THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES POEMS BY K. J. F. <f>i\ov MCMVI RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, B.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. 18821906 " There shall be as the shaking of an olive tree, and as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done."" THIS book has been privately printed with the knowledge that the friends of the author will be glad to share some of his inner thoughts. The Epilogue was written a few days before his death, when he lay in a garden where there are roses. A few of the poems were collected into a note- book, and the rest were found loose among his papers. Whether any of them are in the final form in which they would have been published, or whether he proposed to publish them, can never be known ; but it is due to his memory to state that he did not prepare them for publication. vii CONTENTS PAGE Lovely the land 1 WINCHESTER With groping skill 6 The Blue, the Brown, the Red . . . 7 On a Dead House-master . . . . .10 The First Fifteen 11 Domum Night ....... 13 Non Nobis 14 CAMBRIDGE The Fiftieth Meeting of the X Society ... 19 From the Minute-Book of the X Society . . 21 Sir William Browne Prize Epigram . . .22 Another Epigram 24 Farewell to the 'Varsity 25 ix CONTENTS VARIA Life 31 Friendship 33 Sympathy 35 Retrospects ..... 39 Farewell 41 Science 44 The Might-have-been 45 Despair 49 In a London Cemetery . . 53 FRAGMENTS .... . 59-73 TRANSLATIONS Plato : Apology xxxii . 77 Pindar : Fragment cxxxi . 82 Pindar : Fragment cxxxvii . . 83 Catullus : ci .... .84 Catullus : xcvi .... . 86 Martial : I. 88 87 EPIIX)GUE POEMS Lorcly the land that is over that matt; Softly the melodies beckon and call, Promising freely a City of Gold, Fruitage unfading and rapture untold. Dark is the gate to it, narrow and small, Storms all about it and mists over all; Few that can enter it, few that can find , Most of us wearily wander and blind. WINCHESTER E 2 WITH GROPING SKILL WITH groping skill I keep and faulty care This little corner of God's garden plot ; Young souls the nursling beds my labour sows, A soil that good from ill discerneth not, But at a seeming random takes my seeds, Now tares, and now a rose ; And straight the weeds to wild luxuriance flare, And choke the rose that in slow patience breeds. Lord of the garden, guide my words and deeds, That all be seeds of roses, none of tare : Lest, when the Lord return to view His ground, He findeth only weeds ; and mine the blame, And mine the sorrow when the souls I love Are dug and hoe'd by long remorse and shame, 5 To clear my careless plantings, while their pain My greater pain shall prove; And bright boy-faces, marred with many a wound I might have shielded, through the deep ingrain Shall gleam sad eyes upon me, sick in vain To bear their burden, so they might be crowned. THE BLUE, THE BROWN, THE RED THOUGH many, many here to-day Shall part to meet no more, And Life shall bear us far and wide To ev'ry sea and shore, No Wykehamist shall e'er forget The school where he was bred, The cloisters grey, the work and play, The Blue, the Brown, the Red. O, blue the seas the English rule, And brown the English land, And red the English blood that flows By evVy sea and strand ! We bear, in token that our best In England's cause have bled For centuries of sacrifice, The Blue, the Brown, the Red. O, red the clouds at early morn, And blue the noonday sky, And brown the twilight shadows fall Before the sunbeams die ! In boyhood, manhood, age alike, Where'er our life be led, Our mother school our lives shall rule, The Blue, the Brown, the Red. O, blue for striving thought and faith That soar beyond the skies, And brown for sombre duteous lives, And red for sacrifice ! 8 O sons of Wykehairfs family, Where heroes trod, ye tread Your whole life through do honour to The Blue, the Brown, the Red. O, blue the eternal sky above, And brown the earth beneath, And red the rising sun that wakes The world each day from death ! While sky above and earth beneath Behold the sunbeams spread, Our mother school shall work and rule, The Blue, the Brown, the Red. ON A DEAD HOUSE-MASTER KINDLY guide of strange young steps New-exiled from guardian home, Now thy long, long term is o'er, Now thy holy-days are come. In thy Home beyond the Tide Find an even kinder Guide. 10 THE FIRST FIFTEEN PRIZES come, and prizes go, Life has many a joy to show, Many an eager strife between, Battles many and battles keen ; But none can beat And none defeat The joy of the first fifteen. Crawling, crawling, slow, how slow Minute by minute the long hours go Spirit and body are all aglow, All of a passion keen, ii Work how work when the mind's away, Pondering over the points of play? Work how work when to-day's the day, Day of the first fifteen ? 12 DOMUM NIGHT OUR latest sunset gilds the dreaming vale, To smile farewell the very shadows glow ; The far hills vanish : dewy slumber steals On silent meadows and the Itchen's flow. The last light fades ; the grey Court rings with cheers, The Chapel fills, and many a sainted head On lowly brass or painted window high Connects our worship with our many dead. The solemn prayer for those who come no more, The hymn that tells of One the same for aye, The clustered partings, long walks round the Court, Uneasy sleep and then another day. 13 NON NOBIS WE thank Thee first, Our Father, Beneath whose hand did grow Our grassy open downland, Our silver streams below ; Whose finger paints our meadows And tints the clouds above, Whose mercy saves our country And makes her worth our love. We thank Thee for our Founder, And all who wrought his plan, Through whom we learn the manners That make the Christian man : 14 We thank Thee for Thy favour, And for Thy grace we pray On every good endeavour In house, in work, in play. We thank Thee for our fathers, Who trod where now we tread, Our ageless roll of heroes, Our unremembered dead, Whose graves the world encircles From South to Northern ice, Or lived and died forgotten In patient sacrifice. ( Unfinished) CAMBRIDGE THE FIFTIETH MEETING OF THE X SOCIETY, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE I DREAMED a dream when the night was lone, And the stars were sighing for dawn I dreamed that the fetters of Space were flown, And the curtains of Time withdrawn. From the aisles of the Abbey, from grassy graves, Each soul of a poet was fleeting, Like a flowery breath from the garden of Death, To a feast for our fiftieth meeting. Where Helicon longs for the Muses tread And the voices that ring no more, With a misty moon for their lamp overhead, They feasted, the poets of yore. 19 c 2 To Homer's "At Home" they are all of them come, They are singing and talking and eating; They are all of them tippling, from Dante to Kipling, On the night of our fiftieth meeting. They feed on the heart of the hurrying years, Their wine is the world's desire; They drink the deep water of human tears That throbs in the veins like fire ; They talk as the whisper of wandering waves, But they cease from their talk and their eating, When rises the host to propose the toast Of the X and its #tieth meeting. 20 FROM THE MINUTE-BOOK OF THE X SOCIETY . . ' GROWN in the garb of the gossamer grape, Brief as the bloom of the vine Trampled, and tumbled, and torn in the vats, Love is a psychical wine, Stored in the cool of the earth for a while, Waiting a banquet divine. 21 THE CREEK EPIGRAM WHICH OBTAINED SIR WILLIAM BROWNE'S GOLD MEDAL, 1903. SUBJECT 6vTO. tyiXtlv (6e\ovra 8e EPIGRAM j~tve, fca\bv TO tfiv K dray ay tov eariv aira<jiv <yap oyaew? vvKTi i jr\avel<> re (f>i\e2, <f>iXia<; teal repirvov epwra KOI TTOVOV evavSpov <f)povriBa r ovpaviav rpv%o/jievov$ 8' ijB'f] KOL/JLO. rov aicrjparov VTTVOV -irefi-rrei 0' ware \adelv oitcaB' \rj\vdoTa<;. 22 IDEM AXGLICE A LITTLE helpless child, astray in night, I reached the Inn of Light. They bade me welcome, richest cheer they brought, Love, Friendship, Work, and Thought. Then when I was aweary, last and best, They gave me dreamless rest; And sent me on my way, that I might come Unknown, unknowing, Home. ANOTHER EPIGRAM FROM the blind earth a tender bud I came: Griefstorms and weeping showers^ Did strengthen me, and Love's celestial flame Drew forth my hidden powers ; But ere my blossom cast its scent abroad The Gardener plucks me for his Master's board. 'E/c 7779 el/At Tv<f>\fj<;, fjLa\aicov S' epov d\ryea tcdOpe^rev Sd/cpv' , e etc fcd\VKO? S' ijSrj \yeapasi\ r^v avOepa o Krj7roK6fJio<: Sairo? dyaX^a 24 FAREWELL TO THE 'VARSITY ON the threshold now of manhood I can scan the years to be The monotonous career of Prim respectability : Tidy hat and coat eternal, Badge of commonplace's slave; In a trim suburban villa, Till a trim suburban grave. O the prospect all entrancing, Had I never been a child, If there did not wail within me Stirring voices of the wild ! 25 O ye dawns upon the mountains, O ye rosy peaks of snow, O ye misty lakes and rivers Gleaming faintly far below ; O ye moors across the water, O ye winds across the fen, How regard ye us, your brothers, Us, the modern race of men ? We have stuffed our brains with knowledge Till we cannot know you more; We have sold our souls for riches, And the bargain leaves us poor; We have made the world a loveless, Eyeless, thoughtless, dead machine; We have ugliness for monarch, And the dividend for queen. 26 Give the crowd that asks them, Fortune, Pomp and circumstance and state : But to me no slum-born favours, Neither wealth nor station great ; Put me far from their possessors, In a world beyond their ken, Eye to eye with Nature's glories, Eye to eye with Nature's men. Near the vastness of the mountains, 'Neath the broadness of the sky, With a spirit widened by them I would live and I would die. VARIA LIFE 1. Is it only an evening odour Born of the closing flowers, The sad strange note of a fragile harp,* This fugitive life of ours ? Will the mind, with its worldwide yearning, Torture of doubt and toil, Like labours and pains of the passing flesh, Have an end in the dull dead soil ? Is to die but to sleep at nightfall, To rest from the long day, life, An infinite peace for evermore, Forgetfulness after strife ? * PLATO, Phaedo 31 Death the end ? Away with tears, Drug thee with the wine of joy ; Life is over ere it cloy, Drown thy sorrows, drown thy fears. Dark the earth where grows the weed ; Howling wind and sobbing sky Bow it, warp it till it die, Vanish. But, behold, a seed ! Sow the seed in tropic bowers, Calm for tempest, sun for rain, See it raise its leaf again ; Blossom with ethereal flowers. FRIENDSHIP 1. EYES cannot see a friend : no sense has trod That shrine, or can tread ; learn your neigh- bour's worth By imitation, merit's only test ; Try him in storm and sunshine, grief and mirth, Till years of effort bring similitude Between you, best with best ; Till melting soul with soul, not clod with clod, You reach, your unity by death renewed, God, immortality, infinitude ; This is the way to friendship, this to God : 33 D, For deeds, not words, make up the Godward way, Not prayers repeated, nor undoubted creeds. Not everyone that saith " Lord, Lord ! ", but he That, doubting or believing, doth the deeds The Lord did, his the Kingdom. Friends of man, He saith, are friends of Me. Take heart, O doubters, do the best ye may ; Facts, fictions of that Life forbear to scan, But act His teaching, imitate His plan, So shall ye meet Him, soul to soul, some day. 34 SYMPATHY WE are strangers, never Arm in arm we twine ; Yet my heart is ever One with thine. Man and mount and meadow, Ocean's changing tide Outwardly are shadow, Soul inside. Through the phantoms groping, Blind as blind the mole, Struggling, yearning, hoping, Soul seeks soul. 35 D 2 On the phantoms gazing, Earth with earthy eyes, Comes a force erasing The disguise : Comes a sense exciting Sympathies to roll, Thought to thought uniting, Soul to soul. Some mysterious token, Clear in spirit speech, Joins the threads long broken Each to each. Dimly now discerning, Ring the awakening chords, Oversweet with yearning, More than words : 36 Harps awhile recalling Tunes forgotten long, Random fancies falling Into song ; As in recollection, Rainbow'd thro 1 our tears, Childhood's resurrection, Golden years. Then the chords long broken Break again apart ; Stores the truth unspoken Either heart ; Till the Dawn awaked Rout the shades of night, And all souls stand naked In the light, 37 Powers exerted wholly, Secrets wholly known ; Then I'll claim thee solely For my own. RETROSPECTS WHEN we are under the grasses, When we are under the sod, Where but the mourner passes In the still presence of God If there be aught hereafter Making our fugitive years More than a thoughtless laughter, Hiding the silent tears Shall we, with infinite grieving, Out of our lonely night, Look on the land of the living Golden in memory's light ? 39 Grief for the wrongs we committed Now that their wounds are revealed ? Grief for the sorrows permitted Which but a word would have healed ? For opportunities wasted Now opportunity's o'er ? Wine of the soul never tasted Now we can taste it no more ? Grief for the soul's many powers Wasted and weakened and fled, Seeds that might have been flowers, Had we but cared for them, dead ? 40 FAREWELL I HAD a friend once, We were at one Walking together ; Warm was the sun. Steep the white pathway Under our feet, Worn by the flocks and Cracked by the heat. Haze in the valley, Clear on the down ; There we sat gazing Into the town, Thinking together Under the sun ; Nature was smiling When we were one. Grasshoppers whirring Through the hot hours Butterflies dancing Over the flowers ; Hedges of roses, Murmuring bees, Birds all around us, Thyme in the breeze ; Music in Nature, We had our part ; Beauty in Nature, Love in the heart. \ 42 I had a friend once, Now I have none ; Bleak is the country, Chill is the sun. Fairer their faces, Brighter their fame ; 1 cannot alter, I am the same. Love is undying ; Friendship is done. Go and be happy, I am alone. 43 SCIENCE ROLL back incalculable time, Make wisest man an idiot ape ; Reduce him to a formless shape That groped and grovelled in the slime : Let all the world's amazing frame And countless worlds of worlds unite To wander through the primal night, One awful mist of glowing flame : Yet all the slow-unfurling scroll, The stars, the seas, the bird, the man, Are steps of one ascending plan, The raiment of eternal Soul. 44 THE ETERNAL SHADOW OF THE MIGHT- HA VE-BEEN IN dreams I saw a garden. Clinging mists Wept over it, and on the wailing winds Was felt a voiceless sorrow of despair, Such woe as deepens in a widow's eyes Who weeps an only son. Along dark paths, Half seen in trailing vapour, draggled plants, Deformed, rent, flowerless, earthy. Overhead A glory, wherein gleamed ethereal flowers, Like the rich blooms of hot Guiana woods, Or Alpine pastures, where the thawing snow Has left a flame of flowers ; but more fair These spirit blossoms than the best on earth. " What place is this ? " I murmured. Then a voice Came floating to me, like a dying man's, 45 Whose words come faintly from far fields of death, Beyond the waters of oblivion : " Hell ; And we in Hell, who, being what we are, Must here behold what we too might have been. I lived a life that men call good, had wealth My fathers left me, horses, servants, houses ; These goods Death made another's. For know well, As in the body, so in mind and soul, Not by the number of the things we own, Not by the number of the facts we know, Or rules of conduct studied, but by use We brace the muscles, rouse the hidden powers, Attain our full perfection. 11 Then another : " Yea, for I lived encloistered, far from all 46 Temptation. Lo, this flaccid soul, unnerved, Having no care for effort." And a third : " I gathered books about me, lived in books, And now the books have left me knowing naught. Learn then to do thy thinking for thyself. 1 ' Then saw I mine own soul. In spring the ferns Along the ditches thrust up tiny curls, Green coils, the promise of great leafy fronds. So showed my soul a group of tiny coils. Then voices whispered to me, " Tend them well, By Effort : Effort feeds the growth of soul. Think hard thoughts, do hard actions, such as wake The whole glad manhood of the heart, to strive, To battle down resistance, and to stand A little higher up the mountain side 47 Whose summit glistens in the sun of God. Go where the fight is fiercest. Daily fight Makes the best fighters. So at last with peace Pass through this Valley of the Might-have-been Unshamed." 48 DESPAIR DARK, blind dark, tangible and infinite, Overwhelms my world of sunshine, beauty, life. Life but vague films, a maddening brain's romance, Earth^ beauty, life, and sunshine one machine Of grim precision, wheel on wheel for ever Spun on by never-ending misery. Man, sprung from age-long agony in brutes, Born into agony, ephemeral ; and then Annihilation. Earth a lifeless death. And I alone. I know not if these men Be aught ; they chatter, slumber, weep and die Alone in formless night : the hurrying wheel Hurls me forth, like a lonely constellation A million million miles from any star, Blind, lightless, lifeless, thro 1 eternal night. And yet I only know that I am I Cast sprawling amid things that are not I Mere shapes that grow before the closing eyes. Yet something lives beneath the mortal veil : From woodlands sleeping to the summer glare, From the great winds that wail o'er the grey fen, The chant of timeless waves, that rise and ebb In storm or calm upon the timeless shores ; The fair, calm eyes of children, or the peace Of reverend age, or sight of happy homes, From human gladness and from human tears, The mellow sadness or the fire of Music, From the soft looks of pictured beauty steals A whispered echo to my inmost soul, Like a friend's voice along the joining wires, And spirit talks to spirit and is glad. So In life's brief span, as in a darkened room, With here and there a guttering light, we sit : Without the lonely night, Infinity. O, but to pierce the enwrapping mists, and see A star above to guide us ! I have stood On a grey headland, when the lashing seas Were wrapped in rolling vapours, and the mist Stood like a wall between me and the land. And I, alone in the grey chillness, felt The horror of that primal chaos-gloom When the " earth was without form and void." Then swift A flying sunbeam smote the fog aside, And all was joyous light and loveliness. " Let there be light, and there was light." So now, Let there be light in this grey phantom world, 51 E 2 Smite down the mortal mists, and let me see What truth there be beyond. What gentle presence steals unseen upon me, More soft than summer breezes when they kiss The moonlit bushes by a moonlit sea ? An anodyne to fevered nerves, that soothes My tangled brain, and floats my quieted sense Upon the downy wings of waking dreams ? DEATH : On tortured limbs and aching brains My mother-hands I lay : My touch can still my children's pains And soothe their tears away. O ye that labour, faint, and weep, Come unto me ; I give you sleep. IN A LONDON CEMETERY 1. SIXTY years he laboured, Weary, worn ; Hark, the peaceful singing Sunday morn. 2. Pent in London's gloom and glare Fifty summers past : Boundless ocean, open sky, God's own light at last. 53 (ON NAMELESS TOMBS.) Cradled in a crowded room, Stabled, starved in filth and gloom, Thrust into a nameless tomb, What the object of our birth? Croesus' splendour, Mammon's mirth- Such is equity on earth. 4. Within the secret cells of Life He wrought by slow design. At last the scaffolding is down ; Behold the perfect shrine ! 54 5. Across our valley of Despair and Doubt, Where chill the clinging vapours lie, He travelled lightless, till at last shines out The Sun of Certainty. 55 FRAGMENTS FRAGMENTS OF A PLAY A PROLOGUE. I WALKED at even by a lonely sea. Across the East a giant form of dark Rose, spreading wings of cloud, to wrap the sky. Against his coming shrank the Lord of Light : The whole sky blazed with battle, red as blood ; Then slowly faded into viewless depth. The immemorial ocean sobbed, the wind Wailed with the agony of dying worlds; 59 And all my soul became a harp, whose strings Were touched by spirits ; the strange wine of knowledge More full than mortal, flushed me, and I knew Myself at one with the deep heart of things, And felt the purpose of unfolding Time. Then gushed within a well of wordless song. 60 CHORUS : PARODOS. Out of a world of eternal fruition Down to a world of probation we come; Drawn by the might of a mortal's petition, Leave we the joys of our heavenly home. Pulsing for ever in onward creation Out of the womb of the hazes of flame Building the continents, seas, vegetation, Animal, man ; then unbuilding the same : Clothed in the beauty of Life never ending, Changing for ever in secular strife, Guiding the soul that is ever ascending Up to the heavenly that is our life. 61 STROPHE. From the unfathomed abysses of Ocean, From the great Deep and the darkness of Death, Where there is never a sound or a motion, Up thro 1 the waters there rises a breath. See on the surface a trouble, Dimple of waves for a span, Sunlit or shadowy bubble Gone in an hour. That is Man. 62 AXTISTROPHE. Into the deep of the sunless abysses, Fathomless caves that are under the earth, See how the sunlight intrudes with its blisses, Pierces the gloom with a needle of mirth. Numberless atoms are leaping Out of the dark for a span Into the sunshine, then creeping Back to the dark. That is Man. To the spirit eyes Time is not, nor Space All the centuries Have their equal place. Changes only seem : Mortals only die In the fevered dreams Of the mortal eye. Body's sense alone Grasps a solid earth, Solid rock and shore, Solid death and birth. 64 Spirit sense alone Sees a spirit stair Upwards to the Throne, Always, everywhere. Like a meteor's way Stream the centuries, Side by side to-day Time's infinities. To the spirit eyes Stand they side by side ; Nothing ever dies, Nothing ever died. Portals are riven So potent the spell : Here is thy Heaven, And here is thy Hell. MY mortal world has flashed away Like darkness shattered by the day. Bewildered, dizzy, now I rage From land to land, from age to age And side by side I see them grow, The form above, the soul below. 66 OTHER FRAGMENTS 1. O, bare the barren wastes of Thought, Where naught is human, man is naught The cause of Evil ? Yonder wood May rest your doubts, for all is good. Let be your problems ; here the Real Is one, I doubt not, with the Ideal. 67 F 2 2. I THANK Thee, Lord, for Thy strong angel, Pain, Who frets and chisels this my shrine of Life, Who tries the strength of stone by stone, Removes the rotten and rejects the weak. 68 3. WITHIN the vast, impenetrable night That never lightens to a living eye, As in a garner, dreams the gathered grain, Reaped from the furrows of mortality. A land like summer nights, when folded flowers Can scent the coming rain And lift their fragrance to the moonless height The expectant dark is living. Spirit powers That move o'er still fields in the quiet hours Illume the soul's deep waters with strange light. 69 4. O WINDS that whisper in yon living trees, O sunbeams stirring these dark sods overhead, When aching hearts awake each dreary morn To tears and chill remembrance of the dead In homes our childish voices gladdened, far Amid Canadian corn, In grimy cities of the Northern seas, In lonely sheep-runs 'neath the Southern Star, In every land that echoed England's war, Go, whisper softly, " Peace ; they are at peace." 70 5. DANCING over the sunlit sand, Rolls in the wave from the sea, Singing the song of its stainless home To the pebbles that dance in the creamy foam, The song of Infinity : Raising the spirit beyond the sphere Of the petty discomforts that vex us here, Shaking the fettered soul free. Year after year the souls of men Roll in from Eternity, Vainly clutching at hopes that cheat, All the refuse and dross that they meet. Bearing with them the bitter gall Of a wasted chance, of a hopeless fall, Back they reel to the sea. 6. HEBREW POETS IN the thunders of the torrent, In the earthquake and the fire, In the desert glare abhorrent, We have heard Him speak in ire. GREEK POETS: * In the fairest human faces, In the prime of manhood"^ flower, In the youthful body's graces, We have felt His softer power. 72 BOTH : Was His might and His majesty only a dream ? Was it only delusion, that god-like gleam ? Is Nature so terrible, Man so fair, A pitiless, will-less machine of despair ? 73 TRANSLATIONS THE FAREWELL OF SOCRATES To THOSE THAT VOTED FOE HIM. REMEMBER, too, that much would bid us hope. Death is a gain, whatever death may be Whether the dead man turns to nothingness, A senseless sleep or else, as fables say, A pilgrimage, a change of home, is all That waits him dead. And if a senseless sleep, Eternal sleep wherein no dreams may come, What bliss is death ! What, to a dreamless sleep Compared, are worth a thousand days and nights 77 Such as a man nay, e'en a monarch sees? A' dreamless sleep, to all Eternity Would seem no longer than a passing night. And if this death be like a pilgrimage Hence to some other place, and true the tale That there await our coming all the dead What greater boon can be than death, my friends ? Whereby a man may rid him of these shams, Judges that know not justice, and attain The unseen world and faultless judgment bar. Minos and Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Triptolemus, and all the storied dead Served justice in their generation. This A punishment? Nay, but the best of boons. Converse with Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod Who would not buy it for his all ? If this 78 Be death, 111 gladly die a thousand deaths. There should my soul with Palamedes meet, And Ajax son of Telamon, and all Who died by unjust judgments in the past, And joy to rival them in suffering told. There should I question who was truly wise, Who in his own conceit alone, as here. Who would not give his all to question him That led the banded hosts of Greece to Troy, Or wise Odysseus, or the myriad dead, Both men and women ? ay, and freely, too. Inquiry is no crime in Heav'n, methinks. Death then but gains far happier life than this, If tales be true, and immortality. Ye too, my judges, must be confident 79 In face of death, and hold this truth for sure : The good man cannot come to any ill In life or death, nor do the Gods desert His paths. For this my fate is not, I see, Due to blind chance; but it is best for me To die, and rid me of this weary world. Therefore, with those who brought me to my death I am not very angry, though they meant Not good but ill 'tis that alone I blame. One last request I make : if, when my sons Are grown to manhood, ye shall find them vain, Lovers of aught in preference to the Good, Rebuke them with that old persistent cry Wherewith I goaded you these many years: 80 " Your wisdom is but blindness ; seek the true." Thus shall ye do me justice and my sons. Farewell! Time bids us part, and so we go, I to my death, ye to your life ; but whose The better fortune knoweth none but God. PLATO, Apology, xxxii.-end 81 THE SOUL BLEST the fortune that awardeth Toilsome life its latest breath, When the mortal body fleeteth Down the ways of mighty Death. All that came from God surviveth Life's reflection, past the goal Death's dark barrier. But in lifetime, Wakes the body, sleeps the soul. Yet in dreams the soul awaketh, Vision-taught begins to know How a severance creepeth nearer, Good from evil, weal from woe. PINDAR, Fragment 131. 82 THE MYSTERIES THRICE happy he, who ere he die That vision gains ; he knows The heavenly source of life, And what its close. PINDAR, Fragment 137. 83 G 2 PRATER AVE ATQUE VALE O'ER many a sea I have hurried, O'er many a land I have sped To see thee ; but ah ! thou art buried, My gifts are but gifts to the dead : To speak with thee ah ! there replieth No voice, and thy ashes are dumb ; To see thee but fortune denieth : I see not thyself, but thy tomb. And hence I must journey to-morrow ; Yet take what I bring thee to-day, The primitive tokens of sorrow, Traditional dues and display. Oh ! bitter, my brother, our meeting, Too young, too unsullied to die ! A torrent of tears is our greeting, Our welcome eternal good-bye ! CATULLUS, ci. 57 QUICQbAM MUTIS IF through the grave's dumb walls our sorrow sends Dim echoes down that cheer the dead below, When yearning hearts on earth bewail lost friends, And would recall the loves of long ago Weep on. Thy lost one, torn from joys above So young, forgets that sorrow in thy love. 86 A DEAD SLAVE BOY Alcimus, whom ere thy prime Death snatched from me, thy lord, And laid thee in thy little grave Beneath Labican sward : Take, lad, no weight of costly stone That soon should pass away Such gift as Sorrow vainly gives Her dead, and sees decay But what my toil has wrought for thee, Turf dewy with my tears, Deep bowered in vines and bending box. That shall not yield to years. 87 Receive my gift, dear lad, and lie As I myself would lie, When Fate has cut my latest thread Of life, and bids me die. MARTIAL, i. 88. EPILOGUE As languid petals from a rose in June Fall fragrant to the last, Through breathless airs in a rich garden close, So he who left us passed. 89 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, BKEAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BDNGAY, SUFFOLK. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. m L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444 A 000 501 947 6