THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES POEMS BY K. J. 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 re (f>i\e2, iXia<; teal repirvov epwra KOI TTOVOV evavSpov