very well this part of mankind, I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed from the same, if not from a nobler impulse than that of gentlemen and officers. They have the same taste of being acceptable to their friends, and go through the difficulties of that profession by the same irresistible charm of friendship, and the com- munication of joys and sorrows, which quickens the relish of pleasure, and abates the anguish of 275 pain. Add to this, that they have the same regard to fame, though they do not expect so great a share as men above them hope for : but I will engage Sergeant Hall would die ten thousand deaths, rather than a word should be spoken at the Red Lettice, or any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice of his courage or honesty. If you will have my opinion then of the Sergeant's letter, I pronounce the style to be mixed, but truly epis- tolatory ; the sentiment relating to his own wound is in the sublime ; the postscript of Pegg Hartwell, in the gay : and the whole the picture of the bravest sort of men, that is to say, a man of great courage and small hopes. When I came home this evening, I found,after many attempts to vary my thoughts, that my head still ran upon the subject of the discourse to-night at Will's. I fell, therefore, into the amusement of proportioning the glory of a battle among the whole army, and dividing it into shares, according to the method of the million lottery. In this bank of fame, by an exact cal- culation, and the rules of political arithmetic, I have allotted ten hundred thousand shares : five hundred thousand of which is the due of the general, two hundred thousand I assign to the general officers, and two hundred thousand more to all the commissioned officers from colonels to ensigns ; the remaining hundred thousand must be distributed between the non-commissioned officers and private men : accord- ing to which computation, I find Sergeant Hall is to have one share and a fraction of two-fifths. 276 When I was a boy at Oxford, there was among the antiquities near the theatre a great stone, on which were engraven the names of all who fell in the battle of Marathon. The generous and knowing people of Athens understood the force of the desire of glory, and would not let the meanest soldier perish in oblivion. Were the natural impulse of the British nation animated with such monuments, what man would be so mean, as not to hazard his life for his ten hundred thousandth part of the honour on such a day as that of Blenheim or Blaregnies. X. Steele. Youth and Age *^y ^o> *o (From Gryll Grange} T PLAYED with you 'mid cowslips blowing, When I was six and you were four ; When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing, Were pleasures soon to please no more. Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather, With little playmates, to and fro, We wandered hand in hand together ; But that was sixty years ago. You grew a lovely roseate maiden, And still our early love was strong ; Still with no care our days were laden, They glided joyously along. And I did love you very dearly, How dearly words want power to show ; I thought your heart was touched as nearly ; But that was fifty years ago. 277 Then other lovers came around you, Your beauty grew from year to year, And many a splendid circle found you The centre of its glittering sphere. I saw you then, first vows forsaking, On rank and wealth your hand bestow. Oh, then I thought my heart was breaking ; But that was forty years ago. And I lived on, to wed another ; No cause she gave me to repine : And when I heard you were a mother, I did not wish the children mine. My own young flock, in fair progression, Made up a pleasant Christmas row, My joy in them was past expression ; But that was thirty years ago. You grew a matron plump and comely, You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze ; My earthly lot was far more homely : But I too had my festal days. No merrier eyes have ever glistened Around the hearth-stone's wintry glow, Than when my youngest child was christened ;- But that was twenty years ago. Time passed. My eldest girl was married, And I am now a grandsire grey ; One pet of four years old I've carried Among the wild-flowered meads to play. 278 In our old fields of childish pleasure, Where now, as then, the cowslips blow, She fills her basket's ample measure, And that is not ten years ago. But though first love's impassioned blindness Has passed away in colder light, I still have thought of you with kindness, And shall do, till our last good night. The ever-rolling silent hours Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be an hundred years ago. T. L. Peacock. (From Hawthorn and Lavender] n^HE rain and the wind, the wind and the rain They are with us like a disease : They worry the heart, they work the brain, As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane, And savage the helpless trees. What does it profit a man to know These tattered and tumbling skies A million stately stars will show, And the ruining grace of the afterglow And the rush of the wild sunrise ? 279 Ever the rain the rain and the wind ! Come, hunch with me over the fire, Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned, Ere the blood of the year got chilled and thinned, And the death came on desire. W. E. Henley. Farewell to Arms -o^ -<^y <<^> (From Polyhymnia 1590) T T IS golden locks time hath to silver turned ; O time, too swift, O swiftness never ceasing. His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned, But spurned in vain ; youth waneth by increasing : Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen ; Duty, faith, love, are roots for ever green. His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, And, lover's sonnets turned to holy psalms, A man at arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are to age his alms : But though from court to cottage he depart, His saint is sure of his unspotted heart. And when he saddest sits in homely cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song, " Blessed be the hearts that wish my sovereign well, Curs'd be the souls that think her any wrong." Goddess, allow this aged man his right To be your bedesman now that was your knight. G. Peek. 280 Time <^y ^> o ^y *^y T T NFATHOMABLE sea! whose waves arc years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears ! Those shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality ! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea ? P. B. Shelley. Sonnets Ixxi., Ixxii., Ixxiii. ^> ^y "^T O 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. 281 O, lest the world should task you to recite What merit liv'd in me, that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove ; Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon deceased I Than niggard truth would willingly impart : O, lest your true love may seem false in this, That you for love speak well of me untrue, My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me nor you. For I am sham'd by that which I bring forth, And so would you to love things nothing worth. That time of year thou may'st 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, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long W. Shakspere. 282 Stanzas < <^y (From Songs and Psalms) TV/I" Y prime of youth is but a frost of cares ! My feast of joy is but a dish of pain ! My crop of corn is but a field of tares ! And all my good is but vain hope of gain ! My life is fled, and yet I saw no sun ! And now I live, and now my life is done ! The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung ! The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves be green ! My youth is gone, and yet I am but young ! I saw the world, and yet I am not seen ! My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun ! And now I live, and now my life is done ! J. Mundy. Dream Pedlary <^y ^> (From Poems of 1851) T F there were dreams to sell, What would you buy ? Some cost a passing bell ; Some a light sigh, That shakes from Life's fresh crown Only a rose-leaf down. If there were dreams to sell, Merry and sad to tell, And the crier rang the bell, What would you buy ? A cottage lone and still, With bowers nigh, Shadowy, my woes to still Until I die. Such pearl from Life's fresh crown Fain would I shake me down. Were dreams to have at will, This best would heal my ill, This would I buy. But there were dreams to sell 111 didst thou buy ; Life is a dream, they tell, Waking, to die. Dreaming a dream to prize, Is wishing ghosts to rise ; And if I had the spell To call the buried well, Which one would I ? If there are ghosts to raise, What shall I call, Out of hell's murky haze, Heaven's blue pall ? Raise my loved long-lost boy To lead me to his joy. There are no ghosts to raise ; Out of death lead no ways ; Vain is the call. 284 Know st thou not ghosts to sue No love thou hast. Else lie, as I will do, And breathe my last. So out of Life's fresh crown Fall like a rose-leaf down. Thus are the ghosts to woo ; Thus are all dreams made true, Ever to last ! T. L. Bcddoes. Amicus Redivivus ^> ^> ^> (From Last Essays of Elia} T DO not know when I have experienced a stranger sensation, than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had been paying me a morning visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of turning down the right hand path by which he had entered with staff in hand, and at noonday, deliberately march right forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear. A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling enough ! but, in the broad open daylight, to witness such an unreserved motion towards self-destruction in a valued friend, took from me all power of speculation. How I found my feet, I know not. Conscious- ness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but the 285 silvery apparition of a good white head emerging ; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen which wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on my shoulders, and I freighted with a load more precious than his who bore Anchises. And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a little late to participate in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to communicate their advice as to the recovery ; pre- scribing variously the application, or non-applica- tion, of salt &c., to the person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more saga- cious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impossible, as one would think, to be missed on, shall I confess? in this emergency, it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions and mine had not been inconsiderable are commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution. Monoculus for so, in default of catching his true name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman who now appeared is a grave middle- aged person, who, without having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of un- fortunate fellow creatures, in whom the vital spark, 286 to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtrud- ing his services, from a cure of common surfeit- suffocation to the ignoblest obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth for the most part to water-practice ; for the convenience of which he has judiciously fixed his quarters near the grand repository of the stream mentioned, where, day and night, from his little watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot and partly, because the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be found at these common hostelries than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance, and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but which, by time, and frequency of nightly divings, has been dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His remedy after a sufficient application of warm blankets, friction, etc., is a simple tumbler, or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, 287 as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster ; and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of the pre- scription. Nothing can be more kind or encourag- ing than this procedure. It addeth confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion ? In fine Monoculus is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in the endeavour to save the lives of others his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty I could press a crown upon him for the price of restoring the existence of such an invaluable creature to society as G. D. It was pleasant to observe the effect of the sub- siding alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have given a shake to memory, call- ing up notice after notice, of all the providential deliverances he had experienced in the course of his long and innocent life. Sitting up in my couch my couch which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it ad- ministered, shall be honoured with costly valance, at some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook he discoursed of marvellous escapes by carelessness of nurses by pails of gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, in infancy by orchard pranks, and snapping twigs in schoolboy frolics by descent of tiles at Trumpington, and of 288 heavier tomes at Pembroke by studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of the learned head. Anon, he would burst out into little frag- ments of chanting of songs long ago ends of deliverance -hymns, not remembered before since childhood, but coming up now, when his heart was made tender as a child's for the tremor cordis^ in the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which we should do ill to christen cowardice ; and Shaks- peare, in the latter crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remember the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow rivers. Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton what a spark you were like to have extinguished for ever ! Your salubrious streams to this City, for now near two centuries, would hardly have atoned for what you were in a moment washing away. Mockery of a river liquid artifice wretched conduit ! hence- forth rank with canals, and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this, that, smit in boyhood with the explorations of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the vales of Amwell to explore your tributary springs, to trace your salutary waters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield parks ? Ye have no swans no Naiads no river God or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius of your waters. U 289 Had he been drowned in Cam there would have been some consonancy in it : but what willows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist sepulture? or having no name, beside that unmeaning as- sumption of eternal novity, did ye think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth be termed the Stream Dyerian And could such spacious virtue find a grave Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? I protest George, you shall not venture out again no, not by daylight without a sufficient pair of spectacles in your musing moods espe- cially. Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it. You shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your years, after your many tracts in favour of sprinkling only. I have nothing but water in my head o' nights since this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; the billows go over my head, all the waters go over me. Selah." Then I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I cry out too late to save. Next follow a mournful procession suicidal faces, saved against their wills from drowning : dolefully trailing a length of reluctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds pen- 290 dent from locks of watchet hue constrained Lazari Pluto's half-subjects stolen fees from the grave bilking Charon of his fare. At their head Arion or is it G. D. ? in his singing garments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth are constrained to drown outright, by wharfs where Ophelia twice acts her muddy death. And doubtless there is some notice in that invisible world, when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so lately) to their inexorable pre- cincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's door, the sensation aroused within the palace must be considerable, and the grim Feature, by modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must have learned by this time to pity Tantalus. A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian Shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was announced by no equivocal indications. From their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver ghosts poet or historian of Grecian or of Roman love to crown with unfading chaplets the half-finished love-labours of their unwearied scholiast. Him Markland expected him Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom he had barely seen upon earth, with newest airs prepared to greet ; and, patron of the gentle Christ's boy, who should have been his 291 patron through life the mild Askew, with longing aspirations leaned foremost from his venerable ^Esculapian chair, to welcome into that happy com- pany the matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon earth had so prophetically fed and watered. C. Lamb. Dirge *^y *^ ^y (From Sylvia] VI7AIL ! wail ye o'er the dead ! Wail ! wail ye o'er her ! Youth's ta'en and Beauty's fled : O then deplore her ! Strew ! strew ye, maidens strew Sweet flowers and fairest, Pale rose and pansy blue, Lily the rarest ! Lay, lay her gently down On her moss pillow, While we our foreheads crown With the sad willow ! Raise, raise the song of woe, Youths, to her honour ! Fresh leaves and blossoms throw, Virgins upon her. 292 Round, round the cypress bier, Where she lies sleeping, On every turf a tear, Let us go weeping. Wail ! wail ye o'er the dead ! Wail ! wail ye o'er her ! Youth's ta'en and Beauty's fled ; O then deplore her ! G. Darlcy. Epitaph on a Jacobite *cy *^> 'T^O my true king I offered free from stain Courage and faith : vain faith and courage vain. For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away And one dear hope that was more prized than they. For him I languished in a foreign clime, Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime ; Heard on La Vernia Scargill's whispering trees, And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees ; Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep, Each morning started from the dream to weep ; Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave The resting place I asked, an early grave. Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone, From that proud country which was once mine own, By those white cliffs I never more must see, By that dear language which I spake like thee, Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here. Lord Macaulay. 293 Chorus *o -^ -*c> *v> (From Hellas] n^HE world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn : Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far ; A new Peneus rolls its fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize ; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. O write no more the tale of Troy, If Earth Death's scroll must be ! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free : Although a subtler sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. 294 Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime ; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or heaven can give. Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued : Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, But votive tears and symbol flowers. O cease ! must hate and death return ? Cease ! must men kill and die ? Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, O might it die or rest at last ! P. B. Shelley. Dirge for the Year ^> ^> /^\RPHAN hours, the year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep ! Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep : See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping, 295 As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the dead cold year to-day : Solemn hours ! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud. As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days Rocks the year : be calm and mild, Trembling hours ; she will arise With new love within her eyes. January grey is here, Like a sexton by her grave ; February bears the bier, March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps but, O ye hours ! Follow with May's fairest flowers. P. B. Shelley. Essay cclxvi. -^ *o *^y (From The Tatler] TT would be a good Appendix to The Art of Living and Dying, if any one would write The Art of Growing Old, and teach men to resign their pretensions to the pleasures and gallantries of youth, in proportion to the alteration they find in themselves by the approach of age and infirmities. The infirmities of this stage of life would be much 296 fewer, if we did not affect those which attend the more vigourous and active part of our days ; but instead of studying to be wiser, or being contented with our present follies, the ambition of many of us is also to be the same sort of fools we formerly have been. I have often argued, as I am a pro- fessed lover of women, that our sex grows old with a much worse grace than the other does ; and have ever been of opinion that there are more well-pleased old women, than old men. I thought it a good reason for this, that the ambition of the fair sex being confined to advantageous marriages, or shining in the eyes of men, their parts were over sooner, and consequently the errors in the performances of them. The conversation of this evening has not convinced me of the contrary : for one or two fop- women shall not make a balance for the crowds of coxcombs amongst ourselves, diversified according to the different pursuits of pleasure and business. Returning home this evening a little before my usual hour, I scarce had seated myself in my easy chair, stirred the fire, and stroked my cat, but I heard somebody come rumbling upstairs. I saw my door opened, and a human figure advancing towards me, so fantastically put together, that it was some minutes before I discovered it to be my old and intimate friend Sam Trusty. Immediately I rose up, and placed him in my own seat : a compliment I pay to few. The first thing he uttered, was " Isaac, fetch me a cup of your cherry- 297 brandy, before you offer to ask any question." He drank a lusty draught, sat silent for some time, and at last broke out " I am come," quoth he, "to insult thee for an old fantastic dotard, as thou art, in ever defending the women. I have this evening visited two widows who are now in that state I have often heard you call an "After life." I suppose you mean by it an existence which grows out of past entertainments, and is an untimely delight in the satisfactions, which they once set their hearts upon too much to be ever able to relinquish. Have but patience," continued he, "until I give you a succinct account of my ladies, and of this night's adventure. They are much of an age, but very different in their characters : the one of them, with all the advances which years have made upon her, goes on in a certain romantic road of love and friendship which she fell into in her 'teens ; the other has transferred the amourous passions of her first years to the love of cronies, petts, and favourites, with which she is always surrounded : but the genius of each of them will best appear by the account of what happened to me at their houses. About five this afternoon, being tired with study, the weather inviting, and time lying a little on my hands, I resolved, at the instigation of my evil genius, to visit them ; their husbands having been our contemporaries. This I thought I could do without much trouble ; for both live in the very next street. I went first to my Lady Camomille, and the butler, who had lived long in the family, 298 and seen me often in his master's time, ushered me very civilly into the parlour, and told me, though my lady had given strict orders to be denied, he was sure I might be admitted, and bid the black boy acquaint his lady that I had come to wait upon her. In the window lay two letters, one broke open ; the other fresh sealed with a wafer : the first directed to the divine Cosmelia, the second to the charming Lucinda ; but both, by the indented characters, appeared to have been writ by very unsteady hands. Such uncommon addresses increased my curiosity, and put me upon asking my old friend the butler if he knew who those persons were. ' Very well,' says he : l This is from Mrs. Furbish to my lady, an old school- fellow and great crony of her ladyship's ; and this is the answer.' I enquired in what county she lived. * Oh dear ! ' says he, * but just by in the neighbourhood. Why, she was here all this morn- ing, and that letter came and was answered within these two hours. They have taken an odd fancy, you must know, to call one another hard names : but for all that they love one another hugely.' By this time the boy returned with his lady's humble service to me, desiring I would excuse her : for she could not possibly see me, nor any body else, for it was opera-night." "Methinks," says I, "such innocent folly, as two old women's courtship to each other, should rather make you merry than put you out of humour." "Peace, good Isaac," says he, "no interruption, I 299 beseech you. I got soon to Mrs. Feeble's, she that was formerly Betty Frisk : you must needs remember her : Tom Feeble of Brazen Nose fell in love with her for her fine dancing. Well, Mrs. Ursula, without further ceremony, carries me directly up to her mistress' chamber, where I found her environed by four of the most mischievous animals that can infest a family : an old shock dog with one eye, a monkey chained to one side of the chimney, a great grey squirrel to the other, and a parrot waddling in the middle of the room. However, for a while, all was in a profound tran- quility. Upon the mantle-tree, for I am a pretty curious observer, stood a pot of lambetive electuary, with a stick of liquorish, and near it a phial of rose-water and powder of tutty. Upon a table lay a pipe filled with betony and colts-foot, a roll of wax candle, a silver spitting-pot, and a Seville orange. The lady was placed in a large wicker chair, and her feet wrapped up in flannel, and supported by cushions, and in this attitude (could you believe it Isaac) she was reading a romance with spectacles on. The first compliments over, as she was industriously endeavouring to enter upon conversation, a violent fit of coughing seized her. This awaked Shock, and in a trice the whole room was in an uproar : for the dog barked, the squirrel squealed, the monkey chattered, the parrot screamed, and Ursula, to appease them, was more clamourous than all the rest. You, Isaac, who know how any harsh noise affects my head, may 300 guess what I suffered from the hideous din of these discordant sounds. At length all was appeased and quiet restored : a chair was drawn for me, where I was no sooner seated, but the parrot fixed his horny beak, as sharp as a pair of shears, in one of my heels, just above the shoe. I sprung from the place with an unusual agility, and so, being within the monkey's reach, he snatches off my new bob-wig, and throws it upon two apples that were roasting by a sullen sea coal fire. I was nimble enough to save it from farther damage than singeing the foretop. I put it on ; and composing myself as well as I could, I drew my chair towards the other side of the chimney. The good lady, as soon as she had recovered breath, employed it in making a thousand apologies, and, with great eloquence, and a numerous train of words, lamented my misfortune. In the middle of her harangue, I felt something scratching near my knee, and feeling what it should be, found the squirrel had got into my coat pocket. As I endeavoured to remove him from his burrow, he made his teeth meet through the fleshy part of my forefinger. This gave me an inexpressible pain. The Hungary water was im- mediately brought to bathe it, and gold-beaters' skin applied to stop the blood. The lady renewed her excuses : but being now out of all patience, I abruptly took my leave, and hobbling downstairs with heedless haste, I set my foot full in a pail of water, and down we came to the bottom together." Here my friend concluded his narrative ; and, with a composed 301 countenance, I began to make him compliments of condolance : but he started from his chair, and said " Isaac, you may spare your speeches, I expect no reply : when I told you this, I knew you would laugh at me : but the next woman that makes me ridiculous shall be a young one." R. Steele. Sonnet "O *o ^y ^y T I FT not the painted veil which those who live Call Life ; though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread, behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies ; who ever weave Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. I know one who had lifted it he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love, But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught The world contains, the which he could approve. Through the unheeding many he did move, A splendour among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. P. B. Shelley. 302 Time ^y ^> ^> -<^y /^\ H cruel Time ! which takes in trust, 1 ^^^ Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust ; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. Sir W. Raleigh. Invocation ^y ^^y ^> (From the Third Book of Airs, 1617) r ~PHRICE toss these oaken ashes in the air, Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair, Then thrice times three tie up this true love's knot, And murmur soft " She will or she will not." Go burn these poisonous leaves in yon blue fire, These screech-owl's feathers and this prickling briar, This cypress gathered at a dead man's grave, That all my fears and cares an end may have. Then come, you fairies ! dance with me a round ! Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound ! In vain are all the charms I can devise : She hath an art to break them with her eyes. T. Campion. 303 Dirge ^> ^y ^y ^y (From Poems of 1851) T ET dew the flowers fill ; No need of fell despair, Though to the grave you bear One still of soul but now too still One fair but now too fair. For, beneath your feet, the mound, And the waves that play around, Have meaning in their grassy and their watery smiles ; And with a thousand sunny wiles Each says, as he reproves, Death's arrow oft is Love's. T. L. Beddoes. Death's Summons "O *o "Qy A DIEU ; farewell earth's bliss, ^T This world uncertain is : Fond are life's lustful joys, Death proves them all but toys. None from his darts can fly : I am sick, I must die. Lord have mercy on us I Rich men, trust not in wealth, Gold cannot buy you health ; Physic himself must fade ; All things to end are made ; 34 The plague full swift goes by ; I am sick, I must die. Lord have mercy on us ! Beauty is but a flower, Which wrinkles will devour : Brightness falls from the air ; Queens have died young and fair ; Dust hath closed Helen's eye ; I am sick, I must die. Lord have mercy on us ! Strength stoops unto the grave : Worms feed on Hector brave ; Swords may not fight with fate : Earth still holds ope her gate. Come, come, the bells do cry ; I am sick, I must die. Lord have mercy on us ! * Wit with his wantonness, Tasteth death's bitterness ; Hell's executioner Hath no ears for to hear What vain art can reply ; I am sick, I must die. Lord have mercy on us ! Haste therefore each degree To welcome destiny : Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a players stage. x 305 Mount we unto the sky ; I am sick, I must die. Lord have mercy on us ! (From Hawthorn and Lavender) T. Nashe. hills, gray skies, gray lights, ^"^ And still gray sea O fond, O fair, The Mays that were, When the wild days and wilder nights Made it like heaven to be ! Gray head, gray heart, gray dreams O breath by breath, Night-tide and day Lapse gentle and gray, As to a murmur of tired streams, Into the haze of death. W. E. Henley Men of Genius ^ <^ C ILENT the Lord of the world *^ Eyes from the heavenly height, Girt by his far-shining train, Us who with banners unfurled Fight life's many-chanced fight Madly below, in the plain. 306 Then said the Lord to his own : " See ye the battle below ? Turmoil of death and of birth ! Too long let we them groan. Haste, arise ye, and go ; Carry my peace upon earth." Gladly they rise at his call ; Gladly they take his command : Gladly descend to the plain. Alas ! How few of them all Those willing servants shall stand In their master's presence again ! Some in the tumult are lost ; Baffled, bewildered, they stray, Some as prisoners draw breath, Others the bravest are crossed, On the height of their bold-followed way, By the swift-rushing missile of Death. Hardly, hardly shall one Come, with countenance bright, O'er the cloud-wrapt, perilous plain : His Master's errand well done, Safe thro' the smoke of the fight Back to his Master again. M. Arnold. 307 A Christmas Carol -Q> *^ (From Noble Numbers] TH\ARK and dull night, fly hence away, And give the honour to this day That sees December turn'd to May. If we may ask the reason, say The why and wherefore all things here Seem like the spring-time of the year. Why does the chilling winter's morn Smile like a field beset with corn ? Or smell like to a mead new shorn, Thus on the sudden ? Come and see The cause why things thus fragrant be . 'Tis He is born, whose quick'ning birth Gives life and lustre, public mirth, To heaven and the under earth. Chorus. We see Him come, and know Him ours, Who, with His sunshine and His showers, Turns all the patient ground to flowers. The darling of the world is come, And fit it is we find a room To welcome Him. The nobler part Of all the house here is the heart. 308 Chorus. Which we will give Him ; and bequeath This holly and this ivy wreath, To do Him honour ; who 3 s our King And Lord of all this revelling. New Year's Eve < (From the Essays of Elia} R. Herrick. man hath two birth days : two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birth day hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam. Of all sound of all bells bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth ; all I 39 have done or suffered, performed or neglected in that regretted time, I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal colour ; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed I saw the skirts of the departing Year. It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave taking. I am sure I felt it and all felt it, with me, last night ; though some of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those who Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties : new books, new faces, new years, from some mental twist in me which makes it difficult to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and con- clusions. I encounter pell-mell with past dis- appointments. I am armour -proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would no more alter them than the 310 incidents of some well-contrived novel. Methinks, it is better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was in thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W n, than that so passionate a love adventure should be lost. It was better that our family should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue. In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say that skipping over the inter- vention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love? If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspective and mine is painfully so can have a less respect for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and humoursome ; a notorious * * * ; addicted to * * * * . averse from counsel, neither taking it nor offering it ; * * * besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you will : lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou cans't be willing to lay at his door but for the child Elia that "other one," there, in the background I must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient smallpox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least colour of falsehood. God help thee Elia, how art thou changed ! Thou art sophisti- cated. I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful ! From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, and not some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpracticed steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being ! That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause ; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself ; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite ? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader (a busy man perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly-conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia. The Elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution, and the ringing 312 out of the Old Year was kept by them with circum- stances of peculiar ceremony. In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to rain hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarcely conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty* never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life : but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth? I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In pro- portion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." These metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mor- tality. I care not to be carried with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity ; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth : the face of town and country ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the 313 age to which I am arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be wearied by age : or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My house- hold gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests and irony itself do these things go out with life ? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him? And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces ? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading ? Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here, the recognisable face the " sweet assurance of a look"? In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying to give it its mildest name does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost prob- lematic. At these times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. Then we are as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling : cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity : moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced in the Can- ticles : I am none of her minions I hold with the Persian. Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital plague-sore. I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to six score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper ; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding Positive / Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like thy- self. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall " lie down with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows ? or, forsooth, that " so shall the fairest face appear ? " why, to com- fort me, must Alice W n be a goblin ? More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! Thy New Year's Days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine and while that turn-coat bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal a song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton : THE NEW YEAR Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star Tells us, the day himself s not far : And see where, breaking from the night, He gilds the western hills with light. 316 With him old Janus doth appear, Peeping into the future year, With such a look as seems to say, The prospect is not good that way. Thus do we rise ill sights to see, And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy : When the prophetic fear of things A more tormenting mischief brings, More full of soul-tormenting gall, Than direst mischiefs can befall. But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight Better inform'd by clearer light, Discerns sereneness in that brow, That all contracted seemed but now. His reversed face may show distaste, And frown upon the ills are past ; But that which this way looks is clear, And smiles upon the New-born Year. He looks too from a place so high, The Year lies open to his eye ; And all the moments open are To the exact discoverer. Yet more and more he smiles upon The happy revolution. Why should we then suspect or fear The influences of a year, So smiles upon us the first morn, And speaks us good as soon as born ? Plague on 't the last was ill enough, This cannot but make better proof ; Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through The last, why so we may this too ; And then the next in season shou'd Be super-excellently good : For the worst ills (we daily see) Have no more perpetuity, Than the best fortunes that do fall ; Which also bring us wherewithal Longer their being to support, Than those do of the other sort : And who has one good year in three, And yet repines at destiny, Appears ungrateful in the case, And merits not the good he has. Then let us welcome the New Guest With lusty trimness of the best ; Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, And renders e'en Disaster sweet : And though the Princess turn her back, Let us but line ourselves with sack, We better shall by far hold out, Till the next Year she face about. How say you, reader do not these verses smack of the rough magnanimity of the old Englishen vein? Do they not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction ? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected ? Passed like a cloud absorbed in the passing sunlight of clear poetry clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries. And now another cup of the generous ! and a Merry New Year, and many of them, to you all my masters ! C. Lamb. 319 PLYMOUTH W. BRENDON AND SON, LIMITED PRINTERS , 1 - r.B 11645