60^5 5 6 2 7 5 9 THE LIBRARY [HE UNIVERSITY OF CAL [FORNIA LOS ANGELES -* BY SEVERN SEA BY SEVERN SEA AND OTHER POEMS BY T. HERBERT WARREN, M.A. President of Magdalen College, Oxford LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1898 DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO t&e Ciueen ?R SG, t TO THE QUEEN ADY WHOSE ORBED SOVEREIGNTY BY MANY A LAND AND EVERY SEA TlES HALF THE GLOBE WITH EMPERY, WHO ASKED OF HEAVEN THE BETTER PART, A WISE AND UNDERSTANDING HEART, AND GAINED LONG LIFE AND RULING ART ; NOW WHEN HER FLOWERS A NATION FLINGS, NOW WHEN THE WORLD ITS GREETING BRINGS, AND WITH ACCLAIM A PLANET RINGS : ONE BLOOM HER CLOISTER-GARDEN BEARS, ONE ECHO OF HER CHANTED AIRS, YOUR COLLEGE OF THE LILY DARES ON THIS TWICE CROWNED CROWNING DAY THAT SUMS THE CYCLES OF YOUR SWAY LOYALLY AT YOUR FEET TO LAY. Magdalen College, Oxford: zotb June, 1 897. 960554 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Prose Poet of the fabled West ..... i The rolling moorland russet-dun ..... 4 Nestor of Poesy, whose utterance sage . . . .10 Lord in this land and lord in many lands . . .13 Last left of the mortal Immortals, art thou too taken at last 1 7 Green natural cloister of our Academe .... 20 Morn of the year, of day and May the prime ! . .21 Richard of Chichester, so ran the style .... 23 Time was I yearned for happiness .... 24 'Twas that sweet moment of the year .... 25 Mistress Rachel, Mistress Ruth 26 Dear friends, who from your aery home ... 29 To the bride 32 Dear Lady, take this little song ... -33 vii Table of Contents Whilome I wrote a little song ..... 34 Dawne to Darke 37 Works of earth and words of air . . . . .38 I wandered by the shining river's side .... 40 Take, friend of all that's good and fair .... 43 Dear the gray walls hid in the greenwood side . . 44 You asked me, friend, to send a Sonnet ... 46 Daniel, well-lettered son of Somerset .... 47 Dear second home beyond the misty sea . .48 To suffer or to succour, 'tis the school . 49 Nightingale poet, all too delicate . . -5 Swept by the breaths of memory . . . . 5 J Sick Autumn spreads his magic tints .... 54 sweet to hear and feel their strife .... 56 Dark against the sky ..... 58 Thou who hast seen for once and all the vision . . 61 Ay me ! ay me ! how sweet ..... 63 1 am a modest Violet ....... 65 The swallow is here, is here ..... 66 Renowned their lot and fair their fame .... 68 viii Table of Contents Beloved she moved among us ..... 69 Him, Parmeno, I reckon happiest .... 70 Whenever thou would'st know thy real worth . . 71 That craft, my friends, you there behold . . 72 Tully, of all Rome's progeny ..... 74 Dear Martial, if with you f could .... 75 Beneath this rising mound entombed is laid ... 76 Who never ate with tears his bread . . -77 'Twas a cloudless April morrow ... .78 Falleth a shooting star 79 IX NOTE. Some of the pieces which follow are reprinted by permission from the " Spectator" " Athenatum" and " Guardian'' and from " Macmillan's" and the "Oxford Magazine" in which they first appeared. The greater number of them formed the collection issued in a small limited edition in the spring of this year (1897) by Mr. Daniel of Worcester College, Oxford, from his private press, but a few are now printed for the first time. XI By Severn Sea TO R. D. BLACKMORE PROSE POET of the fobled West, * Ere school and railway had begun To fuse our shires and tongues in one, And equalize the worst and best, While Devon vowels fluted yet By Dart and Lynn their mellow length, While flourished still in Saxon strength The consonants of Somerset, Your Exmoor epic fixed the hues That lingered on by combe and tor, And in the hollow vale of Oare You found a matter for your Muse ! The brigands' den, the prisoned bride, The giant yeoman's hero mould, Who fought and garrulously told The Iliad of his country-side ; By Severn Sea You bade them live and last for us And for our heirs, as caught erewhile The Doric of his rocky isle Lives in your loved Theocritus ; Loved, for you are a child of ours, And know and prize the scholar's home Who learned in student days to roam Among the cloisters and the towers Where now my missive rhyme I pen To greet you as in lettered ease You move amid your birds and bees, Old Virgil's gardener come again ; Or like Alcinous from his hall Survey your orchards ripening fair, Apple on apple, pear on pear, From snowy blossom to golden ball ; Or teach your swelling vines to shape Their tender buds and safely thrust The spires that hold in starry dust The promise of the purple grape. By Severn Sea So may they find you, may you take These verses with a kindlier eye And backward thoughts of sympathy With him who writes, for memory's sake ; Who loves like you the western ground, The wilder scene, the hills that scent The sea, and in this inland pent That hems our Academe around, Must fain require his haunts of old, Though happy here, and sometimes miss By still and silver Tamesis The rushing Severn's molten gold. Oxford: April, 1896. By Severn Sea BY SEVERN SEA A l ^HE rolling moorland russet-dun With all its gold and purple bloom Made fragrant by the summer sun, Climbs from the softly-curving combe Above dark wood and whitening lea And orchard green by Severn Sea ; A noble flood, more proudly wide, From our dear island's mother breast Pours none, nor swirls a fuller tide To barter with the boundless West For many a costly argosy Than this broad stream of Severn Sea. A dateless gulf whose wave of old Yet fervent from the central flame, By tropic jungle steaming rolled, Or foamed around the monstrous frame Of flying, creeping, swimming things With serpent gorge and dragon wings ; By Severn Sea Lands that a mystic glamour fills, The after-glow of sunken stars, Where the old tongues murmur to the hills Dead loves, dead hates, forgotten wars, And Arthur's phantom glories haunt The shadowy scene of high romaunt. What life, what death of brute and man Have scarred your earth and stained your wave, Where pirate horde and robber clan Have reared and ravaged home and grave, And gorgeous wrecks of stately Spain Mix with the bones of Celt and Dane ! Now all is peace from shore to shore, Mourns Avalon in ruined state Beneath her silent-watching tor, And holy Cleeve thy sculptured gate Sees but the glittering runnel pass Beside thy cloister-guarded grass ; While towered hall and castle stand, Their ancient wont and fashion yet By Severn Sea Unchanged, as if some fairy hand 'Mid their green oaks of Somerset Had lulled them to such drowsihood As chained erewhile the Slumbering Wood, So sleep they, only through their dream At times the merry bugles wind, When hound and horse and horseman gleam By ferny haunts of hart and hind, And pride of olden venerie The antlered stag goes wildly free. Nought hear they else, but from its well Deep in the dim heart of the glen The secret stream from dell to dell Rustling by ways apart from men, Till in some cool and shadowed cave It wed the quiet-waiting wave. O charmed realm, O storied scene, What echoes whisper on your tide, What memories mingle with your sheen, Of lives that here have breathed and died, By Severn Sea Of lips whose unforgotten lays Made beauty lovelier by their praise ! Here sojourned erst the lyric three, Whose wandering made a classic ground From Quantoxhead to Dunkery, Where they by height or hollow found Fountains that carol for all time In tune to their own deathless rhyme ; And here that nearer dearer tongue Mourned his dead friend and sang the dirge- More sadly sweet was never sung Of him who on your murmurous verge Wind-wafted from Italian land Hath rest by his own Severn strand. Ah western winds and waters mild ! Others your vaporous languors chide ; They have not loved you from a child, Nor grown to strength your shore beside. Ye speak of youth and hope to me, Ye airs, ye floods of Severn Sea ! By Severn Sea For I was native to your mood And apt to take your influence, To muse and pause, to pore and brood, To doubt the shows and shapes of sense, To dream how not to dream away The long large hours of boyhood's day. And when high noon on many a sail Was bright along the brimming flow, Or when the westering sun must fail Blood-red, and from the shifting glow Of lilac-citron skies the queen That sways your motion glimmered green, One lesson still my spirit learned From flood and daylight fleeting past, And from its own strange self that yearned Like them to lapse into the vast, And merge and end its vague unrest In some wide ocean of the West ; Ere we can find true peace again, Our being must have second birth, 8 By Severn Sea Purged and made one through joy and pain With Him Who rules and rounds the earth, Beyond the dark, behind the light, In mystery of the Infinite. And we like rivers from their source Through cloud and shine, by deep or shoal, Must follow that which draws our course, The Love that is its guide and goal ; Of life, of death, ye made me free, Waters and hills of Severn Sea ! Mine he ad: August, 1892. To Lord Tennyson TO LORD TENNYSON "VTESTOR of Poesy, whose utterance sage ^ ^ Has charmed so long our time, example bright In the hard war of Truth, a steadfast light To guide our search in this self-darkened age ! Thou in a more heroic hour didst wage With men of mighty mould victorious fight Two generations back, and still of right Reign'st in the third, and none may lift thy gage ; Nor yet in this thy lovely Pylian realm And hospitable home, wilt wholly rest, Shaping what shall not die, beside the shore, Till God shall bid thee sail and bend the helm Beyond the Ocean and the misty West, Whither thine own Antilochus went before. Freshwater : April, 1891. 10 Virgilium Vidi VIRGILIUM VIDI THE old Latin commentators preserve several striking notices of Virgins habit of reading or reciting his poems , both while he was composing them, and after they were completed, and especially of the remarkable beauty and charm of the poet's rendering of his own words and its powerful effect upon his hearers. c He readj says Suetonius, c at once with sweetness and with a wonderful fascination ; and Seneca had a story of the poet Julius Montanus saying that he himself would attempt to steal something from Virgil if he could first borrow his voice, his elocution, and his dramatic power in reading ; for the very same lines, said he, which when the author himself read them sounded well, without him were empty and dumb. He read to Augustus the whole of his Georgics, and on another occasion three books of the JEneid, the second, the fourth, and the sixth, the last with an effect upon Octavia not to be forgotten, for she was present at the reading, and at those great lines about her own son and his premature death, which begin " Tu Marcellus eris," it is said that she fainted away and was with difficulty recovered. His amanuensis Eros again, in his old age, used to relate how Virgil, on one occasion, carried away by the warmth of recitation, had completed on II Virgilium Vidi the spur of the moment two lines previously left by him unfinished^ the lines Misenum ./Eoliden, quo non praestantior alter ./Ere ciere viros, Martemque accendere cantu and had ordered him at once to write them into the book.'' (SuET. Life of Virgil^ ed. Nettleship, pp. 15, 16.) Another passage which Virgil is said to have read^ with immense effect upon the feelings of his hearers^ is the well-known one in the fourth .flineid (w. 320-324). Te propter Lybicae gentes Nomadumque tyranni Odere, infensi Tyrii ; te propter eundem Exstinctus pudor, et, qua sola sidera adibam, Fama prior. Cui me moribundam deseris, hospes ? Hoc solum nomen quoniam de conjuge restat. (SzRVius ad loc.} 12 Virgilium Vidi TO ALFRED LORD TENNYSON T ORD in this land and lord in many lands, ^^ However far may reach The myriad labour or our English hands, Our always-widening speech, Crowned with the bay and brightening with your fame The leaves your elders wore ! Now while the crocus darts a leaping flame, About your garden-door, And by your trees the flower, whose happy part Time since it was to fill With her blithe mood a sterner laureate's heart, The gracious daffodil, Coy daughter of the wild and wont to hide A shy and secret queen, Springs unafraid and flaunts her simple pride Of sylvan gold and green ; While on the downs above the wintry turf The venturous violets peep, And with a softer sigh the creaming surf Seethes round the chalky steep, '3 Virgilium Vidi And on his cheek the climbing traveller feels Not quite unkind the breeze Before whose breath a bluer shadow steals Across the thawing seas, And in the sheltered combes beside the snow The first primroses dare. And the lark flutes and flutters high and low Tossed on the April air ; Now when the singing and the springing time Makes bolder every heart, Take, king of verse, the tribute of a rhyme, Albeit of little art, From one who prizes more than words can say, As life and cares grow long, What charmed with simpler spell his boyhood's day- The magic of your song ; As more and more a wiser sense divines What in quick heats of youth He deemed the form of beauty in your lines To be the soul of truth : And counts him thrice and four times fortunate To have found such signal grace Of welcome bidding pass the sacred gate, And entering, face to face Virgilium Vidi To have seen the Virgil of our time, and heard, More musical than song, The rolling cadence of the poet's word In accents true and strong, Grandly reverberant with a nation's wail Above the warrior's grave, Or softly calling to the silver sail Across the moonlit wave ; In such a moving voice as that which made The imperial mother swoon With sweet and sharp of sorrow, when it bade The purple flowers be strewn, And lavish lilies heaped upon the head Withdrawn as soon as shown, Rome's idle honour to a spirit fled Too pure to be her own ; Or sang how piled beneath Misenus' hill The trumpet and the oar Signed the dumb ghost whose living lips had skill To light the blaze of war ; The very voice of beauty and of art Where yet so strangely ring Those undernotes of tears that are a part Of every mortal thing. 15 Virgilium Vidi Dust is the singer, but the song endures, Making the old tongue of Rome, Though dead, to speak j and even so shall yours O'erleap the bounds of home, Not only to be read by him who spells A half-forgotten lore 'Mid mouldering shelves of ancient halls, or dwells Upon an old-world shore, Beside some classic hill or fount that links Our day to ages flown By Tuscan or ./Egean wave, or drinks The Danube or the Rhone, But echoing round and round our ampler earth To capes of hope and ire, And islands parted by the globe's full girth, And zones of frost and fire, Where Mississippi or Saint Lawrence drifts His rafted forests by, Or snowy-corniced Himalaya lifts The world's white roof on high. Freshwater : April, 1891. 16 In Memoriam IN MEMORIAM ALFRED LORD TENNYSON K(ll.l'WV aeurov fv SaK/ovots LAST left of the mortal Immortals, art thou too taken at last, Loved part so long of the present, must thou too pass to the past ? Thou hast lain in the moonlight and lapsed in a glory from rest into rest, And still is the teeming brain, and the warm heart cold in the breast, And frozen the exquisite fancy, and mute the magical tongue From our century's tuneful morn to its hushing eve that had sung. Crowned poet and crown of poets whose wealth and whose wit could combine Great echoes of old-world Homer, the grandeur of Milton's line, D 17 In Memoriam The sad sweet glamour of Virgil, the touch of Horace divine, Theocritus' musical sigh, and Catullus daintily fine ! Poet of Art and of Nature, of sympathies old and new, Who read in the earth and the heavens, the fair and the good and the true, And who wrote no line and no word that the world will ever rue ! Singer of God and of men, the stars were touched by thy brow, But thy feet were on English meadows, true singer of England thou ! We lose thee from sight, but thy brothers with honour receive thee now, From earliest Chaucer and Spenser to those who were nearer allied, The rainbow-radiance of Shelley and Byron's furious pride, Rich Keats and austere Wordsworth, and Browning who yesterday died By sunny channels or Venice, and Arnold from Thames' green side. Knells be rung, and wreaths be strung, and dirges be sung for the laurelled hearse, 18 In Memoriam Our tears and our flowers fade scarce more fast than our transient verse, For even as the refluent crowds from the glorious Abbey disperse, They are all forgotten, and we go back to our fleeting lives ; But we are the dying, and thou the living, whose work survives, The sum and the brief of our time, to report to the after-years Its thoughts and its loves and its hopes and its doubts and its faiths and its fears ; They live in thy lines for ever, and well may our era rejoice To speak to the ages to come with so sweet and so noble a voice. izth October, 1892. Adduces Walk ADDISON'S WALK natural cloister of our Academe, What ghost is this that greets us as we pace Beneath your boughs, the genius of the place, With soft accost that fits our musing dream ? Scholar, divine, or statesman would beseem That reverend air, that pensive-brilliant face And lofty wit and speech of Attic grace Rich in grave ornament and noble theme : 'Tis he who played unspoiled a worldly part, Taught the town truth, and in a formal age Lured fop and toast to heed a note sublime ; Who here had early learned the crowning art, To walk the world like Plato's monarch-sage, Spectator of all being and all time. 2O May- Day on Magdalen Tower MAY-DAY ON MAGDALEN TOWER WRITTEN FOR MR. HOLMAN HUNT'S PICTURE of the year, of day and May the prime ! How fitly do we scale the steep dark stair, Into the brightness of the matin air, To praise with chanted hymn and echoing chime, Dear Lord of Light, Thy lowlihead sublime That stooped erewhile our life's frail weed to wear ! Sun, clouds, and hills, all things Thou framest so fair, With us are glad and gay, greeting the time. The college of the lily leaves her sleep ; The gray tower rocks and trembles into sound, Dawn-smitten Memnon of a happier hour ; Through faint-hued fields the silver waters creep ; Day grows, birds pipe, and robed anew and crowned, Green Spring trips forth to set the world aflower. 21 Richard of Chichester TO THE RIGHT REVEREND RICHARD DURNFORD, LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER, ON ST RICHARD'S DAY M.DCCCLXXXXII Dicit quidem Petrus Ravennas, quod ipsa stepe sanc- torum nomina mer'itum indicant^ testantur insignia ; Ricardus igitur etymologice potest dici^ quasi Ridens, Carus et Dulcis . . . ut metrics merito de ipso dica- tur Nominis in primo rides^ dulcescis in imo, Si medium quesris^ c&rus amicus eris. Acta Sanctorum : Vita Sti Ricardi Cicestrensis. 22 Richard of Chichester RICHARD OF CHICHESTER ICHARD OF CHICHESTER, so ran the style Of him who now six centuries away, Ruling Cicestria's l realm ' with gentle sway, Sent light and peace out o'er our troubled isle, His very name the record of his smile, And of his sweetness and his charm, they say ; So ran the style, and s/ i HVAS that sweet moment of the year * When first the seasons' hopes appear, When through black boughs of winter seen Spring shimmers in a gauze of green. His pushing heir not yet installed The guiltless cuckoo shyly called, And like a fountain pulsing strong Larks towered and dropped on jets of song ; Nodded beneath the sheltering hill In the low breeze the daffodil, And pink the budding almond stood Blushing at her own hardihood ; While on the down so harsh and bare But yesterday, see everywhere Pale stars in purple morning set, The primrose with the violet ! ' Hesperides HESPERIDES ALL AMIDST THE GARDENS FAIR OF HESPERUS AND HIS DAUGHTERS THREE THAT SING ABOUT THE GOLDEN TREE M ISTRESS Rachel, Mistress Ruth, Dancing down the ways of youth By the dancing rills of truth, Fairy music lead your measure, Bring you to the hidden treasure And the oracles of sooth, Bid all sprites of evil vanish, Gnome and Kobold ban and banish, Charm each dragon head uncouth ! So they danced among their roses, Whom the Grecian tale discloses, In the golden-fruited garden Where the watchful snake was warden, Daughters of the sunset West, Magic maidens ever lilting, 26 Hesperides Magic bowers never wilting, While the sunset flashed and bickered And the sparkling ocean flickered And the silver Star of Even Hung above the crimson heaven, And the whirling world had rest. Till there came the hero presence Breaking on their charmed pleasaunce From the lands of work and pain, Quelled the fierce unsleeping warden, Plucked the fruitage of the garden For a gift at Wisdom's fane ; For a gift and for a token That the lulling spell was broken, All the careless years completed, All their golden nonage fleeted, And the star that lit to dreaming Must for busy morn be beaming, And the world must whirl again. Dancing down the ways of youth By the dancing rills of truth, Fairy music lead your measure, 27 Hesperides Bring you to the hidden treasure And the oracles of sooth, Bid all sprites of evil vanish, Gnome and Kobold ban and banish, Charm each dragon head uncouth ; Mistress Rachel, Mistress Ruth ! Christmas, 1895. 28 A New Year's Greeting A NEW YEAR'S GREETING T"*\EAR friends, who from your aery home ^~* Watch all the glancing fates that fleet In light and shade o'er tower and dome Of Oxford at your feet Green Spring that smiles through tears of rain, Or golden Summer's gorgeous glow Red Autumn on the fiery vane, White Winter still with snow : Thames vale in morning vapour drest, Noon brooding o'er the sultry High, The Poet's Tree by Cumnor crest Etched on the evening sky : You scan our scene, you hear our noise A sound of many changing chimes, Now sad with grief, now glad with joys, The echo of our times : 29 A New Tear's Greeting You see us through a happy haze Of new delight, of old content, But are you mindful of the days That here below you spent ? Do you to-night perchance remember A fragrant hour, a summer moon, Will you watch with us in December, As once you watched in June ? Midsummer-midnight 'twas no word Spoke from the sleeping moon-blanched tower, Only the soul the secret heard Of that fate-laden hour. Midwinter-midnight 'tis, and, hark ! From merry spire and turret ring A hundred chimes through all the dark What burthen do they sing ? * A year is flying, sighing, flowing, going, A dear old year, a kind old year : A year is meeting, greeting, showing, growing, A bright, a light New Year. 30 A New Tear's Greeting 4 New homes, new hopes, new joy, and if new trouble, Love old and new, in joy, in trouble too : Happy the single life, happier the double, Happy the old, happier the new : Two loves for one, four friends for two.' L'ENVOI Then hail, dear friends, thrice o'er, and let this letter Writ in the old year bid welcome to the new : Good was the old, but may the new be better, Dear friends, for us and you ! Magdalen College : New Tear's Eve, 1890. To the Bride TO THE BRIDE WITH A COPY OF ROBERT BRIDGES' 'SHORTER POEMS' '"TpO the bride * Her friends two Old and new Wedlock-tied Send this tome, With all message Fair, to presage Her new home. Of Oxford's best He who wrote Each sweet note, He who pressed, He who bound ; May she find It to her mind, As they've found ! 3* To J. C. S. An Envoy D TO J. C. S. ENVOY TO A BIRTHDAY ODE EAR Lady, take this little song, Not over-wise though all too long ; As tiny straws flung up in air May show what way strong winds do fare, So little words ill-chosen and weak The heart's deep voice may faintly speak. Time was I found thy stately mien As of a gracious distant queen ; Now drawing nearer to thy throne, With growing years emboldened grown, I fain take courage to record The debt that all these years afford ; And though no words on any day Nor any deeds can all repay, Bid boyhood's chivalry find end In the true service of a friend. Davos P/atz, August, 1884. To J. C. S. A Birthday Ode TO J. C. S. A BIRTHDAY ODE w HILOME I wrote a little song, Not wise, I said, though all too long, A little song great debt to pay, How great nor short nor long could say. A stately gracious queen you seemed When youth confirmed what boyhood dreamed Now youth to ampler manhood changed O'er wider fields of life has ranged ; Some flowers he finds grown fruit, some yet Flowering, and still the ancient debt Exceeds the utmost of his store, And you are worthier than before j So little words ill-chosen and weak The heart's deep voice once more must speak. Ah ! can it be a lustre's flown Since then we gathered at your throne ? How full the years, how fleet the tides, How much is gone, how much abides, 34 To J. C. S. A Birthday Ode What loss in gain, what gain in loss, What siftings of the gold from dross, What planting and what watering hours, What increase from the holier powers, What hopes grown memories, what fears, What tender joys, what tenderer tears Too sacred for a holiday, Yet never from our hearts away, While that sweet heaven-uplifted star Smiles on her earthly home from far ! So take, dear Lady of this day, Once more the tribute of a lay And gratitude how poorly drest, With five years' added interest, Nay, doubled now by that sweet tone The over-echo or my own ; For listen, and you'll hear it come A response o'er the seas of home In sweet accord to all I say From her that should be here to-day ; When all and each who call you friend Or dearer names, your court attend In act or heart, with blithest mien 35 To J. C. S. A Birthday Ode And festal garb to greet their queen, Whose crown is wisdom as of old And courtesy her orb of gold, Whose sceptre bright Ithuriel's lance, Truth kindling truth where'er it glance. Long may you reign, and long may we Or young or old your lieges be ! And for your humble loyal bard, If neither fate nor you be hard, Thus much he hopes, thus much he prays, Your royal laurel for his lays, And that on some far birthday he May see and share your Jubilee ! Davos P/atz, 2.6th August, 1889. The Sundial LINES FOR A SUNDIAL Meditatur Homo. DAWNE TO DARKE GRADE BY GRADE SHADOWES MARKE. Monet Solarium. SHADOWE HARKE WHAT YS SAYDE ! Monitio. THYNGES DIVRNALLE BIN A SHADE OF ETERNALLE. 37 Memorial. Anthem ANTHEM WRITTEN FOR AND SUNG AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE AT FROGMORE, I4/TH DECEMBER 1896 Yea, like as a father pitleth his own children, even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear Him. For He knoweth whereof we are made, He remembereth that we are but dust. \ T 7XDRK.S of earth and words of air, Dust to dust, and breath to breath, All we are, and all we were, He who made remembereth. Nought abideth, this world's scheme Perisheth and vanisheth, Passing like a broken dream Waking none remembereth. 38 Memorial Anthem Grief abideth, years returning To the hearts He chasteneth Bring again the tears of mourning j He who wept remembereth. Faith abideth, even on earth Faithfully who laboureth, Lo, his life hath endless worth, And his Lord remembereth. Hope abideth, like a star, When the darkness deepeneth, Guiding to that country far Pilgrim zeal remembereth. Love abideth, Love in heaven, Love on earth, can conquer death, So His love, by whom is given All our love, remembereth. Lord, remember, Lord, forget not ! Howsoe'er forgetful we, Lord, remember, Jesu, let not Our frail nature fall from Thee ! 39 Natural Religion NATURAL RELIGION T WANDERED by the shining river's side, * Tenderly after Spring's first warming rain Blue the heaven, and blue the mirroring tide ; From end to end of his restored domain The steely swallow swooped ; tufted and pied With blossom white and gold the meadow plain, And fringed with rush and reed, whereby did glide Sweet Thames aripple with rustling glistening train. I wandered by the steaming river's side, Sultry and sick the air, a stagnant thread The shrunken stream erewhile so flush and wide From pool to pool crawled in his shrivelled bed ; Vanished the springing flowers, yellow and dried A stubble of withered grass showed in their stead, And scarce Thames' honest face could be descried With scummy froth and rotting weed o'erspread. I wandered by the river's side once more ; As to some mask of death face-cloth and pall 40 Natural Religion The chill white mists clung close, an iron floor Hard, cold as death itself, with icy wall Pent the invisible stream from shore to shore ; Silence was over all, death everywhere, Death desolate, mute, motionless and frore, On sullen earth, clogged flood and starving air. Again I wandered by the river's shore ; Motion was there again, tumult and throes, For all the surface heaved and cracked and tore Riven and splintered into jagged floes That gnashed and justled as they downward bore, Griding and scoring all the tender bank And sweeping flotage or wreck and drift before The ruining hurry of their turbulent rank. Then came a warm wet wind, incessantly The rain descended and the tempest beat On sodden grass and black unsheltering tree, Or changed to colder airs with hail and sleet Lashing the wrinkled flood and shivering lea, Till all the cleansing cycle was complete, And joy returned and bright tranquillity, And to the stream once more I bent -my reet : G 41 Natural Religion Nor less than this, nor less than death, I cried, Than death and dissolution must befall, Ere earth could see again his summer pride, Or spring her budding maidenhood recall ; Fair things must fade that beauty may abide, Love is the purpose as the source of strife, So closely link the powers that look so wide, And life death's death, and death the life of life ! A Book of Daintiest Verse TO L. R. WITH A COPY OF ROBERT BRIDGES' 'SHORTER POEMS' '"TTVAKE, friend of all that's good and fair, * This book of daintiest verse, And let each coy retired air Its music rare rehearse. The silver Thames by summer kis't, The rustling brakes of Spring Or Autumn woods when gales are whist, Such songs as these they sing. Such songs in England's flowering day Made merry England brave, From honied Chaucer shrewdly gay To Wither blithely grave. 43 Leaving Graythwaite FOR LEAVING GRAYTHWAITE BY WINDERMERE T"\EAR the gray walls hid in the greenwood side *~* Cresting the sunny shore, That sleeping sees the snowy canvas glide And hears the oar ; Dear the swirt stream that tumbling through the glen Scurries across the mead, Fit emblem of the restless life of men With peace to end its speed ; Dear the high moor with purple heath o'erblown, With bracken and with ling, Haunts only to the screaming plover known Or the wild hawk's wide wing j There lonely straying ofttimes have I vowed My friendship to the rill, Or sworn me sister to the wandering cloud Or far-off solemn hill. 44 Leaving Graythwaite Ah sheltering garden of my girlhood's day, Ah vocal solitude, Into the world of men I take my way With all its murmurs rude ; Your charmed woods I leave, yet ere I go Into the hum and strife May something of your tranquil beauty flow And pass into my life ! So when I weary with the stifling breath And deafen with the noise, Shall come to save me from the spirit's death The memory of your joys ; Tired of the town my rancy's feet shall tread Once more the upland sod, And lead once more the days my childhood led With Nature and with God. 45 An Excuse AN EXCUSE asked me, friend, to send a Sonnet, I wrote that I would think upon it, But Love is neither sold nor bought, And sonnets do not come with thought, Unless the touch of fire be given The Muse alone can filch from Heaven ; So though my answer linger late, I crave your patience still to wait Till sunnier hours and skies more kind Befriend a something torpid mind. When this relentless winter yields, And cowslips tuft your Pencombe fields, And when in Maudlin May is born With chant and chime and dissonant horn, And trees grow green and rivers glisten, And for the cuckoo's call we listen, And larger light gives larger scope To soul and sense, why then we'll hope The month and Muse may me inspire With happier chance to prove the lyre, And then may be I'll send a Sonnet, For in meantime I'll think upon it. 46 ' Well-languaged Daniel* TO HENRY OLIVE DANIEL OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, WITH A COPY OF THE WORKS OF SAMUEL DANIEL THE POET ANIEL, well-lettered son of Somerset, And even as he who did these lays indite 4 Well-languaged,' take them, yours they are by right Of name and nurture, and hereafter let Lest we fair Delia's Petrarch should forget Some choice exemplar stand for our delight, Type, paper, margin, all things, trimly dight, Your Excudebat for their warrant set ! i For you enrich the poet-shrining shelf With daintiest treasures old and new, and give In many a nice and justly-ordered page Back to mechanic days of haste and pelf The tasteful Tudor touch, so these shall live Green as their shire and yours from age to age. 47 To America TO AMERICA WRITTEN DURING THE SICKNESS OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD, SEPTEMBER l88l T^\EAR second home beyond the misty sea, ' Shore where the brethren of our fathers sought With that chaste bride for whom our fathers fought From storms and foes escaped in peace to be : That bride whom all too soon fate's irony Bade their sons choose both peace and kin before, Then when not England on her children war, But England's blinded rulers did decree. Dear home and folk, whom still one tongue assures Blood of our blood, who know spite waves and years One fealty to one freedom ours and yours, Now in your night of trials and of fears While light is not and sorrow's ache endures, Our prayers you have may you not need our tears ! 48 A Hospital ST. PETER'S HOME / "T" V O suffer or to succour, 'tis the school * Where best we learn what things have truest worth Not man's frail glories nor his frailer mirth, Nor all that doth his purblind sense befool ; But to discern by Heaven's inmost rule Flowers in the desert, manna amid dearth, In tears the baptism of the soul's new birth, In pain the angel of the healing pool. Therefore this House is even God's Hostelry, Where with yet throbbing limbs His pilgrims wait, Under the wall of His own City of Peace, Till thou, the great Apostle of the key, Shall at His bidding ope the golden gate, And all their labour and their longing cease. H 49 The Nightingale Poet WILLIAM COLLINS SCHOLAR OF WINCHESTER 1733-40 COMMONER OF QUEEN'S 1740-41. DEMY OF MAGDALEN 1741-44 IGH TIN GALE poet, all too delicate For the world's noon ; shy student, with the fair Vision of ancient Hellas and the rare Magic of her lost lyres impassionate ; Thou for a while of freedom, love, and fate, Nature, and man's regret, didst trill thine air, Thy bosom to the thorn, but could'st not bear Of raptured frenzy the o'erteeming freight : Yet for thy suffering large reward was given, In weakness to forerun corrival strength And catch the music of the coming days, From thy mad cell to hear the voice of Heaven After earth's Babel, and on earth at length Pure laurels and thy brethren's nicest praise. Early Travel EARLY TRAVEL WEPT by the breaths of memory FVom those far heights that roll, What thousand shimmering pictures lie Glassed in thy depths, O soul ! What cherished scenes from that blithe day When first by happy chance, Our careless trio took its way Beyond the seas to France : When whirled across a weary land All day on wheels of fire, At even how glad we saw them stand, The peaks of our desire. What towering barriers' shadowy sleep Lulled by the pastoral tune Of tinkling kine that trampled deep In the lush fields of June ! Early Travel What clustering huts that barred the way, What modest faces shy, What simple souls' untrammelled play, True seed of Arcady ! What scented pine-trees' whispered moan, What chime of silver rills 'Mid flowerets pure as blow alone Upon the sacred hills ! To rise, to climb, beneath the night, And while the day was born, How flushed and paled till all was bright Horn after icy horn ! How watched a silent goddess grand The mountain of the Rose ; How Cervin ramped twixt land and land, An obelisk of snows ! To pause beneath the sombre arch Cool in its noontide gloom, And seem to catch the echoing march Of the stern sons of Rome ; 52 \ Early Travel Or make beneath Italian sky The dusty defile ring, Racing the flood that thundered by Swoln with the spates of spring ; Lo, piled upon the mountain side The towers that Virgil drew, " Rivers 'neath ancient bulwarks glide,"- That master-hand how true! And ah, what gentler dear delights By thy loved lake Lucerne, Slow sailing under dreaming heights To watch thy waters burn, When evening on thy pathways glowed, And streamed by spire and bridge, And distant dim Pilatus showed More soft his traitor's ridge ! 53 Youth's Eclipse YOUTH'S ECLIPSE OICK Autumn spreads his magic tints ^ O'er earth and sea, The landscape's hectic splendour hints The close to be ; One hue the smouldering forest paints And scarlet skies, In mist the narrowing evening faints And fades and flies, Cold vapours rise a thousand shadows blending Of gold and gray, And sad and swift in dim mysterious ending Burns down the day. My soul, my soul, why also dies thy laughter In chills and fears? Why dost thou strain and yearn to follow after With sighs and tears? Further than night and winter thou must follow The goal to see, 54 Youth's Eclipse Else Spring returned all vain and Summer hollow To thee will be: Once hast thou wept o'er Autumn and o'er even, Thou'rt past the door Of Eden : farewell happy early Heaven, For evermore ! 55 Bristol and Clifton BRISTOL AND CLIFTON SWEET to hear and feel their strife That battle in the human cause, And make their mother Nature's laws, Work out their higher, richer life. Ay, sweet the whirring of the loom, And tramping hoof and rolling wain, And feet that pass and come again, And dusky, overhanging gloom. And sweet to see beside the quays The stately ships from distant climes, And hear the pealing steeple-chimes Half drowned in din of thronging ways. O sweet to leave the common pen, To feel a world of wider span, To cast the appanage of man, And think of other things than men. 56 Bristol and Clifton Ay, sweet the sultry summer sleep, With chirring birds in brake and fern, With silver laughter of the burn, With distant plashing of the deep. Or sweet from oft" some breezy wold That crowns the rugged-pillared scar, To catch beyond the woods afar The sunset ocean shot with gold. 57 Microcosm D THE MICROCOSM ARK against the sky Rises the mountain wall, But bright, how bright In the summer light Dashed into white with fall on fall The streamlet hurries by ! And here will I lay me down, Little stream, for a while by thee, Thou one among many, unnoticed, unknown, Of all save yon wandering bee, Or these flies whose world is this pool of thine, Wherein to live and to love, to rejoice and repine. Yes ! here will I lay me down By this pool and this fall of thine, And watch the droplets gather and glitter and slip From the pendent mosses that fringe the edge Of thy tiny channel, or tip Some infinitesimal ledge. 58 Microcosm Since not Niagara's self Is more wondrous one whit than this, Though it swoop a sea from a continent shelf To plunge in an ocean abyss : For these delicate spikes of flowers, And tremulous bents of grass, Are waved by the self-same breeze That sways the giant trees, Or sweeps the Alpine pass, Or buffets the soaring pride of sky-built city towers : And each fairy filament, And feathery frond of fern, Is strung of no other element Than builds yon mountain chain, Or moons that wax and wane, Or suns and stars that burn : And were this to stay in its course, Or these waters turn back their way, The sun would stop and the moon would stay, And the stars that are whirled by the self-same force Through the cycles of months and of years, of night and of day. 59 Microcosm Ay, wondrous indeed art thou, But how more wonderful I, For thou wilt flow as thou flowest now, And wear the hills till they sink and are low, And through changes endure for ever and on, For thy force and thy stuff will never be gone, But I shall shortly die ! 60 The Everlasting No THE EVERLASTING NO ' I V HOU who hast seen for once and all the vision, *- Thou who hast felt high discontent And known the bitter sweet of great ambition, Not for these short-lived follies thou wast meant. Yet which to follow of the striving voices, Faith, knowledge, nature, still to meet Surfeit in pleasure, in faith superstition, In knowledge weariness, in love deceit ? Forth to the wilderness ? Ah I see only Desert winds shaking the desert reeds : Ignorant and thirsting still and lonely Shall solitude suffice my thousand needs ? 61 The Everlasting No What though the inner eye be filled with seeing, What though the mountain and the plain be great, Only to think and brood in dreams of being, This cannot solve the riddle of our fate. Sight of the stars and conscious sense of duty, These are but drops in the still vacant heart, These have I known and felt and loved their beauty With half my soul, nor filled the other part. 62 The Golden Age THE GOLDEN AGE A Y ME ! ay me ! how sweet * * With eyes of yearning far behind us cast, Tired eyes atingle with the bitter blast, Tired eyes and sore with all the glare and heat That doth so fiercely beat On our poor brows who wage Here in the blinding dust and sharp turmoil Hard warfare, wearying strife, And live our workday life Of unremitting toil In this our iron age, How sweet, how glad to turn us to the past, How glad, how sweet to gaze With yearning eyes far backward cast, On those fair seasons of the world's first dawn, And scenes so far withdrawn, 63 The Golden Age As through a golden haze Lit with a rich yet tempered light, Till our outwearied sight Be comforted feasting on the green of grass, And violet gray of sky, And waters hyaline, And vistas softly lucent wherein pass Fair forms of men and women by, And shadowy ampler shapes than these, divine ! 64 For a Children^ s Game I FOR A CHILDREN'S GAME For a Little Girl AM a modest Violet Dew tears of joy my dark eyes wet, My fragrance fills my lowly nest, The humblest oft are happiest. For a Girl I AM a stately Foxglove tall I ring my nodding bells and call Ho busy bees that wandering roam, Here's honey, honey, for your home ! For a Boy A BULLRUSH I on river bank- Stand with my men in serried rank, And straight and proud keep watch and ward O'er all who pass the shining ford. K 65 Greek Children's Swallow Song GREEK CHILDREN'S SWALLOW SONG T HE swallow is here, is here Bringing the joyous spring, Bringing the joyous year On bosom white and sable wing. Quick, out with the kneaded cake From the house of plenteous ease, And a cup of wine our thirst to slake And a basket filled with cheese ! Nor on white bread nor brown Does the swallow look down. Shall we take or shall we be gone ? If thou givest aught But woe if not, We will not let thee alone. 66 Greek Children's Swallow Song Shall we take the door or the lintel Or thy wife who sits within ? We'll easily carry her off, She is so small and thin ; But if thou givest a portion, Great may thy portion be. Ope, ope to the swallow the door ! We are no sages with foreheads hoar But only children are we. Athenteus, viii. 360 c. The Glory of Hellas R rdv fv 0e/3/A07ruAcus Oavovrwv ENOWNED their lot and fair their fame, Thermopylae's great dead ; Their grave a shrine is, theirs for pity acclaim, And memory in the stead Of tears ; a shroud So rich, so proud, Nor mouldering stain Nor conquering time shall blot ; The c Heroes' Close ' this plot All Hellas' glory to its tenant hath ta'en. So witnesses Leonidas, the King Of Sparta, he who left behind Rich ornament of valorous mind And praise that bards shall never cease to sing. Simonides ap. Diod. Sic. xi. II. 68 ' My Late Espoused Saint ' B MY LATE ESPOUSED SAINT' ELOVED she moved among us, Beloved she lies in her grave, To a home, to a husband's bosom Came never a bride more brave. Tomb of a buried mortal Count not her barrow then, As the shrines of the gods are honoured Be it honoured of men ! Climbing the crooked way There shall the traveller say, 4 She died on a day for her husband And now she's a spirit in heaven ; All hail, Lady, thy blessing Here to us be it given ! ' Euripides: Alcestis ; vv. 991 1004. 69 Vanity Fair VANITY FAIR T TIM, Parmeno, I reckon happiest * * Who, looking calmly on this glorious pageant Of common sun, stars, water, cloud, and fire Awhile, soon takes his journey whence he came. For these, if thou should live to be an hundred, Thou'lt still see there, or if thy years be few ; And aught more glorious thou'lt never see. Count then our time on earth as a World's Fair, Where mankind gather from their several homes, A chaffering crowd, thieves, dice, the fun o' the fair, The first to pack his traps and leave his inn Takes the best victual and the good word of all ; But he who lingers late, cleaned out and broken, Finds sour old age and want come surely on him Bandied about 'mid enemies and snares : Who comes to stay, goes sorrily to's grave. From Menander's 'Changeling' A Greek Addis on A GREEK ADDISON Cf. t Spectator,' No. 26 XT7HENEVER thou would'st know thy real worth, Mark, as thou goest, the gravestones of the dead ! There shrunk to ashes and a puff of dust, Lie kings and kesars once the great and wise, And they whom wealth and they whom birth made boastful, Or their great glory or their shining beauty, But nought of all could fence them against time, Mortal they were and found one common grave ; Look on the dead and know man's true estate ! From an unknown play vf Menander. 7 1 The Old Yacht THE OLD YACHT '~T~ A HAT craft, my friends, you there behold, -* The fastest thing afloat of old, If you'll believe her tale, was she ; * No timber ever swam the sea But she could give it the go-by, Were need with oar or sail to fly ' ; A truth fell Adria's beach allows, Aye, and the Circlet Isles, she vows, And glorious Rhodes and savage Thrace, Propontis, and thy wreckful race, Pontus, where she a ship to-day Was once a waving wood, she'll say, Whose vocal tresses whispered oft Upon Cytorus' ridge aloft. Pontic Amastris and ye rocks Cytorian hight that bear the box, Ye knew, ye know, and ye can tell How since the hour her birth befell, 72 The Old Yacht Yours was the top on which she stood, So much she claims, and yours the flood First wet her maiden oars, anon Through chafing channels many a one She bore her lord, howe'er the gale On port or starboard woo'd the sail, Or if heaven's influence following fair Strained either sheet with equal air ; Nor ever vow to gods of shore For her did crew or captain pour, While from old Ocean's farthest bound To this clear lake her way she found. But that is ancient history, To-day in harbour she's laid by To rest and rust self-dedicate To Castor and to Castor's mate. Catullus: Carm. iv. 73 The Poet to the Orator T THE POET TO THE ORATOR hULLY, of all Rome's progeny Most eloquent that e'er can be, Or is, or was in history, Full thanks to you Catullus gives The very poorest bard that lives, Of all Rome's bards as much the worst As you of all her bar the first. Catullus: Carm. xlix. 74 Pereunt et Imputantur PEREUNT ET IMPUTANTUR "P\EAR Martial, if with you I could ^* Taste days of gladness free from care, Arrange my moments as I would, Leisure, and life worth living, share, On halls and houses of the great, Dull glories of heraldic state, Crabbed cases in the dismal court, On these, on these we would not wait : But walk and talk and book and sport, The cool alcove, the shady tree, The bath, the Maiden Fount, should be Business and haunt for you and me. To-day, alas ! nor you nor I Can be ourselves ; the bright hours meant To be so good, they pass and fly, Still scored against us c had and spent.' Ah, is not this the moral, say, He who might live must not delay ? Martial : Epig. v. 20. 75 Epitaph on a Little Girl B EPITAPH ENEATH this rising mound entombed is laid delis' Canace ; poor little maid, Her seventh winter was her very last ; O sin, O shame ! yet stay, you weep too fast ; Life's transient term here is no place to blame, Sad was her death, more sad the way it came : A wasting plague her beauty reft away And made her darling face its helpless prey, Ruthless, her very kisses to consume, Nor give her lips unrifled to the tomb : So sudden must he swoop, the vulture god, At least he might some other way have trod ; Nay, Death made haste her sweet voice to imprison, Lest that dear tongue should coax e'en the grim grave to listen. Martial: Epig., xi. 8 1. 76 Wer Nie Sein Brod