Our youth began with tears and sighs,
With seeking what we could not find;
Our verses all were threnodies,
In elegiacs still we whined;
Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,
We sought and knew not what we sought.
We marvel, now we look behind:
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!
Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!
What? not content with seas and skies,
With rainy clouds and southern wind,
With common cares and faces kind,
With pains and joys each morning brought?
Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”
To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;
We set our souls on salmon flies,
We whistle where we once repined.
Confound the woes of human-kind!
By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;
Who hum, contented or resigned,
“Life’s more amusing than we thought!”

Envoy.

O nate mecum, worn and lined
Our faces show, but that is naught;
Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

THE LAST CAST.

THE ANGLER’S APOLOGY.

Just one cast more! how many a year
Beside how many a pool and stream,
Beneath the falling leaves and sere,
I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!

Dreamed of the sport since April first
Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,
Adown the pastoral valleys burst
Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.

Dreamed of the singing showers that break,
And sting the lochs, or near or far,
And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”
From Urigil to Lochinvar.

Dreamed of the kind propitious sky
O’er Ari Innes brooding grey;
The sea trout, rushing at the fly,
Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!

* * * * *

Brief are man’s days at best; perchance
I waste my own, who have not seen
The castled palaces of France
Shine on the Loire in summer green.

And clear and fleet Eurotas still,
You tell me, laves his reedy shore,
And flows beneath his fabled hill
Where Dian drave the chase of yore.

And “like a horse unbroken” yet
The yellow stream with rush and foam,
’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,
Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!

I may not see them, but I doubt
If seen I’d find them half so fair
As ripples of the rising trout
That feed beneath the elms of Yair.

Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,
And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,
And Autumn in that lonely vale
Where wedded Avons westward sweep,

Or where, amid the empty fields,
Among the bracken of the glen,
Her yellow wreath October yields,
To crown the crystal brows of Ken.

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,
Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,
You never heard the ringing reel,
The music of the water side!

Though Gods have walked your woods among,
Though nymphs have fled your banks along;
You speak not that familiar tongue
Tweed murmurs like my cradle song.

My cradle song,—nor other hymn
I’d choose, nor gentler requiem dear
Than Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,
Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!

TWILIGHT.

SONNET.

(AFTER RICHEPIN.)

Light has flown!
Through the grey
The wind’s way
The sea’s moan
Sound alone!
For the day
These repay
And atone!

Scarce I know,
Listening so
To the streams
Of the sea,
If old dreams
Sing to me!

BALLADE OF SUMMER.

TO C. H. ARKCOLL

When strawberry pottles are common and cheap,
Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,
When midnight dances are murdering sleep,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And far from Fleet Street, far from here,
The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,
And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When clamour that doves in the lindens keep
Mingles with musical plash of the weir,
Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And better a crust and a beaker of beer,
With rose-hung hedges on either hand,
Than a palace in town and a prince’s cheer,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When big trout late in the twilight leap,
When cuckoo clamoureth far and near,
When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer,
Where kine knee deep in the water stand,
On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

Envoy.

Friend, with the fops while we dawdle here,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

BALLADE OF CHRISTMAS GHOSTS.

Between the moonlight and the fire
In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire
To make your merry blood run slow!
How old, how grave, how wise we grow!
No Christmas ghost can make us chill,
Save those that troop in mournful row,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

The beasts can talk in barn and byre
On Christmas Eve, old legends know,
As year by year the years retire,
We men fall silent then I trow,
Such sights hath Memory to show,
Such voices from the silence thrill,
Such shapes return with Christmas snow,—
The ghosts we all can raise at will.

Oh, children of the village choir,
Your carols on the midnight throw,
Oh bright across the mist and mire
Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas glow!
Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,
Let’s cheerily descend the hill;
Be welcome all, to come or go,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

Envoy.

Friend, sursum corda, soon or slow
We part, like guests who’ve joyed their fill;
Forget them not, nor mourn them so,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!

LOVE’S EASTER.

SONNET

Love died here
Long ago;—
O’er his bier,
Lying low,
Poppies throw;
Shed no tear;
Year by year,
Roses blow!

Year by year,
Adon—dear
To Love’s Queen—
Does not die!
Wakes when green
May is nigh!

BALLADE OF THE GIRTON GIRL.

She has just “put her gown on” at Girton,
She is learned in Latin and Greek,
But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on
That the prudish remark with a shriek.
In her accents, perhaps, she is weak
(Ladies are, one observes with a sigh),
But in Algebra—there she’s unique,
But her forte’s to evaluate π.

She can talk about putting a “spirt on”
(I admit, an unmaidenly freak),
And she dearly delighteth to flirt on
A punt in some shadowy creek;
Should her bark, by mischance, spring a leak,
She can swim as a swallow can fly;
She can fence, she can put with a cleek,
But her forte’s to evaluate π.

She has lectured on Scopas and Myrton,
Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique,
Old tiles with the secular dirt on,
Old marbles with noses to seek.
And her Cobet she quotes by the week,
And she’s written on κεν and on καὶ,
And her service is swift and oblique,
But her forte’s to evaluate π.

Envoy.

Princess, like a rose is her cheek,
And her eyes are as blue as the sky,
And I’d speak, had I courage to speak,
But—her forte’s to evaluate pi.

RONSARD’S GRAVE.

Ye wells, ye founts that fall
From the steep mountain wall,
That fall, and flash, and fleet
With silver feet,

Ye woods, ye streams that lave
The meadows with your wave,
Ye hills, and valley fair,
Attend my prayer!

When Heaven and Fate decree
My latest hour for me,
When I must pass away
From pleasant day,

I ask that none my break
The marble for my sake,
Wishful to make more fair
My sepulchre.

Only a laurel tree
Shall shade the grave of me,
Only Apollo’s bough
Shall guard me now!

Now shall I be at rest
Among the spirits blest,
The happy dead that dwell—
Where,—who may tell?

The snow and wind and hail
May never there prevail,
Nor ever thunder fall
Nor storm at all.

But always fadeless there
The woods are green and fair,
And faithful ever more
Spring to that shore!

There shall I ever hear
Alcaeus’ music clear,
And sweetest of all things
There Sappho sings.

SAN TERENZO.

(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the wreck of the Don Juan.)

Mid April seemed like some November day,
When through the glassy waters, dull as lead,
Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,
Slipped down the long shores of the Spezian bay,
Rounded a point,—and San Terenzo lay
Before us, that gay village, yellow and red,
The roof that covered Shelley’s homeless head,—
His house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.

The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen
Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again.
Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free,
When suddenly the forest glades were stirred
With waving pinions, and a great sea bird
Flew forth, like Shelley’s spirit, to the sea!

1880.

ROMANCE.

My Love dwelt in a Northern land.
A grey tower in a forest green
Was hers, and far on either hand
The long wash of the waves was seen,
And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,
The woven forest boughs between!

And through the silver Northern night
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, lily-white,
Stole forth among the branches grey;
About the coming of the light,
They fled like ghosts before the day!

I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle grey;
I know not if the boughs between
The white deer vanish ere the day;
Above my Love the grass is green,
My heart is colder than the clay!

BALLADE OF HIS OWN COUNTRY.

I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves
Among the shining salmon-flies;
A song for summer-time that grieves
I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves.
Between grey sea and golden sheaves,
Beneath the soft wet Morvern skies,
I scribbled on a fly-book’s leaves
Among the shining salmon-flies.

TO C. H. ARKCOLL

Let them boast of Arabia, oppressed
By the odour of myrrh on the breeze;
In the isles of the East and the West
That are sweet with the cinnamon trees
Let the sandal-wood perfume the seas;
Give the roses to Rhodes and to Crete,
We are more than content, if you please,
With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

Though Dan Virgil enjoyed himself best
With the scent of the limes, when the bees
Hummed low ’round the doves in their nest,
While the vintagers lay at their ease,
Had he sung in our northern degrees,
He’d have sought a securer retreat,
He’d have dwelt, where the heart of us flees,
With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

Oh, the broom has a chivalrous crest
And the daffodil’s fair on the leas,
And the soul of the Southron might rest,
And be perfectly happy with these;
But we, that were nursed on the knees
Of the hills of the North, we would fleet
Where our hearts might their longing appease
With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

Envoy.

Ah Constance, the land of our quest
It is far from the sounds of the street,
Where the Kingdom of Galloway’s blest
With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

VILLANELLE

(TO M. JOSEPH BOULMIER, AUTHOR OF “LES VILLANELLES.”)

Villanelle, why art thou mute?
Hath the singer ceased to sing?
Hath the Master lost his lute?

Many a pipe and scrannel flute
On the breeze their discords fling;
Villanelle, why art thou mute?

Sound of tumult and dispute,
Noise of war the echoes bring;
Hath the Master lost his lute?

Once he sang of bud and shoot
In the season of the Spring;
Villanelle, why art thou mute?

Fading leaf and falling fruit
Say, “The year is on the wing,
Hath the Master lost his lute?”

Ere the axe lie at the root,
Ere the winter come as king,
Villanelle, why art thou mute?
Hath the Master lost his lute?

TRIOLETS AFTER MOSCHUS.

Αίαῖ ταὶ μαλάχαι μέν ἐπὰν κατὰ κᾱπον ὄλωνται
ὕστερον άυ ζώοντι καὶ εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο φύοντι
άμμες δ’ οι μεγάλοι καὶ χαρτερί οι σοφοὶ ἄνδρες
ὁππότε πρᾱτα θάνωμες άνάχοοι ἔν χθονὶ χοίλα
‘εύδομες ἔυ μάλα μαχρὸν ἀπέμονα νήγρετον ‘ύπνον.

Alas, for us no second spring,
Like mallows in the garden-bed,
For these the grave has lost his sting,
Alas, for us no second spring,
Who sleep without awakening,
And, dead, for ever more are dead,
Alas, for us no second spring,
Like mallows in the garden-bed!

Alas, the strong, the wise, the brave
That boast themselves the sons of men!
Once they go down into the grave—
Alas, the strong, the wise, the brave,—
They perish and have none to save,
They are sown, and are not raised again;
Alas, the strong, the wise, the brave,
That boast themselves the sons of men!

BALLADE OF CRICKET.

TO T. W. LANG.

The burden of hard hitting: slog away!
Here shalt thou make a “five” and there a “four,”
And then upon thy bat shalt lean, and say,
That thou art in for an uncommon score.
Yea, the loud ring applauding thee shall roar,
And thou to rival Thornton shalt aspire,
When lo, the Umpire gives thee “leg before,”—
“This is the end of every man’s desire!”

The burden of much bowling, when the stay
Of all thy team is “collared,” swift or slower,
When “bailers” break not in their wonted way,
And “yorkers” come not off as here-to-fore,
When length balls shoot no more, ah never more,
When all deliveries lose their former fire,
When bats seem broader than the broad barn-door,—
“This is the end of every man’s desire!”

The burden of long fielding, when the clay
Clings to thy shoon in sudden shower’s downpour,
And running still thou stumblest, or the ray
Of blazing suns doth bite and burn thee sore,
And blind thee till, forgetful of thy lore,
Thou dost most mournfully misjudge a “skyer,”
And lose a match the Fates cannot restore,—
“This is the end of every man’s desire!”

Envoy.

Alas, yet liefer on Youth’s hither shore
Would I be some poor Player on scant hire,
Than King among the old, who play no more,—
“This is the end of every man’s desire!”

THE LAST MAYING.

“It is told of the last Lovers which watched May-night in the forest, before men brought the tidings of the Gospel to this land, that they beheld no Fairies, nor Dwarfs, nor no such Thing, but the very Venus herself, who bade them ‘make such cheer as they might, for’ said she, ‘I shall live no more in these Woods, nor shall ye endure to see another May time.’”—Edmund Gorliot, “Of Phantasies and Omens,” p. 149. (1573.)

“Whence do ye come, with the dew on your hair?
From what far land are the boughs ye bear,
The blossoms and buds upon breasts and tresses,
The light burned white in your faces fair?”

“In a falling fane have we built our house,
With the dying Gods we have held carouse,
And our lips are wan from their wild caresses,
Our hands are filled with their holy boughs.

As we crossed the lawn in the dying day
No fairy led us to meet the May,
But the very Goddess loved by lovers,
In mourning raiment of green and grey.

She was not decked as for glee and game,
She was not veiled with the veil of flame,
The saffron veil of the Bride that covers
The face that is flushed with her joy and shame.

On the laden branches the scent and dew
Mingled and met, and as snow to strew
The woodland rides and the fragrant grasses,
White flowers fell as the night wind blew.

Tears and kisses on lips and eyes
Mingled and met amid laughter and sighs
For grief that abides, and joy that passes,
For pain that tarries and mirth that flies.

It chanced as the dawning grew to grey
Pale and sad on our homeward way,
With weary lips, and palled with pleasure
The Goddess met us, farewell to say.

“Ye have made your choice, and the better part,
Ye chose” she said, “and the wiser art;
In the wild May night drank all the measure,
The perfect pleasure of heart and heart.

“Ye shall walk no more with the May,” she said,
“Shall your love endure though the Gods be dead?
Shall the flitting flocks, mine own, my chosen,
Sing as of old, and be happy and wed?

“Yea, they are glad as of old; but you,
Fair and fleet as the dawn or the dew,
Abide no more, for the springs are frozen,
And fled the Gods that ye loved and knew.

Ye shall never know Summer again like this;
Ye shall play no more with the Fauns, I wis,
No more in the nymphs’ and dryads’ playtime
Shall echo and answer kiss and kiss.

“Though the flowers in your golden hair be bright,
Your golden hair shall be waste and white
On faded brows ere another May time
Bring the spring, but no more delight.”

HOMERIC UNITY.

The sacred keep of Ilion is rent
By shaft and pit; foiled waters wander slow
Through plains where Simois and Scamander went
To war with Gods and heroes long ago.
Not yet to tired Cassandra, lying low
In rich MycenÆ, do the Fates relent:
The bones of Agamemnon are a show,
And ruined is his royal monument.

The dust and awful treasures of the Dead,
Hath Learning scattered wide, but vainly thee,
Homer, she meteth with her tool of lead,
And strives to rend thy songs; too blind to see
The crown that burns on thine immortal head
Of indivisible supremacy!

IN TINTAGEL.

LUI.

Ah lady, lady, leave the creeping mist,
And leave the iron castle by the sea!

ELLE.

Nay, from the sea there came a ghost that kissed
My lips, and so I cannot come to thee!

LUI.

Ah lady, leave the cruel landward wind
That crusts the blighted flowers with bitter foam!

ELLE.

Nay, for his arms are cold and strong to bind,
And I must dwell with him and make my home!

LUI.

Come, for the Spring is fair in Joyous Guard
And down deep alleys sweet birds sing again.

ELLE.

But I must tarry with the winter hard,
And with the bitter memory of pain,
Although the Spring be fair in Joyous Guard,
And in the gardens glad birds sing again!

PISIDICÊ.

The incident is from the Love Stories of Parthenius, who preserved fragments of a lost epic on the expedition of Achilles against Lesbos, an island allied with Troy.

The daughter of the Lesbian king
Within her bower she watched the war,
Far off she heard the arrows ring,
The smitten harness ring afar;
And, fighting from the foremost car,
Saw one that smote where all must flee;
More fair than the Immortals are
He seemed to fair PisidicÊ!

She saw, she loved him, and her heart
Before Achilles, Peleus’ son,
Threw all its guarded gates apart,
A maiden fortress lightly won!
And, ere that day of fight was done,
No more of land or faith recked she,
But joyed in her new life begun,—
Her life of love, PisidicÊ!

She took a gift into her hand,
As one that had a boon to crave;
She stole across the ruined land
Where lay the dead without a grave,
And to Achilles’ hand she gave
Her gift, the secret postern’s key.
“To-morrow let me be thy slave!”
Moaned to her love PisidicÊ.

Ere dawn the Argives’ clarion call
Rang down Methymna’s burning street;
They slew the sleeping warriors all,
They drove the women to the fleet,
Save one, that to Achilles’ feet
Clung, but, in sudden wrath, cried he:
“For her no doom but death is meet,”
And there men stoned PisidicÊ.

In havens of that haunted coast,
Amid the myrtles of the shore,
The moon sees many a maiden ghost
Love’s outcast now and evermore.
The silence hears the shades deplore
Their hour of dear-bought love; but thee
The waves lull, ’neath thine olives hoar,
To dreamless rest, PisidicÊ!

FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST.

Returning from what other seas
Dost thou renew thy murmuring,
Weak Tide, and hast thou aught of these
To tell, the shores where float and cling
My love, my hope, my memories?

Say does my lady wake to note
The gold light into silver die?
Or do thy waves make lullaby,
While dreams of hers, like angels, float
Through star-sown spaces of the sky?

Ah, would such angels came to me
That dreams of mine might speak with hers,
Nor wake the slumber of the sea
With words as low as winds that be
Awake among the gossamers!

LOVE THE VAMPIRE.

Ο ΕΡΩΤΑΣ ’Σ ΤΟΝ ΤΑΦΟ.

The level sands and grey,
Stretch leagues and leagues away,
Down to the border line of sky and foam,
A spark of sunset burns,
The grey tide-water turns,
Back, like a ghost from her forbidden home!

Here, without pyre or bier,
Light Love was buried here,
Alas, his grave was wide and deep enough,
Thrice, with averted head,
We cast dust on the dead,
And left him to his rest. An end of Love.

“No stone to roll away,
No seal of snow or clay,
Only soft dust above his wearied eyes,
But though the sudden sound
Of Doom should shake the ground,
And graves give up their ghosts, he will not rise!”

So each to each we said!
Ah, but to either bed
Set far apart in lands of North and South,
Love as a Vampire came
With haggard eyes aflame,
And kissed us with the kisses of his mouth!

Thenceforth in dreams must we
Each other’s shadow see
Wand’ring unsatisfied in empty lands,
Still the desirÈd face
Fleets from the vain embrace,
And still the shape evades the longing hands.

There is a Heaven, or here, or there,—
A Heaven there is, for me and you,
Where bargains meet for purses spare,
Like ours, are not so far and few.
Thuanus’ bees go humming through
The learned groves, ’neath rainless skies,
O’er volumes old and volumes new,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!

There treasures bound for Longepierre
Keep brilliant their morocco blue,
There Hookes’ Amanda is not rare,
Nor early tracts upon Peru!
Racine is common as Rotrou,
No Shakespeare Quarto search defies,
And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!

There’s Eve,—not our first mother fair,—
But Clovis Eve, a binder true;
Thither does Bauzonnet repair,
Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup!
But never come the cropping crew
That dock a volume’s honest size,
Nor they that “letter” backs askew,
Within that Book-man’s Paradise!

Envoy.

Friend, do not Heber and De Thou,
And Scott, and Southey, kind and wise,
La chasse au bouquin still pursue
Within that Book-man’s Paradise?

BALLADE OF A FRIAR.

(Clement Marot’s FrÈre Lubin, though translated by Longfellow and others, has not hitherto been rendered into the original measure, of ballade À double refrain.)

Some ten or twenty times a day,
To bustle to the town with speed,
To dabble in what dirt he may,—
Le FrÈre Lubin’s the man you need!
But any sober life to lead
Upon an exemplary plan,
Requires a Christian indeed,—
Le FrÈre Lubin is not the man!

Another’s wealth on his to lay,
With all the craft of guile and greed,
To leave you bare of pence or pay,—
Le FrÈre Lubin’s the man you need!
But watch him with the closest heed,
And dun him with what force you can,—
He’ll not refund, howe’er you plead,—
Le FrÈre Lubin is not the man!

An honest girl to lead astray,
With subtle saw and promised meed,
Requires no cunning crone and grey,—
Le FrÈre Lubin’s the man you need!
He preaches an ascetic creed,
But,—try him with the water can—
A dog will drink, whate’er his breed,—
Le FrÈre Lubin is not the man!

Envoy.

In good to fail, in ill succeed,
Le FrÈre Lubin’s the man you need!
In honest works to lead the van,
Le FrÈre Lubin is not the man!

BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. [78]

I have scribbled in verse and in prose,
I have painted “arrangements in greens,”
And my name is familiar to those
Who take in the high class magazines;
I compose; I’ve invented machines;
I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”;
For my county I played, in my teens,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows;
I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens;
I have climbed the Caucasian snows;
I abstain, like the ancients, from beans,—
I’ve a guess what Pythagoras means,
When he says that to eat them’s a crime,—
I have lectured upon the Essenes,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s,
I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,”
I have breasted the river that flows
Through the land of the wild Gadarenes;
I can gossip with Burton on skenes,
I can imitate Irving (the Mime),
And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

Envoy.

So the tower of mine eminence leans
Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime;
I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans,
But—I am not in “Men of the Time!”

BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS.

Let others praise analysis
And revel in a “cultured” style,
And follow the subjective Miss [80]
From Boston to the banks of Nile,
Rejoice in anti-British bile,
And weep for fickle hero’s woe,
These twain have shortened many a mile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.

These damsels of “Democracy’s,”
How long they stop at every stile!
They smile, and we are told, I wis,
Ten subtle reasons why they smile.
Give me your villains deeply vile,
Give me Lecoq, Jottrat, and Co.,
Great artists of the ruse and wile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!

Oh, novel readers, tell me this,
Can prose that’s polished by the file,
Like great Boisgobey’s mysteries,
Wet days and weary ways beguile,
And man to living reconcile,
Like these whose every trick we know?
The agony how high they pile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!

Envoy.

Ah, friend, how many and many a while
They’ve made the slow time fleetly flow,
And solaced pain and charmed exile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.

THE CLOUD CHORUS.

(FROM ARISTOPHANES.)

Socrates speaks.

Hither, come hither, ye Clouds renowned, and unveil yourselves here;
Come, though ye dwell on the sacred crests of Olympian snow,
Or whether ye dance with the Nereid choir in the gardens clear,
Or whether your golden urns are dipped in Nile’s overflow,
Or whether you dwell by MÆotis mere
Or the snows of Mimas, arise! appear!
And hearken to us, and accept our gifts ere ye rise and go.

The Clouds sing.

Immortal Clouds from the echoing shore
Of the father of streams, from the sounding sea,
Dewy and fleet, let us rise and soar.
Dewy and gleaming, and fleet are we!
Let us look on the tree-clad mountain crest,
On the sacred earth where the fruits rejoice,
On the waters that murmur east and west
On the tumbling sea with his moaning voice,
For unwearied glitters the Eye of the Air,
And the bright rays gleam;
Then cast we our shadows of mist, and fare
In our deathless shapes to glance everywhere
From the height of the heaven, on the land and air,
And the Ocean stream.

Let us on, ye Maidens that bring the Rain,
Let us gaze on Pallas’ citadel,
In the country of Cecrops, fair and dear
The mystic land of the holy cell,
Where the Rites unspoken securely dwell,
And the gifts of the Gods that know not stain
And a people of mortals that know not fear.
For the temples tall, and the statues fair,
And the feasts of the Gods are holiest there,
The feasts of Immortals, the chaplets of flowers
And the Bromian mirth at the coming of spring,
And the musical voices that fill the hours,
And the dancing feet of the Maids that sing!

BALLADE OF LITERARY FAME.

“All these for Fourpence.”

Oh, where are the endless Romances
Our grandmothers used to adore?
The Knights with their helms and their lances,
Their shields and the favours they wore?
And the Monks with their magical lore?
They have passed to Oblivion and Nox,
They have fled to the shadowy shore,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

And where the poetical fancies
Our fathers rejoiced in, of yore?
The lyric’s melodious expanses,
The Epics in cantos a score?
They have been and are not: no more
Shall the shepherds drive silvery flocks,
Nor the ladies their languors deplore,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

And the Music! The songs and the dances?
The tunes that Time may not restore?
And the tomes where Divinity prances?
And the pamphlets where Heretics roar?
They have ceased to be even a bore,—
The Divine, and the Sceptic who mocks,—
They are “cropped,” they are “foxed” to the core,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

Envoy.

Suns beat on them; tempests downpour,
On the chest without cover or locks,
Where they lie by the Bookseller’s door,—
They are all in the Fourpenny Box!

Νήνεμος ’Αἰών

I would my days had been in other times,
A moment in the long unnumbered years
That knew the sway of Horus and of hawk,
In peaceful lands that border on the Nile.

I would my days had been in other times,
Lulled by the sacrifice and mumbled hymn
Between the Five great Rivers, or in shade
And shelter of the cool HimÂlayan hills.

I would my days had been in other times,
That I in some old abbey of Touraine
Had watched the rounding grapes, and lived my life,
Ere ever Luther came or Rabelais!

I would my days had been in other times,
When quiet life to death not terrible
Drifted, as ashes of the Santhal dead
Drift down the sacred Rivers to the Sea!