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 ■ Bookseller,
 
 UWWRT 
 WWEKSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 -
 
 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS
 
 LACHRYM^ MUSARUM 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 £l& WILLIAM WATSON 
 
 SLontron 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1892 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 
 L33 
 
 First Edition printed November 1892 
 Reprinted December 1892
 
 TO 
 
 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON 
 
 AND 
 
 MEREDITH TOWNSEND 
 
 WITH GRATITUDE
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LaCHRYMjE Musarum .... 
 Dedication of " The Dream of Man " 
 The Dream of Man .... 
 Shelley ; s Centenary . 
 A Golden Hour .... 
 
 At the Grave of Charles Lamb 
 Lines in a Flyleaf of " Christabel " 
 Lines to our New Censor 
 Reluctant Summer .... 
 The Great Misgiving. 
 "The Things that are more excellent : 
 Beauty's Metempsychosis . 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 I I 
 
 16 
 
 34 
 42 
 
 44 
 46 
 48 
 5o 
 
 52 
 
 54 
 60
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 England my Mother .... 
 
 62 
 
 Night 
 
 70 
 
 The Fugitive Ideal .... 
 
 72 
 
 " The Foresters " 
 
 73 
 
 Song 
 
 75 
 
 Columbus 
 
 76
 
 LACHRYMyE MUSARUM 
 
 (6th October 1892) 
 
 Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head : 
 
 The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er : 
 
 Carry the last great bard to his last bed. 
 
 Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. 
 
 Land that he loved, that loved him ! nevermore 
 
 Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore, 
 
 Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, 
 
 Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, 
 
 The master's feet shall tread. 
 
 B
 
 2 LACHRYM/E MUSARUM 
 
 Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute : 
 The singer of undying songs is dead. 
 
 Lo, in this season pensive-hued and grave, 
 While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant 
 
 leaf 
 From withered Earth's fantastic coronal, 
 With wandering sighs of forest and of wave 
 Mingles the murmur of a people's grief 
 For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall. 
 He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and 
 
 showers. 
 For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame, 
 And soon the winter silence shall be ours : 
 Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame 
 Crowns with no mortal flowers. 

 
 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM 3 
 
 Rapt though he be from us, 
 Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus ; 
 Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each 
 Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach ; 
 Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach ; 
 Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome 
 
 home ; 
 Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech ; 
 Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam, 
 Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave, 
 His equal friendship crave : 
 And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech 
 Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome. 
 
 What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears, 
 To save from visitation of decay ?
 
 4 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM 
 
 Not in this temporal sunlight, now, that bay 
 Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears 
 Sings he with lips of transitory clay ; 
 For he hath joined the chorus of his peers 
 In habitations of the perfect day : 
 His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears, 
 And more melodious are henceforth the spheres, 
 Enriched with music stol'n from earth away. 
 
 He hath returned to regions whence he came. 
 Him doth the spirit divine 
 Of universal loveliness reclaim. 
 All nature is his shrine. 
 Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea, 
 In earth's and air's emotion or repose, 
 In every star's august serenity,
 
 LACIIRVM/E MUSARUM 5 
 
 And in the rapture of the flaming rose. 
 There seek him if ye would not seek in vain, 
 There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole ; 
 Yea, and for ever in the human soul 
 Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain. 
 
 For lo ! creation's self is one great choir, 
 And what is nature's order but the rhyme 
 Whereto the worlds keep time, 
 And all things move with all things from their 
 
 prime ? 
 Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre ? 
 In far retreats of elemental mind 
 Obscurely comes and goes 
 The imperative breath of song, that as the wind 
 Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.
 
 6 LACHRYM/E MUSARUM 
 
 Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, 
 Extort her crimson secret from the rose, 
 But ask not of the Muse that she disclose 
 The meaning of the riddle of her might : 
 Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, 
 Save the enigma of herself, she knows. 
 The master could not tell, with all his lore, 
 Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate 
 
 sped : 
 Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said ; — 
 Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, 
 That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, 
 And charms the ages with the notes that o'er 
 All woodland chants immortally prevail ! 
 And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, 
 He with diviner silence dwells instead,
 
 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM 
 
 And on no earthly sea with transient roar, 
 Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail, 
 But far beyond our vision and our hail 
 Is heard for ever and is seen no more. 
 
 No more, O never now, 
 Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow 
 Whereon nor snows of time 
 Have fall'n, nor wintry rime, 
 Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime. 
 Once, in his youth obscure, 
 The maker of this verse, which shall endure 
 By splendour of its theme that cannot die, 
 Beheld thee eye to eye, 
 And touched through thee the hand 
 Of every hero of thy race divine,
 
 8 LACHRYM^E MUSARUM 
 
 Ev'n to the sire of all the laurelled line, 
 The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand, 
 With soul as healthful as the poignant brine, 
 Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas, 
 Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine, 
 Glorious Maeonides. 
 
 Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet : 
 Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget ? 
 The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue, 
 Are they not ever goldenly impressed 
 On memory's palimpsest ? 
 I see the wizard locks like night that hung, 
 I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod ; 
 I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung, 
 The eyes that looked through life and gazed on 
 God.
 
 LACHRYM/E MUSARUM 9 
 
 The seasons change, the winds they shift and 
 veer; 
 The grass of yesteryear 
 
 Is dead ; the birds depart, the groves decay : 
 Empires dissolve and peoples disappear : 
 Song passes not away. 
 
 I Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, 
 And kings a dubious legend of their reign ; 
 The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust : 
 The poet doth remain. 
 Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive ; 
 And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime, 
 
 Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time, 
 
 Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, 
 
 And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive ; 

 
 io LACHRYM^i MUSARUM 
 
 While to the measure of the cosmic rune 
 For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, 
 And heed no more the hum of idle praise 
 In that great calm our tumults cannot reach, 
 Master who crovvn'st our immelodious days 
 With flower of perfect speech.
 
 DEDICATION OF 
 "THE DREAM OF MAN" 
 
 TO LONDON, MY HOSTESS 
 
 City that waitest to be sung, — 
 
 For whom no hand 
 To mighty strains the lyre hath strung 
 
 In all this land, 
 Though mightier theme the mightiest ones 
 
 Sang not of old, 
 The thrice three sisters' godlike sons 
 
 With lips of gold, — 
 Till greater voice thy greatness sing
 
 12 DEDICATION OF 
 
 In loftier times, 
 Suffer an alien muse to bring 
 Her votive rhymes. 
 
 Yes, alien in thy midst am I, 
 
 Not of thy brood ; 
 The nursling of a norland sky 
 
 Of rougher mood : 
 To me, thy tarrying guest, to me, 
 
 'Mid thy loud hum, 
 Strayed visions of the moor or sea 
 
 Tormenting come. 
 Above the thunder of the wheels 
 
 That hurry by, 
 From lapping of lone waves there steals 
 
 A far-sent sigh ;
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN " 13 
 
 And many a dream-reared mountain crest 
 
 My feet have trod, 
 There where thy Minster in the West 
 
 Gropes toward God. 
 Yet, from thy presence if I go, 
 
 By woodlands deep 
 Or ocean-fringes, thou, I know, 
 
 Wilt haunt my sleep ; 
 Thy restless tides of life will foam, 
 
 Still, in my sight ; 
 Thy imperturbable dark dome 
 
 Will crown my night. 
 
 O sea of living waves that roll 
 
 On golden sands, 
 Or break on tragic reef and shoal
 
 i 4 DEDICATION OF 
 
 'Mid fatal lands ; 
 O forest wrought of living leaves, 
 
 Some rilled with Spring, 
 Where joy life's festal raiment weaves 
 
 And all birds sing, — 
 Some trampled in the miry ways, 
 
 Or whirled along 
 By fury of tempestuous days, — 
 
 Take thou my song ! 
 
 For thou hast scorned not heretofore 
 
 The gifts of rhyme 
 I dropped, half faltering, at thy door, 
 
 City sublime ; 
 And though 'tis true I am but guest 
 
 Within thy gate,
 
 " THE DREAM OF MAN " 15 
 
 Unto thy hands I owe the best 
 
 Awards of fate. 
 Imperial hostess ! thanks from me 
 
 To thee belong : 
 O living forest, living sea, 
 
 Take thou my song!
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 To the eye and the ear of the Dreamer 
 This Dream out of darkness flew, 
 
 Through the horn or the ivory portal, 
 But he wist not which of the two. 
 
 It was the Human Spirit, 
 Of all men's souls the Soul, 
 
 Man the unwearied climber, 
 
 That climbed to the unknown goal 
 
 And up the steps of the ages, 
 The difficult steep ascent,
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 17 
 
 Man the unwearied climber 
 
 Pauseless and dauntless went. 
 
 ^Eons rolled behind him 
 
 With thunder of far retreat, 
 
 And still as he strove he conquered 
 
 And laid his foes at his feet. 
 
 Inimical powers of nature, 
 
 Tempest and flood and fire, 
 
 The spleen of fickle seasons 
 
 That loved to baulk his desire, 
 
 The breath of hostile climates, 
 
 The ravage of blight and dearth, 
 
 The old unrest that vexes 
 
 The heart of the moody earth, 
 
 The genii swift and radiant 
 
 Sabreing heaven with flame, 
 C
 
 i8 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 He, with a keener weapon, 
 
 The sword of his wit, overcame. 
 Disease and her ravening offspring, 
 
 Pain with the thousand teeth, 
 He drave into night primeval, 
 
 The nethermost worlds beneath, 
 Till the Lord of Death, the undying, 
 
 Ev'n Asrael the King, 
 No more with Furies for heralds 
 
 Came armed with scourge and sting, 
 But gentle of voice and of visage, 
 
 By calm Age ushered and led, 
 A guest, serenely featured, 
 
 Entering, woke no dread. 
 And, as the rolling aons 
 
 Retreated with pomp of sound,
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 19 
 
 Man's Spirit, grown too lordly 
 
 For this mean orb to bound, 
 By arts in his youth undreamed of 
 
 His terrene fetters broke, 
 With enterprise ethereal 
 
 Spurning the natal yoke, 
 And, stung with divine ambition, 
 
 And fired with a glorious greed, 
 He annexed the stars and the planets 
 
 And peopled them with his seed. 
 
 Then said he, " The infinite Scripture 
 I have read and interpreted clear, 
 
 And searching all worlds I have found not 
 My sovereign or my peer. 
 
 In what room of the palace of nature
 
 20 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 Resides the invisible God ? 
 For all her doors I have opened, 
 
 And all her floors I have trod. 
 If greater than I be her tenant, 
 
 Let him answer my challenging call 
 Till then I admit no rival, 
 
 But crown myself master of all." 
 And forth as that word went bruited, 
 
 By Man unto Man were raised 
 Fanes of devout self-homage, 
 
 Where he who praised was the praised ; 
 And from vast unto vast of creation 
 
 The new evangel ran, 
 And an odour of world-wide incense 
 
 Went up from Man unto Man ; 
 Until, on a solemn feast-day,
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 21 
 
 When the world's usurping lord 
 At a million impious altars 
 
 His own proud image adored, 
 God spake as He stept from His ambush : 
 
 " O great in thine own conceit, 
 I will show thee thy source, how humble, 
 
 Thy goal, for a god how unmeet." 
 
 Thereat, by the word of the Maker 
 
 The Spirit of Man was led 
 To a mighty peak of vision, 
 
 Where God to His creature said : 
 "Look eastward toward time's sunrise." 
 
 And, age upon age untold, 
 The Spirit of Man saw clearly 
 
 The Past as a chart out-rolled, —
 
 22 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 Beheld his base beginnings 
 
 In the depths of time, and his strife, 
 With beasts and crawling horrors 
 
 For leave to live, when life 
 Meant but to slay and to procreate, 
 
 To feed and to sleep, among 
 Mere mouths, voracities boundless, 
 
 Blind lusts, desires without tongue, 
 And ferocities vast, fulfilling 
 
 Their being's malignant law, 
 While nature was one hunger, 
 
 And one hate, all fangs and maw. 
 
 With that, for a single moment, 
 Abashed at his own descent, 
 In humbleness Man's Spirit
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 23 
 
 At the feet of the Maker bent ; 
 But, swifter than light, he recovered 
 
 The stature and pose of his pride, 
 And, " Think not thus to shame me 
 
 With my mean birth," he cried. 
 " This is my loftiest greatness, 
 
 To have been born so low ; 
 Greater than Thou the ungrowing 
 
 Am I that for ever grow." 
 And God forbore to rebuke him, 
 
 But answered brief and stern, 
 Bidding him toward time's sunset 
 
 His vision westward turn ; 
 And the Spirit of Man obeying 
 
 Beheld as a chart out-rolled 
 The likeness and form of the Future,
 
 24 THE DREAM- OF MAN 
 
 Age upon age untold ; 
 Beheld his own meridian, 
 
 And beheld his dark decline, 
 His secular fall to nadir 
 
 From summits of light divine, 
 Till at last, amid worlds exhausted, 
 
 And bankrupt of force and fire, 
 'Twas his, in a torrent of darkness, 
 
 Like a sputtering lamp to expire. 
 
 Then a war of shame and anger 
 Did the realm of his soul divide ; 
 
 " 'Tis false, 'tis a lying vision," 
 In the face of his God he cried. 
 
 " Thou thinkest to daunt me with shadows ; 
 Not such as Thou feign'st is my doom : 

 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 25 
 
 From glory to rise unto glory 
 
 Is mine, who have risen from gloom. 
 I doubt if Thou knew'st at my making 
 
 How near to Thy throne I should climb, 
 O'er the mountainous slopes of the ages 
 
 And the conquered peaks of time. 
 Nor shall I look backward nor rest me 
 
 Till the uttermost heights I have trod, 
 And am equalled with Thee or above Thee, 
 
 The mate or the master of God." 
 
 Ev'n thus Man turned from the Maker, 
 
 With thundered defiance wild, 
 And God with a terrible silence 
 
 Reproved the speech of His child. 
 And Man returned to his labours,
 
 26 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 And stiffened the neck of his will ; 
 And the aeons still went rolling, 
 
 And his power was crescent still. 
 But yet there remained to conquer 
 
 One foe, and the greatest — although 
 Despoiled of his ancient terrors, 
 
 At heart, as of old, a foe — 
 Unmaker of all, and renewer, 
 
 Who winnows the world with his wing, 
 The Lord of Death, the undying, 
 
 Ev'n Asrael the King. 
 
 And lo, Man mustered his forces 
 
 The war of wars to wage, 
 And with storm and thunder of onset 
 
 Did the foe of foes engage, 
 

 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 27 
 
 And the Lord of Death, the undying, 
 
 Was beset and harried sore, 
 In his immemorial fastness 
 
 At night's aboriginal core. 
 And during years a thousand 
 
 Man leaguered his enemy's hold, 
 While nature was one deep tremor, 
 
 And the heart of the world waxed cold, 
 Till the phantom battlements wavered, 
 
 And the ghostly fortress fell, 
 And Man with shadowy fetters 
 
 Bound fast great Asrael. 
 
 So, to each star in the heavens, 
 
 The exultant word was blown, 
 The annunciation tremendous,
 
 28 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 Death is overthrown ! 
 And Space in her ultimate borders 
 
 Prolonging the jubilant tone, 
 With hollow ingeminations, 
 
 Sighed, Death is overthrown ! 
 And God in His house of silence, 
 
 Where He dwelleth aloof, alone, 
 Paused in His tasks to hearken : 
 
 Death is overthrown ! 
 
 Then a solemn and high thanksgiving 
 By Man unto Man was sung, 
 
 In his temples of self-adoration, 
 
 With his own multitudinous tongue ; 
 
 And he said to his Soul : " Rejoice thou 
 For thy last great foe lies bound,
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 29 
 
 Ev'n Asrael the Unmaker, 
 
 Unmade, disarmed, discrowned." 
 
 And behold, his Soul rejoiced not, 
 
 The breath of whose being was strife, 
 For life with nothing to vanquish 
 
 Seemed but the shadow of life. 
 No goal invited and promised 
 
 And divinely provocative shone ; 
 And Fear having fled, her sister, 
 
 Blest Hope, in her train was gone ; 
 And the coping and crown of achievement 
 
 Was hell than defeat more dire — 
 The torment of all-things-compassed, 
 
 The plague of nought-to-desire ; 
 And Man the invincible queller,
 
 30 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 Man with his foot on his foes, 
 In boundless satiety hungred, 
 
 Restless from utter repose, 
 Victor of nature, victor 
 
 Of the prince of the powers of the air, 
 By mighty weariness vanquished, 
 
 And crowned with august despair. 
 
 Then, at his dreadful zenith, 
 
 He cried unto God : " O Thou] 
 Whom of old in my days of striving 
 
 Methought I needed not, — now, 
 In this my abject glory, 
 
 My hopeless and helpless might, 
 Hearken and cheer and succour ! " 
 
 And God from His lonely height,
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 3I 
 
 From eternity's passionless summits, 
 
 On suppliant Man looked down, 
 And His brow waxed human with pity, 
 
 Belying its awful crown. 
 " Thy richest possession," He answered, 
 
 " Blest Hope, will I restore, 
 And the infinite wealth of weakness 
 
 Which was thy strength of yore ; 
 And I will arouse from slumber, 
 
 In his hold where bound he lies, 
 Thine enemy most benefic ; — 
 
 O Asrael, hear and rise ! " 
 
 And a sound like the heart of nature 
 
 Riven and cloven and torn, 
 Announced, to the ear universal,
 
 3 2 THE DREAM OF MAN 
 
 Undying Death new-born. 
 Sublime he rose in his fetters, 
 
 And shook the chains aside 
 Ev'n as some mortal sleeper 
 
 'Mid forests in autumntide 
 Rises and shakes off lightly 
 
 The leaves that lightly fell 
 On his limbs and his hair unheeded 
 
 While as yet he slumbered well. 
 
 And Deity paused and hearkened, 
 Then turned to the undivine, 
 
 Saying, " O Man, My creature, 
 
 Thy lot was more blest than Mine. 
 
 I taste not delight of seeking, 
 Nor the boon of longing know.
 
 THE DREAM OF MAN 33 
 
 There is but one joy transcendent, 
 And I hoard it not but bestow. 
 
 I hoard it not nor have tasted, 
 But freely I gave it to thee — 
 
 The joy of most glorious striving, 
 Which dieth in victory." 
 
 Thus, to the Soul of the Dreamer, 
 This Dream out of darkness flew, 
 
 Through the horn or the ivory portal, 
 But he wist not which of the two. 
 
 D
 
 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 
 
 (4TH August 1892) 
 
 Within a narrow span of time, 
 Three princes of the realm of rhyme, 
 At height of youth or manhood's prime, 
 
 From earth took wing, 
 To join the fellowship sublime 
 
 Who, dead, yet sing. 
 
 He, first, his earliest wreath who wove 
 Of laurel grown in Latmian grove, 
 Conquered by pain and hapless love 
 Found calmer home,
 
 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 
 
 Roofed by the heaven that glows above 
 Eternal Rome. 
 
 A fierier soul, its own fierce prey, 
 And cumbered with more mortal clay, 
 At Missolonghi flamed away, 
 
 And left the air 
 Reverberating to this day 
 
 Its loud despair. 
 
 Alike remote from Byron's scorn, 
 And Keats's magic as of morn 
 Bursting for ever newly-born 
 
 On forests old, 
 Waking a hoary world forlorn 
 
 With touch of gold,
 
 36 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 
 
 •Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grew 
 Nourished on air and sun and dew, 
 Into that Essence whence he drew 
 
 His life and lyre 
 Was fittingly resolved anew 
 
 Through wave and fire. 
 
 'Twas like his rapid soul ! 'Twas meet 
 That he, who brooked not Time's slow feet, 
 With passage thus abrupt and fleet 
 
 Should hurry hence, 
 Eager the Great Perhaps to greet 
 
 With Why ? and Whence ? 
 
 Impatient of the world's fixed way, 
 He ne'er could suffer God's delay,
 
 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 37 
 
 But all the future in a day 
 
 Would build divine, 
 And the whole past in ruins lay, 
 
 An emptied shrine. 
 
 Vain vision ! but the glow, the fire, 
 
 The passion of benign desire, 
 
 The glorious yearning, lift him higher 
 
 Than many a soul 
 That mounts a million paces nigher 
 
 Its meaner goal. 
 
 And power is his, if naught besides, 
 In that thin ether where he rides, 
 Above the roar of human tides 
 To ascend afar,
 
 38 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 
 
 Lost in a storm of light that hides 
 His dizzy car. 
 
 Below, the unhasting world toils on, 
 And here and there are victories won, 
 Some dragon slain, some justice done, 
 
 While, through the skies, 
 A meteor rushing on the sun, 
 
 He flares and dies. 
 
 But, as he cleaves yon ether clear, 
 Notes from the unattempted Sphere 
 He scatters to the enchanted ear 
 
 Of earth's dim throng, 
 Whose dissonance doth more endear 
 
 The showering song.
 
 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 39 
 
 In other shapes than he forecast 
 
 The world is moulded : his fierce blast, — 
 
 His wild assault upon the Past, — 
 
 These things are vain ; 
 Revolt is transient : what must last 
 
 Is that pure strain, 
 
 Which seems the wandering voices blent 
 
 Of every virgin element,- — 
 
 A sound from ocean caverns sent, — 
 
 An airy call 
 From the pavilioned firmament 
 
 O'erdoming all. 
 
 And in this world of worldlings, where 
 Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er
 
 40 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 
 
 A great emotion shakes the air, 
 
 And life flags tame, 
 And rare is noble impulse, rare 
 
 The impassioned aim, 
 
 Tis no mean fortune to have heard 
 A singer who, if errors blurred 
 His sight, had yet a spirit stirred 
 
 By vast desire, 
 And ardour fledging the swift word 
 
 With plumes of fire. 
 
 A creature of impetuous breath, 
 Our torpor deadlier than death 
 He knew not ; whatsoe'er he saith 
 Flashes with life :
 
 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 41 
 
 He spurreth men, he quickeneth 
 To splendid strife. 
 
 And in his gusts of song he brings 
 Wild odours shaken from strange wings, 
 And unfamiliar whisperings 
 
 From far lips blown, 
 While all the rapturous heart of things 
 
 Throbs through his own, — 
 
 His own that from the burning pyre 
 One who had loved his wind-swept lyre 
 Out of the sharp teeth of the fire 
 
 Unmolten drew, 
 Beside the sea that in her ire 
 
 Smote him and slew.
 
 A GOLDEN HOUR 
 
 A BECKONING spirit of gladness seemed afloat, 
 
 That lightly danced in laughing air before us : 
 The earth was all in tune, and you a note 
 Of Nature's happy chorus. 
 
 'Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead 
 
 The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: 
 The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said, 
 O'er Winter's world comes flitting. 
 
 Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray, 
 Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry ?
 
 A GOLDEN HOUR 43 
 
 Or but some bold outrider of the May, 
 Some April-emissary ? 
 
 The apparition faded on the air, 
 
 Capricious and incalculable comer. — 
 Wilt thou too pass, and leave my chill days bare, 
 And fall'n my phantom Summer ?
 
 AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB, 
 IN EDMONTON 
 
 Not here, O teeming City, was it meet 
 
 Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose, 
 But where the multitudinous life-tide flows 
 
 Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet 
 
 Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat 
 
 Of flocks in Spring-time, there should Earth 
 
 enclose 
 His earth, amid thy thronging joys and 
 woes, 
 
 There, 'neath the music of thy million feet.
 
 AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB 
 
 In love of thee this lover knew no peer. 
 
 Thine eastern or thy western fane had made 
 Fit habitation for his noble shade. 
 Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear, 
 Not here, in rustic exile, O not here, 
 Thy Elia like an alien should be laid ! 
 
 45
 
 LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF 
 "CHRISTABEL" 
 
 Inhospitably hast thou entertained, 
 
 O Poet, us the bidden to thy board, 
 
 Whom in mid -feast, and while our thousand 
 
 mouths 
 Are one laudation of the festal cheer, 
 Thou from thy table dost dismiss, unfilled. 
 Yet loudlier thee than many a lavish host 
 We praise, and oftener thy repast half-served 
 Than many a stintless banquet, prodigally
 
 LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF " CHRISTABEL " 47 
 
 Through satiate hours prolonged ; nor praise less 
 
 well 
 Because with tongues thou hast not cloyed, and 
 
 lips 
 That mourn the parsimony of affluent souls, 
 And mix the lamentation with the laud.
 
 LINES TO OUR NEW CENSOR 
 
 [Mr. Oscar Wilde, having discovered that England is unworthy of 
 him, has announced his resolve to become a naturalised 
 Frenchman.] 
 
 r 
 
 And wilt thou, Oscar, from us flee, 
 
 And must we, henceforth, wholly sever ? 
 
 Shall thy laborious jeux-d' esprit 
 
 Sadden our lives no more for ever ? 
 
 And all thy future wilt thou link 
 
 With that brave land to which thou goest ? 
 Unhappy France ! we used to think 
 
 She touched, at Sedan, fortune's lowest. 
 
 /
 
 LINES TO OUR NEW CENSOR 49 
 
 And you're made French as easily 
 
 As you might change the clothes you're 
 wearing ? 
 Fancy ! — and 'tis so hard to be 
 
 A man of sense and modest bearing. 
 
 May fortitude beneath this blow 
 
 Fail not the gallant Gallic nation ! 
 By past experience, well we know 
 
 Her genius for recuperation. 
 
 And as for us — to our disgrace, 
 
 Your stricture's truth must be conceded : 
 
 Would any but a stupid race 
 
 Have made the fuss about you we did ? 
 
 ,
 
 RELUCTANT SUMMER 
 
 Reluctant Summer ! once, a maid 
 
 Full easy of access, 
 In many a bee-frequented shade 
 
 Thou didst thy lover bless. 
 Divinely unreproved I played, 
 
 Then, with each liberal tress — 
 And art thou grown at last afraid 
 
 Of some too close caress ? 
 
 Or deem'st that if thou shouldst abide 
 My passion might decay ?
 
 RELUCTANT SUMMER 51 
 
 Thou leav'st me pining and denied, 
 
 Coyly thou say'st me nay. 
 Ev'n as I woo thee to my side, 
 
 Thou, importuned to stay, 
 Like Orpheus' half-recovered bride 
 
 Ebb'st from my arms away.
 
 THE GREAT MISGIVING 
 
 " Not ours," say some, " the thought of death to 
 dread ; 
 
 Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell : 
 Life is a feast, and we have banqueted — 
 
 Shall not the worms as well ? 
 
 " The after-silence, when the feast is o'er, 
 
 And void the places where the minstrels stood, 
 
 Differs in nought from what hath been before, 
 And is nor ill nor good."
 
 THE GREAT MISGIVING 53 
 
 Ah, but the Apparition — the dumb sign — 
 The beckoning finger bidding me forego 
 
 The fellowship, the converse, and the wine, 
 The songs, the festal glow ! 
 
 And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit, 
 And while the purple joy is passed about, 
 
 Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier lit 
 Or homeless night without ; 
 
 And whether, stepping forth, my soul shall see 
 New prospects, or fall sheer — a blinded thing ! 
 
 There is, O grave, thy hourly victory, 
 And there, O death, thy sting.
 
 
 "THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE 
 EXCELLENT " 
 
 As we wax older on this earth, 
 
 Till many a toy that charmed us seems 
 
 Emptied of beauty, stripped of worth, 
 
 And mean as dust and dead as dreams,— 
 
 For gauds that perished, shows that passed, 
 Some recompense the Fates have sent : 
 
 Thrice lovelier shine the things that last, 
 
 The things that are more excellent.
 
 " THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT " 55 
 
 Tired of the Senate's barren brawl, 
 
 An hour with silence we prefer, 
 Where statelier rise the woods than all 
 
 Yon towers of talk at Westminster. 
 Let this man prate and that man plot, 
 
 On fame or place or title bent :. 
 The votes of veering crowds are not 
 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 Shall we perturb and vex our soul 
 
 For " wrongs " which no true freedom mar, 
 
 Which no man's upright walk control, 
 And from no guiltless deed debar ? 
 
 What odds though tonguesters heal, or 
 leave 
 Unhealed, the grievance they invent ?
 
 56 "THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT " 
 
 To things, not phantoms, let us cleave — 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 Nought nobler is, than to be free : 
 
 The stars of heaven are free because 
 In amplitude of liberty 
 
 Their joy is to obey the laws. 
 From servitude to freedom's name 
 
 Free thou thy mind in bondage pent ; 
 Depose the fetich, and proclaim 
 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 And in appropriate dust be hurled 
 
 That dull, punctilious god, whom they 
 
 That call their tiny clan the world, 
 Serve and obsequiously obey :
 
 "THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT" 57 
 
 Who con their ritual of Routine, 
 
 With minds to one dead likeness blent, 
 
 And never ev'n in dreams have seen 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 To dress, to call, to dine, to break 
 
 No canon of the social code, 
 The little laws that lacqueys make, 
 
 The futile decalogue of Mode, — 
 How many a soul for these things lives, 
 
 With pious passion, grave intent ! 
 While Nature careless-handed gives 
 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 To hug the wealth ye cannot use, 
 
 And lack the riches all may gain, — 
 O blind and wanting wit to choose,
 
 58 "THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT " 
 
 Who house the chaff and burn the grain ! 
 And still doth life with starry towers 
 
 Lure to the bright, divine ascent ! — 
 Be yours the things ye would : be ours 
 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 The grace of friendship — mind and heart 
 
 Linked with their fellow heart and mind ; 
 The gains of science, gifts of art ; 
 
 The sense of oneness with our kind ; 
 The thirst to know and understand — 
 
 A large and liberal discontent : 
 These are the goods in life's rich hand, 
 
 The things that are more excellent. 
 
 In faultless rhythm the ocean rolls, 
 A rapturous silence thrills the skies ;
 
 " THE THINGS THAT ARE MORE EXCELLENT ; ' 59 
 
 And on this earth are lovely souls, 
 That softly look with aidful eyes. 
 
 Though dark, O God, Thy course and track, 
 I think Thou must at least have meant 
 
 That nought which lives should wholly lack 
 The things that are more excellent.
 
 BEAUTY'S METEMPSYCHOSIS 
 
 That beauty such as thine 
 Can die indeed, 
 Were ordinance too wantonly malign : 
 No wit may reconcile so cold a creed 
 
 With beauty such as thine. 
 
 From wave and star and flower 
 Some effluence rare 
 Was lent thee, a divine but transient dower : 
 Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and 
 hair 
 To wave and star and flower. 

 
 BEAUTY'S METEMPSYCHOSIS 61 
 
 Shouldst thou to-morrow die, 
 Thou still shalt be 
 Found in the rose and met in all the sky : 
 And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me, 
 
 Shouldst thou to-morrow die.
 
 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 
 
 England my mother, 
 Wardress of waters, 
 Builder of peoples, 
 Maker of men, — 
 
 Hast thou yet leisure 
 Left for the muses ? 
 Heed'st thou the songsmith 
 Forging the rhyme?
 
 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 63 
 
 Deafened with tumults, 
 How canst thou hearken ? 
 Strident is faction, 
 Demos is loud. 
 
 Lazarus, hungry, 
 Menaces Dives ; 
 Labour the giant 
 Chafes in his hold. 
 
 Yet do the songsmiths 
 Quit not their forges ; 
 Still on life's anvil 
 
 Forge they the rhyme. 
 
 Still the rapt faces 
 Glow from the furnace :
 
 64 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 
 
 Breath of the smithy- 
 Scorches their brows. 
 
 Yea, and thou hear'st them ? 
 So shall the hammers 
 Fashion not vainly 
 Verses of gold. 
 
 II 
 
 Lo, with the ancient 
 Roots of man's nature, 
 Twines the eternal 
 Passion of song. 
 
 Ever Love fans it, 
 Ever Life feeds it,
 
 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 65 
 
 Time cannot age it ; 
 Death cannot slay. 
 
 Deep in the world-heart 
 Stand its foundations, 
 Tangled with all things, 
 Twin-made with all. 
 
 Nay, what is Nature's 
 Self, but an endless 
 Strife toward music, 
 Euphony, rhyme ? 
 
 Trees in their blooming, 
 
 Tides in their flowing, 
 
 Stars in their circling, 
 
 Tremble with song. 
 F
 
 66 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 
 
 God on His throne is 
 Eldest of poets : 
 Unto His measures 
 Moveth the Whole. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Therefore deride not 
 
 Speech of the muses, 
 
 England my mother, 
 
 Maker of men. 
 
 Nations are mortal, 
 Fragile is greatness ; 
 Fortune may fly thee, 
 Song shall not fly.
 
 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 67 
 
 Song the all-girdling, 
 Song cannot perish : 
 Men shall make music, 
 
 Man shall give ear. 
 
 Not while the choric 
 Chant of creation 
 Flovveth from all things, 
 Poured without pause, 
 
 Cease we to echo 
 Faintly the descant 
 Whereto for ever 
 Dances the world. 
 
 IV 
 
 So let the songsmith 
 Proffer his rhyme-gift,
 
 68 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 
 
 England my mother, 
 Maker of men. 
 
 Gray grows thy count'nance, 
 Full of the ages ; 
 Time on thy forehead 
 Sits like a dream : 
 
 Song is the potion 
 All things renewing, 
 Youth's one elixir, 
 Fountain of morn. 
 
 Thou, at the world-loom 
 Weaving thy future, 
 Fitly may'st temper 
 Toil with delight.
 
 ENGLAND MY MOTHER 69 
 
 Deemest thou, labour 
 Only is earnest ? 
 Grave is all beauty, 
 Solemn is joy. 
 
 Song is no bauble — 
 Slight not the songsmith, 
 England my mother, 
 Maker of men.
 
 NIGHT 
 
 k 
 
 IN the night, in the night, 
 
 When thou liest alone, 
 
 Ah, the sounds that are blown 
 
 In the freaks of the breeze, 
 By the spirit that sends 
 The voice of far friends 
 
 With the sigh of the seas 
 In the night ! 
 
 In the night, in the night, 
 When thou liest alone,
 
 NIGHT 7 1 
 
 Ah, the ghosts that make moan 
 From the days that are sped : 
 The old dreams, the old deeds, 
 The old wound that still bleeds, 
 And the face of the dead 
 
 In the night ! 
 
 In the night, in the night, 
 When thou liest alone, 
 With the grass and the stone 
 
 O'er thy chamber so deep, 
 Ah, the silence at last, 
 Life's dissonance past, 
 
 And only pure sleep 
 In the night !
 
 THE FUGITIVE IDEAL 
 
 As some most pure and noble face, 
 
 Seen in the thronged and hurrying street, 
 Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace, 
 
 A flying odour sweet, 
 Then, passing, leaves the cheated sense 
 Baulked with a phantom excellence ; 
 
 So, on our soul the visions rise 
 
 Of that fair life we never led : 
 They flash a splendour past our eyes, 
 
 We start, and they are fled : 
 They pass, and leave us with blank gaze, 
 Resigned to our ignoble days. 

 
 "THE FORESTERS" 
 
 (Lines written on the appearance of Lord Tennyson's drama.) 
 
 Clear as of old the great voice rings to-day, 
 While Sherwood's oak -leaves twine with Aid- 
 worth's bay : 
 The voice of him the master and the sire 
 Of one whole age and legion of the lyre, 
 Who sang his morning-song when Coleridge still 
 Uttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill, 
 And with new-launched argosies of rhyme 
 Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of 
 time.
 
 74 " THE FORESTERS " 
 
 Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear 
 The laurel glorious from that wintry hair — ■ 
 When he, the sovereign of our lyric day, 
 In Charon's shallop must be rowed away, 
 And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar, 
 The ewe atque vale from the shore ! 
 
 To him nor tender nor heroic muse 
 Did her divine confederacy refuse : 
 To all its moods the lyre of life he strung, 
 And notes of death fell deathless from his tongue. 
 Himself the Merlin of his magic strain, 
 He bade old glories break in bloom again ; 
 And so exempted from oblivious doom, 
 Through him these days shall fadeless break in 
 bloom. 

 
 SONG 
 
 Lightly we met in the morn, 
 
 Lightly we parted at eve. 
 There was never a thought of the thorn 
 
 The rose of a day might leave. 
 
 Fate's ringer we did not perceive, 
 So lightly we met in the morn ! 
 
 So lightly we parted at eve 
 
 We knew not that Love was born. 
 
 I rose on the morrow forlorn, 
 
 To pine and remember and grieve. 
 
 Too lightly we met in the morn ! 
 Too lightly we parted at eve !
 
 COLUMBUS 
 
 (12TH October 1492) 
 
 From his adventurous prime 
 He dreamed the dream sublime 
 Over his wandering youth 
 It hung, a beckoning star. 
 At last the vision fled, 
 And left him in its stead 
 The scarce sublimer truth, 
 The world he found afar.
 
 COLUMBUS 77 
 
 The scattered isles that stand 
 
 Warding the mightier land 
 
 Yielded their maidenhood 
 To his imperious prow. 
 The mainland within call 
 Lay vast and virginal : 
 
 In its blue porch he stood : 
 No more did fate allow. 
 
 No more ! but ah, how much, 
 To be the first to touch 
 The veriest azure hem 
 Of that majestic robe ! 
 Lord of the lordly sea, 
 Earth's mightiest sailor he : 
 Great Captain among them, 
 The captors of the globe.
 
 7 S COLUMBUS 
 
 When shall the world forget 
 Thy glory and our debt, 
 Indomitable soul, 
 Immortal Genoese? 
 Not while the shrewd salt gale 
 Whines amid shroud and sail, 
 Above the rhythmic roll 
 And thunder of the seas. 
 
 
 THE END 
 
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 MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
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