ins i$it CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Estate of L.L. Beaman Date Due mt^.r^mnj^ DEt j l 1 IUb» Jf f 11/^4^ ^«ujx_4:_ J^»^l^ F -A^ S^^l PRINTED IN car NO, Z3233 Cornell University Library PR 1195.S5S53 1888 Sonnets of this century 3 1924 013 293 182 a Cornell University y Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 32931 82 SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY EDITED AND ARRANGED WITH A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION ON THE SONNET BY WILLIAM SHARP Un sonnet sans difaut vaut seul un long poeme BOILEAU NEW YORK AND LONDON WHITE AND ALLEN CO /]k^^^fl AUTHORS AND TITLES. (Names prefixed by an asterisk are those of deceased writers.) ^Alford, Dean page i. Easter Ere i Allingham, William ii. Autumnal Sonnet 2 iii. A Day- Dream's Reflection 3 iv. After Sunset 4 Arnold, Matthew [v. East London 5 vi, Shakespeare ........ 6 vii. Immortality ........ 7 Austin, Alfred viii. Love's Blindness 8 ix. Love's Wisdom ....... 9 X. Unseasonable Snows 10 xi. A Sleepless Night 11 Bell, H. T. Mackenzie xii. Old Year Leaves 12 Bevington, Louisa S. xiii. Love's Depth 13 •Blanchard, Samuel Laman , xiv. Wishes of Youth 14 K B iv AUTHORS AND TITLES. Blind, Mathilde page XV. The Dead 'S xvi. Cleave Thou the Waves l6 xvii. Christmas Eve '7 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen ("Proteus") xviii, An Exhortation . . . ■ • • .18 xix. Vanitas Vanitatis 19 XX. The Pride of Unbelief ... . . 20 xxi. On the Shortness of Time 21 xxii. The Sublime 22 *BowLES, William Lisle xxiii. Ostend 23 Brodie, E. H. xxiv. Omnia Mutantur 24 *Brown, Oliver Madox XXV. Requiescant 25 ♦Browning, Elizabeth Barrett xxvi. The Soul's Expression . xxvii. Sonnets from Portuguese, No. 14 xxviii. ,, „ ,, 17 XXIX. ,, ,, J, 22 XXX. ,, J, ,, 43 26 27 28 29 30 Browning, Robert xxxi. Helen's Tower 31 xxxii. An Answer ..... . . 32 Buchanan, Robert xxxiii. " When we are all asleep " 33 xxxiv. Quiet Waters ....... 34 *Brydges, Sir S. Egerton XXXV. Echo and Silence ...... 35 *Byron, Lord xxxvi. Chillon 36 Caine, Hall xxxvii. " Where Lies the Land ! " . . . -37 xxxviii. " After Sunset " ...,,,, 33 A VTHORS AND TITLES. v Call, W. M. W. page xxxix. The Haunted Shore ...... 39 *Clare, John xl. The First Sight of Spring 40 Clarke, Herbert E. xli. The Assignation 41 xlii. The King of Kings 42 ♦Coleridge, Hartley xliii. The Birth of Speech 43 xliv. Prayer 44 xlv. Night . - 45 xlvi. Not in Vain 46 xlvii. November - 47 ♦Coleridge, Samuel Taylor xlviii. Nature 48 ♦Coleridge, Sara xlix. Phantasmion's Quest 49 Craigmyle, Bessie 1. Cleopatra ........ 50 Craik, Dinah Maria li. The Guns of Peace 51 *De Vere, Sir Aubrey lii. The Rock of Cashel 52 liii. The Right Use of Prayer 53 liv. The Children's Band 54 De Vere, Aubrey (The Younger) Iv. The Sun God 55 Ivi. The Setting of the Moon near Corinth ... 56 Ivii. Her Beauty ........ 57 Iviii. Sorrow 58 Ux. National Apostacy ....... 59 Dixon, Richard Watson (Canon) Ix. Humanity ........ 60 *DoBELL, Sydney Ixi. The Army Surgeon 61 Ixii. The Common Grave . . , ' . . .62 Ixiii. Home : In War Time 63 vi AUTHORS AND TITLES. DoBSON, Austin page Ixiv. Don Quixote "4 *D0UBLEDAY, THOMAS Ixv. The Sea Cave 65 Ixvi. Angling °° DowDEN, Edward Ixvii. An Interior ... . . . . ■ • \L Ixviii. Evening near the Sea Ixix. Awakening . Ixx. Two Infinities Ixxi. Brother Death 68 69 70 71 Eaele, John Charles Ixxii. Rest 72 ♦Elliott, Ebenezer Ixxiii. Fountains Abbey 73 Ellis, Joseph Ixxiv. Silence 74 +KLLISON, Henry Ixxv. A Sunset Thought 7S Ixxvi. London, after Midnight 76 Ixxvii. At Sunset 77 *Faber, Frederick William Ixxviii. Socrates 78 Ixxix. On the Ramparts of AngouISme . . . -79 *Fane, Julian Ixxx. Ad Matrem 80 Freeland, William Ixxxi. In Prospect of Death 81 Garnett, Richard Ixxxii. Age 82 Ixxxiii, Dante ......... 83 GiLLINGTON, MARV C. Ixxxiv. Intra Muros 84 A UTHORS AND TITLES. vii GossK, Edmund W. page Ixxxv. On a Lute Found in a Sarcophagus ... 85 Ixxxvi. Alcyone 86 Ixxxvii. The Tomb of Sophocles ..... 87 *Gkay, David •Ixxxviii. The Thrush's Song 88 Ixxxix. To a Friend 89 Hake, Thomas Gordon xc. Venus Urania 90 *Hallam, Arthur Henry xci. Written in Edinburgh 91 Hamilton, Eugene Lee xcii. Sea-Shell Murmurs 92 xciii. Idle Charon • • 93 xciv. Lethe ... 94 xcv. Sunken Gold . . ■ • • • 95 ♦Hamilton, Sir William Rowan xcvi. To Death . 96 xcvii. Spirit of Wisdom and of Love . . . -97 Hanmer, Lord xcviii. England 98 xcix. To the Fountain at Frascati 99 ''Hawker, Rev. Robert Stephen t. Pater Vester Pascit Ilia 100 HOGBEN, John ci. Truth and Beauty loi Holmes, Edmond G. A. cii. Night 102 *HooD, Thomas ciii. Silence .... ... 103 civ. Death ......... 104 HouFE, Charles A. cv. The Times to Come 105 viii AUTHORS AND TITLES. *HouGHTON, Lord page cvi. Happiness ■ '0° *HuNT, Leigh cvii. The Nile ■ • .107 cviii. Tlie Grasshopper and the Cricket . . . .108 Inchbold, J. W. cix. One Dead 109 Ingelow, Jean ex. An Ancient Chess-King no *JONES, EbENEZER cxi. High Summer in •Keats, John cxii. On First Looking into Chapman's ^flffze;- . .112 cxiii. Ailsa Rock . . . . . . . .113 cxiv. On the Elgin Marbles 1 14 cxv. To Homer . , 115 cxvi. " The Day is Gone " 116 cxvii. "Bright Star" 117 Kemble, Frances Anne cxviii. " Art Thou already Weary of the Way ? " . .118 Knight, Joseph cxix. Love's Martyrdom 119 Lang, Andrew cxx. Homeric Unily ...... 120 cxxi. On the Death of Colonel Burnaby .... 121 Lefroy, Rev. Edward Cracroft cxxii. Something Lost ....... 122 cxxiii. On the Beach in November . »^ . . . . 123 cxxiv. A Thought from Pindar 124 cxxv. Suburban Meadows ...... 125 Locker, Frederick cxxvi. Love, Death, and Time 126 Lytton, Robert, Earl of cxxvii. Evening j2y A UTHORS AND TITLES. IX Makston, Philip Bourke cxxviii. cxxix. cxxx. cxxxi. Not Thou But I . Youth and Nature . A Dream . . . . Three Sonnets on Sorrow, I. cxxxii. cxxxiii. .. in Marston, Westland cxxxiv. Mine cxxxv. Immortality PAGE 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 13s Meredith, George cxxxvi. Lucifer in Starlight 136 ' Meynell, Alice cxxxvii. Renouncement cxxxviii. Without Him cxxxix. Spring among the Alban Hills Monkhouse, Cosmo cxl. Life and Death 137 138 139 140 Myers, Ernest cxli. The Banquet 141 cxlii. The Night's Message 142 cxliii. Milton 143 Myers, Frederick W. H. cxliv. Immortality ........ 144 cxlv. " Would God it were Morning " .... 145 cxlvi. High Tide at Midnight 146 Nesbit, E. cxlvii. Pessimism Newman, John Henry (Cardinal) cxlviii. Substance and Shadow . 147 148 Nichol, John cxlix. London I49 cl. Crowned 15° Noble, J. Ashcroft cli. A Character— and a Question . clii. " Only a Woman's Hair " 151 152 X A VTHORS AND TITLES. *NoEL, Edward Henry page cliii. The Rainbow 153 Noel, Hon. Roden cliv. By the Sea 154 Palgrave, Francis Turner civ. "In Memory of F. C. C." I5S Paton, Sir Noel clvi. " Timor Mortis Conturbat Me " .... 156 Payne, John clvii. Sibyl 157 civiii. Hesperia .... 158 clix. Life Unlived 159 Pfeiffer, Emily clx. Evolution ........ 160 clxi. To Nature. No. II 161 clxii. To Nature. No. Ill 162 clxiii. To a Moth that Drinketh of the ripe October . 163 ♦Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall) clxiv. A Still Place 164 clxv. The Sea — in Calm 165 Raffalovich, Mark Andre clxvi. More than Truth 166 clxvii. The Body Fair 167 Rhys, Ernest clxviii. The Student's Chamber 168 Roberts, Charles G. D. clxix. The Potato Harvest 169 Robertson, Eric Sutherland clxx. The Lost Ideal of the World . . . .170 Robinson, A. Mary F. clxxi. Two Lovers, 1 171 clxxii. Two Lovers. II. . , . . . . . 172 clxxiii. Lover's Silence 173 *RoscoE, William Caldwell clxxiv. The Poetic Land . . . . . . .174 clxxv. Daybreak in February 175 clxxvi. " Like a Musician " 176 AUTHORS AND TITLES. *RoscoE, William Stanley clxxvii. The Harvest Moon RossETTi, Christina G. PAGE clxxviii. Remember 178 clxxix. One Certainty 179 clxxx. The World iSo clxxxi. Vanity of Vanities 181 clxxxii. Love Lies Bleeding 182 *RossETTi, Dante Gabriel clxxxiii. Sibylla Palmifera .... clxxxiv. A Venetian Pastoral clxxxv. On the Refusal of Aid between Nations clxxxvi. Lovesight clxxxvii. The Dark Glass clxxxviii. Without Her clxxxix. True Woman, II. cxc. True Woman, III. cxci. The Choice cxcii. Lost Days cxciii. " Retro me, Sathana ! ' cxciv. A Superscription . Rossetti, William Michael cxcv. Democracy Downtrodden cxcvi. Emigration . House of Life, No, IV. xxxiv. liii. Ivii. Iviii. Ixxii. Ixxxvi. xc. xcvii. 'Russell, Thomas cxcvii. At Lemnos 183 184 18.5 186 187 18S 189 190 igi 192 193 194 195 196 197 Scott, William Bell cxcviii. The Universe Void 198 cxcix. Below the Old House I99 cc. Parted Love 200 cci. Seeking Forgetfulness 201 ccii. Experience cciii. A Garland for Advancing Years 203 •Shelley, Percy Bysshe cciv. Ozymandias . 204 Simcox, George Augustus ccv. A Chill in Summer 205 xii AUTHORS AND TITLES. *Smith, Alexander page ccvi. Beauty 2°° *SouTHEY, Robert ccvii. Winter .....•■•■ 207 Stevenson, Robert Louis ccviii. The Touch of Life 208 *Strong, Charles ccix. Evening . . . ... 209 ccx. Time ......... 210 Swinburne, Algernon Charles ccxi. Dedicatory Sonnet 211 ccxii. Ford ... . ... 212 ccxiii. Webster 213 ccxiv. On the Russian Persecution of the Jews . . . 214 ccxv. Hope and Fear ....... 215 SvMONDS, John Addington ccxvi. The Genius of Eternal Slumber .... 216 ccxvii. Inevitable Change . ... ccxviii. The Jews' Cemetery ccxix. A Crucifix in the Etsch Thai . ccxx. A Dream of Burial in Mid-Ocean ccxxi. A Venetian Sunrise 2l7 218 219 220 221 Tennyson, Lord ccxxii. Montenegro ........ 222 ccxxiii. On the Outbreak of the Polish Insurrection . . 223 *Thomson, James ccxxiv. The Recusant ...... 224 Thobpe, Rev. R. A. ccxxv. Forgetfulness 225 *Thurlow, Lord ccxxvi. To a Bird that Haunted the Waters of Laken . . 226 ccxxvii. The Harvest Home 227 Todhunter, John ccxxviii. A Dream of Egypt ...... 228 In the Louvre 229 230 ccxxix. coxxx. Witches AUTHORS AND TITLES. xiii *Trench, Richard Chenevix (Archbishop) page ccxxxi. The Heart's Sacredness 231 Trench, F. Herbert ccxxxii. In Memoriam 232 *Turner, Charles Tennyson ccxxxiii. The Lattice at Sunrise 233 ccxxxiv. The Buoy-Bell ....... 234 ccxxxv. On Startling some Pigeons 235 ccxxxvi. The Ocean ........ 236 ccxxxvii. Summer Gloaming ...... 237 Waddington, Samuel ccxxxviii. From Night to Night 238 ccxxxix. The Aftermath 239 Watson, William ccxl. God-seeking ........ 240 ccxii. History 241 Watts, Theodore ccxlii. The First Kiss 242 ocxliii. Foreshadowings ....... 243 ccxliv. The Heaven that Was 244 ccxlv. Natura Benigna ....... 245 ccxlvi. Natura Maligna ....... 246 coxlvli. A Dream 247 Webster, Augusta ccxlviii. The Brook Rhine 24S *White, J. Blanco ccxlix. Night ....... . 249 *White, Henry Kirke ccl. "What art Thou?" ...... 250 ♦Whitehead, Charles ccli. " As Yonder Lamp " 251 Whitworth, William Henry cclii. Time and Death 252 Wilde, Oscar ccliii. Libertatis Sacra Fames 253 xiv A UTHORS AND TITLES. *WlLSON, J. (" Christopher North ") PAGE ccliv. The Evening Cloud 254 Wilton, Rev. Richard cclv. Frosted Trees 255 Woods, James Chapman cclvi. The World's Death-Night 256 cclvii. The Soul Stithy 257 * Wordsworth, William cclviii. Fair Star of Evening . . . . . . 258 cclix. On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic . . 259 cclx. To Toussaint L'Ouverture ..... 260 cclxi. On the Subjugation of Switzerland .... 261 cclxii. To Milton 262 cclxiii. Transient Joy ....... 263 cclxiv. The Times that are 264 cclxv. To Sleep ........ 265 cclxvi. After-Thought 266 cclxvii. " The World is too much with us " . . . 267 cclxviii. From Westminster Bridge 268 cclxix. " It is a Beauteous Evening " .... 269 cclxx. Mutability ........ 27(7 INDEX TO SONNETS QUOTED IN THE APPENDIX. Anon page The Mansions of the Blest 316 Adstin, Alfred To England 274 " When Acorns Fall " . ... . . 274 Beaconsfield, Earl of Wellington 275 BiNYON, Robert Lawrence The Past, Asleep 278 Brown, Ford Madox "O. M. B." 279 Brown, Oliver Madox The Past World 277 Coleridge, S. T. On Schiller's Robbers 283 Work without Hope 283 De Verb, Aubrey vEschylus 289 Freeland, William The New-Comers 288 Garnett, Richard Garibaldi's Retirement 289 xvi SONNETS IN APPENDIX. Hamilton, Eugene Lee v\g^ The Phantom Ship 291 Hanmer, Lord The Old Fisher 292 Winter (quoted in Introduction). Holmes, Edmond G. A. On the Coast of Clare 293 Horne, Richard Hengist The Friend of Friends .... -294 Keats, John On the Nile 295 The Grasshopper and the Cricket .... 296 Lame, Charles Innocence ......... 297 Lang, Andrew The Odyssey 298 Lefroy, Rev. Edward Craceoft Cleonicus 298 A Sicilian Night 299 Main, David M. Chaucer 299 To a Favourite Retreat ...... 300 Marston, Philip Bourke In Memoriam : James Thomson 317 Marzials, Frank The Last Metamorphosis of Mephistopheles . . 301 Meredith, George Modern Love (xvi., xxix. xliii., xlix., 1.) . . . 302 Meynell, Alice A Day to Come . . .... 304 PoE, Edgar Allan Silence .... .... 293 Rawnsley, Hardwicke D. The Lake Mirror ;■•■... 307 SONNETS IN APPENDIX. xvii Roberts, Charles G. D. page The Sower ...... . . 307 Robinson, a. Mary F. Apprehension. 1 309 Apprehension. II ' . . 309 RossETTi, Dante Gabriel A Venetian Pastoral (Original Version) . . .311 The One Hope . .311 Shelley, Percy Bysshe On the Nile 295 Stevenson, Robert Louis The Arabesque 313 Symonds, John Addington The Chorister 315 Tennyson, Lord Love Defiant ........ 316 TupPER, Martin The Brecknock Beacons 318 Watson, William Reported Concessions . ...... 320 Nightmare 320 Watts, Theodore In a Graveyard 279 The Rosy Scar 321 A Talk on Waterloo Bridge (a Reminiscence) . . 322 Sonnet on the Sonnet (quoted in the Introduction). White, J. Blanco Night and Death (Early Version) .... 323 Wilton, Rev. Richard The Voice at Eventide 325 XO THE MEMORY OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, WHOSE GLORY IT IS TO HAVE DONE SO MUCH TO STRENGTHEN THE LOVE OF BEAUTY IN ART, IN LITERATURE, AND IN LIFE. V. To J). O. it. I. From out the darkness cometk never a sound : No voice doth reach its from the silent place : There is one goal beyond life's blindfold race, For victor and for victiTn— burial-ground. OJriend, revered, helov'd, maj/st thou have found Beyond the shad, a a a a b b b b a a b b b b b b a a b b b a a b b a b b c a c c c b b b a b a b b a a b b u b c c b c c c c c c a b a a b b a a a b b c a c c b c a c c b b a a b b c c a a b a b c b c b Q 1 ■3 • tA ">< "S > '> > 1 X d > 1 X 'X X 'x X X y u X X The figures in the third division of this Table denote examples among the Sonnets in this book of the variation in question, * Rossetti used to say that he considered this (No. 3) to be the best form of sestet, if it coulil be achieved without any damage to intellectual substance, "^ THE SONNET. xxxvii Of these, it seems to me that the two most musical — the least disturbant to the melodic wave — are the first and third, a — b — a — b — a — b a — b — b — a — b — a The occurrence of a rhymed couplet at the close of the sonnet is rare indeed in Italian literature : I cannot recall a single example of it among the classic masters of the sonnet, and eveh in later times I fancy it would be difficult to find a single good Italian example worthy the name with this termination. But it does not necessarily follow that a closing couplet is equally unpleasant to the ear in English, for in the latter practically all sonnets are what the Italians call mute, that is, the rhyming terminals are in one syllable, while in the language of Petrarca and Dante they are trisyllabic and dissyllabic — a circumstance materially affect- ing our consideration of this much-debated point. Not only are there few good English sonnets with dissyllabic terminals (I remember none with trisyllabic throughout, and do not suppose there is an example thereof to be found), but there are few of any quality. In Mrs. Alice Meynell's Preludes there are one or two partially so con- structed, e.g., " A Day to Come," quoted in the Appendix to this volume. But, notwithstanding the differences in terminal structure, it is open to question whether the rhymed couplet-ending be not almost as disagreeable to the English as to the Italian ear, unless the form b'e that of the so-called Shakespearian sonnet. One of the chief pleasures of the sonnet is the expectancy of the closing portion, and when the ear has become attuned to the sustained flow of the normal octave and also of the opening lines of the sestet, the couplet is apt to come upon one with an unexpected jar, as if some one had opened and banged-to a door while the musician was letting the last harmonious chords thrill under his touch. There has been a good deal written on this point, and Mr. Hall Caine and others have succinctly pointed out their reasons for strongly objecting to it. It is, moreover, perhaps the last point on which sonneteers them- selves will agree. Writing some three or four years ago on xxxviii THE SONNET. this subject, I stated that " if the arrangement of lines suits the emotion, I am not offended by a concluding rhymed couplet, or by the quatrains used to such purpose by Shake- speare, Drayton, and Tennyson-Turner;" but then, un- doubtedly, only one side of the question was clear to me. Continuous study of the sonnet has convinced me that, while many English sonnets of the Guittonian type, even by good writers, are markedly weakened by rhymed couplet- endings, in the Skakespearian form the closure in question is not only not objectionable but is absolutely as much the right thing as the octave of two rhymes is for the Petrarcan sonnet. Most writers on the sonnet either state generally that they object or that they do not object to the rhymed couplets at the close: thus one anonymous critic writes that he fails " to see wherein a .couplet ending is not as musical as any other arrangement, that indeed it is demon- stratably so by the citation of some of the most striking sonnets in our language" — while, on the other hand, Mr. Caine refers to the closure in question as being as offensive to his ear as the couplets at the ends of scenes and acts in some Shakespearian plays. It seems to me now that there are, broadly speaking, but two normal types in English of sonnet-structures — the Petrarcan and the Shakespearian : whenever a motive is cast in the mould of the former a rhymed couplet ending is, to my own ear at least, quite out of place ; whenever it is embodied in the latter the final couplet is eminently satisfactory. Before, however, considering the five chief types (prim- arily, two), I may finish my general remarks on the early history of the sonnet. That by the fourteenth century the mature sonnet was fully understood and recognised is evident from the facts (set forth by Mr. Tomlinson) that of the forty examples attributed (one or two of them somewhat doubtfully) to Dante, thirty-three belong to the strict Guittonian type : of the three hundred and seventeen produced throughout a long period by Petrarca, not one has more than two rhymes in the octave, and only fifteen have any variations from the normal type (eleven in alternate rhymes, and four with the THE SONNET. xxxix first, third, sixth, and eighth lines harmonising) ; while two hundred and ninety agree in having nothing more than a double rhyme both in the major and in the minor system — one hundred and sixteen belonging to the pure Guittonian type, one hundred and seven with the tercets in two alter- nate rhymes (Type I. in foregoing table), and sixty-seven with three rhyme-sounds, arranged as in Type VII. in foregoing table. Again, of the eighty sonnets of Michael Angelo, seven-eighths are in the normal type. It is thus evident that, at a period when the Italian ear was specially keen to all harmonious effects, the verdict of the masters in this species of poetic composition was given in favour of two sonnet formations — the Guittonian structure as to the octave, and the co-relative arrangement of the sestet a — b — c— a — :b — c, or a — b — a — b — a — b, with a prefer- ence for the former. Another variation susceptible of very beautiful effect is that of Type IX. (ante), but though it can most appropriately be used when exceptional tender- ness, sweetness, or special impressiveness is sought after, it does not seem to have found much favour. I may quote here in exemplification of it one of the most beautiful of all Italian sonnets. It is one of Dante's, and is filled with the breath of music as a pine-tree with the cadences of the wind — the close being supremely ex- quisite : while it will also afford to those who are unac- quainted with Italian an idea of the essential distinction between- the trisyllabic and dissyllabic terminals of the southern and the one-syllable or " mute " endings of the English sonnet, and at the same time serve to illustrate what has been already said concerning the pauses at the quatrains and tercets : — Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare La donna mia, quand' ella altrui saluta, Ch' ogni lingua divien tremando muta, E gli occhi non 1' ardiscon di guardare. Ella sen va, sentendosi laudare, Umilimente d' onesta vestuta ; E par che sia una cosa venuta Di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare. 3d THE SONNET. Mostrasi si piacente a chi la mira, Che di per gli occhi una dolcezza al core, Che'ntender non la pu6 chi non la pruova. E par, che dalla sua labbia si mova, Uno spirito soave, pien d' amore, Che va dicendo all' anima : sospira. I need not here enter into detail concerning all the variations that have been made upon the normal type; in Italian these are very numerous, as also in French. In Germany the model type (where, by-the-by, the sonnet was first known by the name of Klang-gedicht, a very matter-of-fact way of rendering sonetto in its poetic sense!) has always been the Petrarcan, as exemplified in the flawless statuesque sonnets of Platen. The following six Italian variations represent those most worthy of notice: — (i) Versi sdruccioli, twelve-syllabled lines, i.e. {Leigh Bunt) slippery or sliding verses, so called on account of their terminating in dactyls — tenere — Venere. (2) Caudated, or Tailed Sonnets — i.e., sonnets to whicl^ as it were an unexpected augmentation of two or five or ; lore lines is made: an English example of which will be found in any edition of Milton's works, under the title, "On the New Forcers of Conscience." (3) Mute Sonnets : on one-syllable terminals, but generally used only for satirical and humorous pnrposes — in the same way as we, contrariwise, select dissyllabic terminals as best suited for badinage. (4) Linked, or Interlaced Sonnets, corre- sponding to the Spenserian form, which will be formulated shortly. (5) The Continuous or Iterating Sonnet, on one rhyme throughout, and (6) the same, on two rhymes throughout. French poets (who, speaking generally, are seen to less advantage in the sonnet than in any other poetic vehicle) have delighted in much experimentalising: their only commendable deviation, one commonly made, is a commencement of the sestet with a rhymed couplet (a mould into which Mr. Swinburne is fond of casting his impulsive speech) — but their octosyllabic and dialogue sonnets, and other divergences, are nothing more than experiments, more or less interesting and able. The * THE SONNET. xli paring-down system has reached its extreme level in the following clever piece of trifling by Comte Paul de Resse- guier — a " sonnet " of single-syllable lines : — Epitaphe d'une Jeune Fille. Fort Belle, Elk Dort! , Sort Fr&le Quelle. Mart I Rose Close — La Brise L'a Prise. Among English sonnets the chief variations are the rhymed-couplet ending added to the preceding twelve lines cast in the regular form : the sonnet ending with an Alex- andrine {vide No. c): the sonnet with an 'Alexandrine closing both octave and sestet {vide No. xxxv.): the Asson- antal Sonnet, i.e., a sonnet without rhymes, but with the vowel sounds of the words so arranged as to produce a distinctly harmonious effect almost identical with that of rhyme-music. Of this form Mr. Wilfred Blunt, among others, has given a good example in his Love-Sonnets of Proteus: the octosyllabic sonnets (mere experiments), written by Mr. E. Cracroft Lefroy and Mr. S. Waddington and others ; and the sonnet constructed on two rhyme- sounds throughout. Among the last named I may mention Mr. William Bell Scott's "Garland for i\dvancing Years," Mr. Edmund Gosse's "Pipe-Player," and Lord Hanmer^s " Winter." The latter I may quote as a fine but little-known example of this experimental variation : — xUi THE SONNET. Winter. To the short days, and the great. vault of shade The whitener of the hills, we come — alas, There is no colour in the faded grass. Save the thick frost on its hoar stems arrayed. Cold is it : as a melancholy maid. The latest of the seasons now doth pass, With a dead garland, in her icy glass Setting its spikes about her crispid braid. The streams shall breathe, along the orchards laid, In the soft spring-time ; and the frozen mass Melt from the snow-drift ; flowerets where it was Shoot up — the cuckoo shall delight the glade ; . But to new glooms through some obscure crevasse She will have past-:-that melancholy maid. This interesting and poetic experiment would have been still better but for the musical flaw in the first line (days — shade) and those in the I3th-I4th (crevasse — past), though of course in this instance the repetition of maid as a terminal is intentional, and is a metrical gain rather than'a flaw. In the Appendix will be quoted a sonnet by Mr. J. A. Symonds, constructed on three rhymes throughout. Dialogue-sonnets are not an English variation : I am aware of very few in our language,— the earliest which I have met with is that written by Alexander, Earl of Stirling (1580- 1640). There are one or two sonnets in French with octaves where the first three lines rhyme, and therewith also the fifth, sixth, and seventh : one, in English, will be found in the Appendix. We may now pass to the consideration of the five standard formal types, thereby closing the first section of this Introduction, that on " Sonnet-structure." These formal types are (i) The Petrarcan. (2) The Spenserian. (3) The Shakespearian. (4) The Miltonic: and (s) The Contemporary. The Guittonian, or Petrarcan sonnet, has already been explained from the structural point of view : but its formal characteristics may be summarised once more, (i) It, like all sonnets, must primarily consist of fourteen decasyllabic lines. (2) It must be made up of a major and minor THE SONNET. xliii system : the major system consisting of eight lines, or two quatrains, to be known as the octave ; the minor consisting of six lines, or two tercets, to be known as the sestet. (3) Two rhyme-sounds only must pervade the octave, and their arrangement (nominally arbitrary, but in reality based on an ascertainable melodic law) must be so that the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth terminals rhyme, while the second, third, sixth, and seventh do so also on a different note. (4) What is generally looked upon as completing the normal type is a sestet with the tercet divisions clearly marked, and employing three rhyme-sounds, the co-relatives being the terminals of lines i and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 6. Among the numerous sonnets (the great majority naturally) in this anthology conforming to the two arche- typal forms, the reader of these remarks may glance for reference at Mr. Matthew Arnold's " Immortality," and at Mr. Theodore Watts' " Foreshadowings." The first English sonnets were composed by Sir Thomas Wyat (1503-1542), and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey {c. 1517-1547); and the first appearance of any in book form was in the rare publication briefly known as Toitle^s Miscellany, whose full title is " Songs and Sonettes written by the ryght honourable lorde Henry Howard "late earle of Surrey, and other." These accomplished young noble- men had resided in Italy, and, themselves delighting in Italian poetic literature — especially Petrarca's work — hastened, on their return to their own country, to acclima- tise the new poetic vehicle which had become so famous in the hands of two of Italy's greatest writers. Their efforts, with a new and difficult medium and a language which was still only approaching that state in which Spenser and Marlowe and Shakespeare found it, were only very partially successful, andj as we now know, their sonnets owed most of what was excellent in them to Italian sources. The remarkable thing about them is that they all end with rhymed-couplets, an arrangement distinctly opposed to any with which they were acquainted in another language. On ' the other hand, it must be noted (this point should be remembered a little later when we come to discuss Mr. xliv THE SONNET. Caine's theory) that Wyat's are otherwise mostly on the Italian model. Surrey, again, evidently found his task over-difficult o£ satisfactory performance, and so constantly experimented with a fourteen-line sonnet-mould— like a musician who, arriving in his own land, finds his country- men's ears not easily attuned to the melodies of the new instrument he brings with him from abroad, and so tries again and again to find some way of making his novel mandolin or lute-sounds attractive to ears accustomed to the harsher strains of fife or windpipe. Thus we find him composing on the two-rhyme-throughout ' system; linking the three elegiac quatrains and a couplet ; and otherwise feeling his way — evidently coming ultimately to the conclu- sion that the three quatrains and the couplet constituted the form best suited to the English language. This may concisely be set forth in the following formula : — A— B— A— B C— D— C— D E— F— E— F G— G A much more original and more potent poetic nature next endeavoured to find meet expression in the sonnet, Spenser, that great metricist and genuine poet, notwith- standing all his power in verse, was unable to acclimatise the new vehicle, the importance and beauty of which he undoubtedly fully recognised. Having tried the effect of a fourteen-line poem in well-modulated blank verse, he found that he was dissatisfied with the result ; equally dissatisfied was he with the quatrains-and-couplet mould of Wyat and Surrey: and so at last, after continuous experiments, he produced a modification of both the English and the Italian form, retaining something of the rhyme-iteration of the latter along with the couplet-ending of the former : or per haps he simply adopted this structure from a similar Italian experiment, discerning through translation its seeming appropriateness. That he considered this the best possible mould of the sonnet for the English poet is evident from the fact that in this structure he composed his famous love sonnets, the Amoretti. The Spenserian sonnet may be regarded as representing that transitional stage of develop- ment which a tropical plant experiences when introduced THE SONNET. ' xlv into a temperate clime. In this case the actual graft proved short-lived, but the lesson was not lost upon cultivators, in whose hands manifold seed lay ready for germination. Spenser's method was to interlace the quatrains by using the last rhyme-sound of each as the key-note of the next — b>; for example, if I may use a musical comparison, con- stituting the dominant of I? and Ir', as of course c^ of (? and THE ASSIGNATION. Thk darkness throbbed that night with the great heat, And my heart throbbed at thought of what should be ; The house was dumb, the lock slid silently ; I only heard the ^night's hot pulses beat Around me as I sped with quiet feet Down the dark corridors ; and once the sea Moaned in its slumber, and I stayed, but she Came forth to meet me lily-white and sweet. Was there a man's soul ever worth her kiss ? Silent and still I stood, and she drew near, And her lips mixed with mine, and her sweet breath Fanned my hot face ; and afterward I wis. What the sea said to us I did not hear ; But now I know it spake of Doom and Death. 42 HERBERT E. CLARKE. XLII. KING OF KINGS. O Death, Death, Death ! Thou art the Lord of all, And at Thy darkened shrine I bow mine head In this Thy temple, where for Thee are shed Man's blood and tears : gods, kings, and temples fall ; Thy reign, O Lord, is immemorial : Ever thou waxest stronger and more dread. More populous grows Thy kiiigdom of the dead, And joy and love and hope Thou hast in thrall. We follow vain desires and idle things, We vex our souls with hollow hopes and fears. We dread the future and regret the past : Thou comest, O Almighty, King of kings, And stillest all the tumult of the years. And tak'st each babbler to thy breast at last. HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 43 XLIII. THE BIRTH OF SPEECH. What was't awakened first the untried ear Of that sole man who was all hiitnan kind ? Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind, Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere ? The four mellifluous streams which flowed so near, Their lulling murmurs all in one combined ? The note of bird unnamed ? The startled hind Bursting the brake, in wonder, not in fear. Of her new lord ? Or did the holy ground Send forth mysterious melody to greet The gracious pressure of immaculate feet? Did viewless seraphs rustle all around Making sweet music out of air as sweet ? Or his own voice awake him with its sound ? 44 HARTLEY COLERIDGE. XLIV. PRAYER. There is an awful quiet in the air, And the sad earth, with moist imploring eye, Looks wide and wakeful at the pondering sky, Like Patience slow subsiding to Despair. But see, the blue smoke as a voiceless prayer. Sole witness of a secret sacrifice, Unfolds its tardy wreaths, and multiplies Its soft chameleon breathings in the rare Capacious ether, — so it fades away, And nought is seen beneath the pendent blue. The undistinguishable waste of day. So have I dreamed! — oh may the dream be true!- That praying souls are purged from mortal hue, And grow as pure as He to whom they pray. HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 45 XLV. NIGHT. The crackling embers on the hearth are dead ; The indoor note of industry is still ; The latch is fast ; upon the window-sill The small birds wait not for their daily bread ; The voiceless flowers — how quietly they shed Their nightly odours ; — and the household rill Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds that fill The vacant expectation, and the dread Of listening night. And haply now She sleeps \ For all the garrulous noises of the air Are hush'd in peace ; the soft dew silent weeps, Like hopeless lovers for a maid so fair : — Oh ! that I were the happy dream that creeps To her soft heart, to find my image there. 46 HARTLEY COLERIDGE. XL VI. NOT IN VAIN. Let me not deem that I was made in vain, Or that ray being was an accident Which Fate, in working its sublime intent, Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain Hath its own mission, and is duly sent To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent 'Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. The very shadow of an insect's wing. For which the violet cared not while it stayed Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing. Proved that the sun was shining by its shade. Then can a drop of the eternal spring, Shadow of living lights, in vain be made ? HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 47 XLVII. NOVEMBER. The mellow year is hastening to its close ; The little birds have almost sung their last, Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast — That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows ; The patient beauty of the scentless rose, Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed, Hangs, a pale mourner for the Summer past, And makes a little summer where it grows : In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day The dusky waters shudder as they shine. The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define, And the gaunt woods, in ragged scant array, Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine. 48 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. XLVIII. TO Mature. It may indeed be phantasy when 1 Essay to draw from all created things Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings j And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie Lessons of love and earnest piety. So let it be ; and if the wide world rings In mock of this belief, to me it brings Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity. So will I build my altar in the fields. And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee, Thee only God ! and Thou shalt not despise Even me, t)ie priest of this poor sacrifice. SAJ?A COLERIDGE. 49 XLIX. PHANTASMION'S QUEST OF lARINE. Yon changeful cloud will soon thy aspect wear, So bright it grows: — and now, by light .winds shaken, — ever seen yet ne'er to be o'ertaken ! — Those waving branches seem thy billowy hair. The cypress glades recall thy pensive air ; Slow rills that wind like snakes amid the grass, Thine eye's mild sparkle fling me as they pass, Yet murmuring cry, This fruitless Quest forbear 1 Nay e'en amid the cataract's loud storm. Where foamy torrents from the crags are leaping, Methinks I catch swift glimpses of thy form, Thy robe's light folds in airy tumult sweeping ; Then silent are the falls : 'mid colours warm Gleams the bright maze beneath their splendour sweeping. 50 BESSIE CRAIGMYLE. CLEOPATRA. Lo ! this is she that ruled the world. Draw near : Over her lowers the shadow of sudden death, To-morrow, without heart-beat, pulse, or breath, Octavian's band shall find her lying here. There, at her side, among the fig-leaves sere, Coils the cerastes hid, unseen by us: Yet is, within those great eyes luminous, No fear, nor any moment's touch of fear. Let be. She is but tracing back the path Trod through the life that is to end this night, Thinking of all the dead days' dear delight, Lute-music, wine-cup, dance, and revelry, The sensuous stillness of the scented bath. Lip-touch, and clasp, and arms of Antony. DINAH MARIA CRAIK. 51 LI. GUNS OF PEACE. Sunday Night, March joih, i8j6. Ghosts of dead soldiers in the battle slain, Ghosts of dead heroes dying nobler far In the long patience of inglorious war, Of famine, cold, heat, pestilence and pain, — All ye whose loss makes up our vigorous gain — This quiet .night, as sounds the cannon's tongue. Do ye look down the trembling stars among. Viewing our peace and war with like disdain ? Or, wiser grown since reaching those new spheres, Smile ye on those poor bones ye sow'd as seed For this our harvest, nor regret the deed? Yet lift one cry with us to Heavenly ears — " Strike with Thy bolt the next red flag unfurl'd, And make all wars to cease throughout the world." 52 SIR AUBREY DE VERE. LII. THE ROCK OF CASHEL. EoYAL and saintly Cashel ! I would gaze Upon the wreck of thy departed powers Not in the dewy light of matin hours, Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze, But at the close of dim autumnal days, When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers, Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers Such awful gleams as brighten o'er Decay's Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks, There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles A pielancholy moral, such as sinks On the lone traveller's heart, amid the piles Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand, Or Thebes Jialf buried in the desert sand. SIR AUBREY DE VERE. 53 LIII. THE RIGHT USE OF PRAYER. Therefore when thou wouldst pray, or dost thine alms, Blow not a trump before thee ; hypocrites Do thus, vaingloriously ; the coinmon streets Boast of their largess, echoing their psalms. On such the laud of men, like unctuous balms, Falls with sweet savour. Impious counterfeits ! Prating of heaven, for earth their bosom beats ! Grasping at weeds, they lose immortal palms ! God needs not iteration nor vain cries : That man communion with his God might share Below, Christ gave the ordinance of prayer : Vague ambages, and witless ecstasies, Avail not : ere a voice to prayer be given The heart should rise on wings of love to heaven. 54 SIR AUBREY DE VERE. LIV. THE CHILDREN BAND. (the crusaders, no. v.) All holy influences dwell within The breast of Childhood : instincts fresh from God Inspire it, ere the heart beneath the rod Of grief hath bled, or caught the plague of sin. How mighty was that fervour which could win Its way to infant souls ! — and was the sod Of Palestine by infant Croises trod ? Like Joseph went they forth, or Benjamin, In all their touching beauty, to redeem ? And did their soft lips kiss the sepulchre ? Alas ! the lovely pageant, as a dream, Faded ! they sank not through ignoble fear; They felt not Moslem steel. By mountain, stream, In sands, in fens, they died — no mother near ! AUBREY DE VERE {thi Younger). 55 LV. THE SUN-GOD. I SAW the Master of the Sun. He stood High in his luminous car, himself more bright ; An Archer of immeasurable might : On his left shoulder hung his quivered load ; Spurned by his steeds the eastern mountains glowed ; Forward his eager eye, and brow of light He bent ; and, while both hands that arch embowed. Shaft after shaft pursued the flying night. No wings profaned that god-like form : around His neck high-held an ever-moving crowd Of locks hung glistening : while such perfect sound Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome Thrilled as a dew-drop ; and each passing cloud Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam. S6 AUBREY DE VERE {the Younger). LVI. THE SETTING OF THE MOON NEAR CORINTH. From that dejected brow in silence beanjing A light it seems too feeble to retain, A sad calm tearful light through vapours gleaming, Slowly thou sinkest on the ^gean main ; To me an image, in thy placid seeming, Of some fair mourner who will not complain ; Of one whose cheek is pale, whose eyes are streaming, Whose sighs are heaved unheard, — ^not heaved in vain. And yet what power is thine ? as thou dost sink, Down sliding slow along that azure hollow. The great collected Deep thy course doth follow, , Amorous the last of those faint smiles to drink ; And all iis lifted fleets in thee obey The symbol of an unpresuming sway ! AUBREY DE VERE {the Younger). 57 LVII. HER BEAUTY. A TRANCED beauty dwells upon her face, A lustrous summer-calm of peace and prayer ; In those still eyes the keenest gaze can trace No sad disturbance, and no touch of care. Peace rests upon her lips, and forehead fair. And temples unadorned. A cloistral grace Says to the gazer over-bold, ^'Beware," Yet love hath made her breast his dwelling-place. An awful night abideth with the pure. And theirs the only wisdom from above. She seems to listen to some strain obscure Of music in sidereal regions wove. Or to await some more transcendent dower From heaven descending on her like a dove. S8 AUBREY DE VERB (the Younger). LVIII. SORROW. Count each affliction, whether light or grave, God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow ; And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave ; Then lay before him all thou hast ; allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow, Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate The soul's marmoreal calmness : Grief should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate ; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end. AUBREY DE VERE (the Younger). 59 LIX. NATIONAL APOSTACY. Trampling a dark hill, a red sun athwart, I saw a host that rent their clothes and hair, And dashed their spread hands 'gainst that sunset glare, And cried. Go from us, God, since God thou art! Utterly from our coasts and towns depart. Court, camp, and senate-hall, and mountain bare ; Our pomp Thou troublest, and our feast dost scare. And with Thy temples dost confuse our mart! Depart Thou from our hearing and our seeing: Depart Thou from the works and ways of men; Their laws, their thoughts, the inmost of their being: Black nightmare, hence! that earth may breathe again! "Can God depart?" I said. A Voice replied, Close by — " Not so; each Sin at heart is Deicide." 6o RICHARD WATSON DIXON. LX. HUMANITY. There is a soul above the soul of each, A mightier soul, which yet to each belongs : There is a sound made of all human speech, And numerous as the concourse of all songs : And in that soul lives each, in each that soul, Though all the ages are its lifetime vast ; Each soul that dies, in its most sacred whole Receiveth life that shall for ever last. And thus for ever with a wider span Humanity o'erarches time and death ; Man can elect the universal man. And live in life that ends not with his breath : And gather glory that increases still Till Time his glass with Death's last dust shall fill. SYDNEY DOBELL. 6i LXI. THE ARMY SURGEON. Over that breathing waste of friends and foes, The wounded and the dying, hour by hour, In will a thousand, yet but one in power, He labours through the red and groaning day. The fearful moorland where the myriads lay Moves as a moving field of mangled worms : And as a raw brood, orphaned in the storms, Thrust up their heads if the wind bend a spray Above them, but when the bare branch performs No sweet paternal office, sink away With helpless chirp of woe, — so, as he goes, Around his feet in clamorous agony They rise and fall; and all the seething plain Bubbles a cauldron vast of many-coloured pain. 62 SYDNEY DOBELL. LXII. THE COMMON GRAVE. Last night beneath the foreign stars I stood, And saw the thoughts of those at home go by To the great grave upon the hill of blood. Upon the darkness they went visibly, Each in the vesture of its own distress. Among them there came One, frail as a sigh,, And like a creature of the wilderness Dug with her bleeding hands. She neither cried Nor wept ; nor did she see the many stark And dead that lay unburied at her side. All night she toiled ; and at that time of dawn, When Day and Night do change their More and Less, And Day is more, I saw the melting Dark Stir to the last, and knew she laboured on. SYDNEY DOBELL. 63 LXIII. HOME : IN WAR-TIME. She turned the fair page with her fairer hand — More fair and frail than it was wont to be ; O'er each remember'd thing he lovitia to see She lingered, and as with a fairy'/ wand Enchanted it to order. Oft she (fanned New motes into the sun ; and aa a bee Sings through a brake of bells, so\imrmured she, And so her patient love did understand The reliquary room. Upon the sill She fed his favourite bird. " Ah, Robin, sing ! He loves thee." Then she touches a sweet string Of soft recall, and towards the Eastern hill Smiles all her soul — for him who cannot hear The raven croaking at his carrion ear. 64 A USTIN DOBSON, LXIV. DON QUIXOTE. Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack, Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro, Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe, And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back, Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack ! To make wiseacredom, both high and low. Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go) Despatch its Dogberrys upon thy track : Alas ! poor Knight ! Alas ! poor soul possest ! Yet would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill, And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest. Some fire of thine might burn within us still ! Ah ! would but one might lay his lance in rest, And charge in earnest — ^were it but a mill. THOMAS DOUBLEDA Y. 65 LXV. THE SEA CAVE. Hardly we breathe, although the air be free: How massively doth awful Nature pile The living rock like some cathedral aisle, Sacred to silence and the solemn sea. How that clear pool lies sleeping tranquilly, And under its glassed "surface seenis to smile. With many hues, a mimie grove the while Of foliage submarine — shrub, flbwer, and tree. Beautiful scene, and fitted to allure The printless footsteps of some sea-born maid, Who here, with her green tresses disarrayed, 'Mid the clear bath, urifearing and secure, May sport at nooiitide in the caverned shade, Cold as the shadow, as the waters pure. 66 THOMAS DOUBLED A Y. -LXVI. ANGLING. Go, take thine angle, and with practised line, Light as the gossamer, the current sweep; And if thou failest in the calm still deep, In the rough eddy may the prize be thine. Say thou'rt unlucky where the sunbeams shine ; Beneath the shadow, where the waters creep. Perchance the monarch of the brook shall leap — For fate is ever better than design. Still persevere ; the giddiest breeze that blows. For thee may blow, with fame and fortune rife; Be prosperous — and what reck if it arose Out of some pebble with the stream at strife. Or that the light wind dallied with the boughs ? Thou art successful; — such is human life. ED WARD DO WDEN. 67 LXVII. AN INTERIOR. Thk grass around my limbs is deep and sweet ; Yonder the house has lost its shadow wholly, The blinds are dropped, and softly now and slowly The day flows in and floats ; a calm retreat Of tempered light where fair things fair things meet ; White busts and marble Dian make it holy, Within a niche hangs Durer's' Melancholy Brooding : and, should you enter, there will greet Your sense with vague allurement effluence faint Of one magnolia bloom j fair fingers draw From the piano Chopin's heart-complaint ; Alone, white-robed she sits ; a fierce macaw On the verandah, proud of plume and paint, Screams, insolent despot, showing beak and claw. 68 EDWARD DOWDEN. LXVIII. EVENING, NEAR THE SEA. Light ebbs from off the Earth ; the fields are strange, Dark, trackless, tenantless ; now the mute sky Resigns itself to Night and Memory, And no wind will yon sunken clouds derange, No glory enrapture them ; from cot or grange The rare voice ceases ; one long-breathed sigh. And steeped in summer sleep the world must lie ; All things are acquiescing in the changCi Hush ! while the vaulted hollow of the night Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth, Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan ? Ah ! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth : Cry, Sea ! it is thy hour ; thou art alone. EDWARD DOWDEN. 69 LXIX. AWAKENING. With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod, With eye so practised in each form around, — And all forms mean, — to glance above the ground Irks it, each day of many days we plod, Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road ; But suddenly, we know not how, a sound Qf living streams, an odour, a flower c^rowned With dew, a lark upspringing" from the sod, • And we awake. O joy of deep^ amaze 1 Beneath the everlasting hills we stand, We hear tke voices of the morning- seas, And earnest prophesyings in the land. While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze The encompassing great cloud of witnesses. JO EDWARD DOWDEN. LXX. TWO INFINITIES. A LONELY way, and as I went my eyes Could not unfasten from the Spring's sweet things, Lush-sprouted grass, and all that climbs and clings In loose, deep hedges, where the primrose lies In her own fairness, buried blooms surprise The plunderer bee and stop his murmurings, And the glad flutter of a finch's wings Outstartle small blue-speckled butterflies. Blissfully did one speedwell plot beguile My whole heart long ; I loved each separate flower, Kneeling. I looked up suddenly — Dear God ! There stretched the shining plain for many a mile, The mountains rose with what invincible power I And how the sky was fathomless and broad I EDWARD DOWDEN. 71 LXXI. BROTHER DEATH. When thou would'st have me go with thee, Death, Over the utmost verge, to the dim place, Practise upon me with no amorous grace Of fawning lips, and words of delicate breath, And curious music thy lute uttereth ; Nor think for me there must be squght-out ways Of cloud and terror; have we many days Sojourned together, and is this thy faith ? Nay, be there plainness 'twixt us ; come to me Even as thou art, O brother of my soul ; Hold thy hand out and I will place mine there ; I trust thy mouth's inscrutable irony, And dare to lay my forehead where the whole Shadow lies deep of thy purpureal hair. 72 JOHN CHARLES EARLE. LXXII. REST. The boat is hauled upon the hardening sand, The mist is gathering o'er the dim morass, The kine are couching on the daisied grass. And in their stalls the champing horses stand. No plash of brine along the darkling strand, No light winds play the reed-pipes as they pass ; The moonlit deep is glittering like glass, And all things yield to stilly Night's comrnand. O balmy hours of silver sheen and dew! Shall nought belie you save this labouring breast- The soul alone to Nature be untrue, And still of what she hath not go in quest? Just now ye spake. Ah, speak those words anew, " Wait, weary heart; soon thou shalt also rest." EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 73 LXXIII. FOUNTAINS ABBEY. Abbey ! for ever smiling pensively, How like a thing of Nature dost thou rise Amid her loveliest works ! as if the skies, Clouded with grief, were arched thy roof to be, And the tall trees were copied all from thee ! Mourning thy fortunes — while the waters dim Flow like the memory of thy evening hymn, Beautiful in their sorrowing sympathy ; As if they with a weeping sister wept, Winds name thy name ! But thou,' though sad, art calm. And Time with thee his plighted troth hath kept ; For harebells deck thy brow, and, at thy feet, Where sleep the proud, the bee and redbreast meet, Mixing thy sighs with Nature's lonely psalms 74 JOSEPH ELLIS. SILENCE. Hush — ^hush ! k is the charm of nothingness, — A sweet estate wherein there is no sweet ; A music true, though no vibrations beat ; A passive mistress, cold and passionless — Bestowing not, yet having power to bless. Until, in holy' love, we kiss her feet O joy wherein no soul a friend may greet, O Thou that giv'st no comfort in distress, Why do we love thee, Silence ? Art thou then The mystic, ghostly Mother of mankind, From forth whose womb we sprang without a throe? To Thee resort for rest and peace all men ; In Thy embrace serene, pure joy they find, — Art Thou the very Heaven whereto we go ? HENR Y ELLISON. 75 LXXV. A SUNSET THOUGHT. The sun is burning with intensest light Behind yon grove ; and in the golden glow Of unconsuming Fire, it doth show Like to the Bush, in which to Moses' sight The Lord appeared ! and O, am I not right In thinking that He reappears e'en now To me, in the old Glory ? and I bow My head, in wonder hush'd, before His might ! Yea ! this whole world so vast, to Faith's clear eye, Is but that burning Bush full of His Power, His Light, and Glory ; not consumed thereby. But made transparent : till in each least flower. Yea ! in each smallest leaf, she can descry His Spirit shining through it visibly I 76 HENRY EZLISON. LXXVI. LONDON, AFTER MIDNIGHT. Silence broods o'ier the mighty Babylon ; And Darkness, his twin brother, with him keeps His solemn watch j the wearied city sleeps. And Solitude, strange contrast ! muses on The fate of man, there, whence the crowd anon Will scare her with life's tumult ! The great deeps Of human Thought are stirless, yet there creeps, As 'twere, a far-off hum, scarce heard, then gone. On the still air ; 'tis the great Heart doth move And beat at intervals, soon froiri its sleep To start refreshed. Oh Thou, who rul'st above, Be with it in its dreams, and let it keep. Awake, the spirit of pure peace and love, Which Thou breath'st through it now, so still and deep! HENR Y ELLISON. 7 7 LXXVII. SUNSET. The golden foot-prints of departing Day Are fading from the ocean silently, And Twilight, stealing onward, halves the sky ; One after one they fade in light away. While, with a thousand songs, the Earth doth say Farewell, uplifting all her mountains high, To catch the last reflections ere they die, As, one by one, their peaks grow cold and grey. Yon orb, that hangs upon the ocean's rim, Looks, Janus-like, both back and forward too. And, while it fades here to Earth's evening-hymn, It brightens, from afar, o'er regions new. Unto the songs of Morning, raised to Him, Who thus 'twixt night and day the great line drew ! 78 FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. LXXVIII. SOCRATES. " Of making many hooks there is no end; and much study is an affliction of th4 flesh'' Thou, mighty Heathen, wart not so bereft Of heavenly helps to thy great-hearted deeds, That thou should'st dig for truths in broken creeds, 'Mid the loose sands of four old empires left. Motions and shadows dimly glowing fell On thy broad soul from forms invisible. With its plain grandeur, simple, calm, and free, ■ What wonder was it that thy life should merit Sparkles of grace, and aiigel ministry. With jealous glimpses of the world of spirit ? Greatest and best in this — that thy pure mind, Upon its saving mission all intent. Scorned the untruth of leaving books behind, To claim for thine what through thy lips was sent. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 79 LXXIX. ON THE RAMPARTS AT ANGOULfeME. Why art thou speechless, thou setting Sun ? Speak to this earth, speak to this Hstening scene, Where Charente flows among the meadows green, And in his gilded waters, one by one, The inverted minarets of poplar quake With expectation, until thou shalt break The intolerable silence. See ! he sinks Without a word ; and his ensanguined bier Is vacant in the west, while far and near Behold ! each coward shadow eastward shrinks. Thou dost not strive, O sun, nor dost thou cry Amid thy cloud-built streets ; but meek and still. Thou dost the type of Jesus best fulfil, A noiseless revelation in the sky. 8o JULIAN FANE. LXXX. AD MATREM. Oft. in the after days, when thou and I Have fallen from the scope of human view, When, both together, under the sweet sky, We sleep beneath the daisies and the dew, Men will recall thy gracious presence bland, Conning the pictured sweetness of thy face ; Will pore o'er paintings by thy plastic hand, And vaunt thy skill and tell thy deeds of grace. Oh, may they then, who crown thee with true bays. Saying, " What love unto her son she bore ! " Make this addition to thy perfect praise, " Nor ever yet was mother worshipped more ! '' So shall I live with thee, and thy dear fame Shall link my love unto thine honoured name. WILLIAM FREELAITD. % i XXXXI. IN PROSPECT OF DEATH. • When I shall die — and be it late or soon—' ' ' Let merciful memories be my only shroud. Think me a light veiled in a morning cloud ; Living to knowledge, — like a finished moon, Though nothing here, to other lands a boon : Nor let my death give triumph to the proud, By your weak tears: be happy with the crowd, Who, spite of woe, are seldom out of tune. ■ Wise in the common instinct, be ye glad : There's some redemption in the doom of death That cuts us from new sins — sweet mercy's plan. Yet, if for me you be sincerely sad. Do this sweet homage toiriy valued breath — ■ Ease the sad burden of some living- rrian ! 83 RICHARD GARNETT. LXXXII. AGE. I WILL not rail, or grieve when torpid eld Frosts the slow-journeying blood, for I shall see The lovelier leaves hang yellow on the tree. The nimbler brooks in icy fetters held. Methinks the aged eye that first beheld The fitful ravage of December wild, Then knew himself indeed dear Nature's child, Seeing the common doom, that all compelled. No kindred we to her beloved broods If, dying these, we drew a selfish breath ; But one path travel all her multitudes, And none disputes the solemn Voice that saith : " Sun to thy setting ; to your autumn, woods ; Stream to thy sea ; and man unto thy death 1 " RICHARD GARNETT. 83 LXXXIII. DANTE. Poet, whose unscarr'd feet have trodden Hell, By what grim path and dread environing Of fire couldst thou that dauntless footstep bring And plant it firm amid the dolorous cell Of darkness where perpetually dwell The spirits cursed beyond imagining ? Or else is thine a visionary wing, And all thy terror but a tale to tell ? Neither and both, thou seeker ! I have been No wilder path than thou thyself dost go. Close mask'd in an impenetrable screen, Which having rent I gaze around, and know What tragic wastes of gloom, before unseen, Curtain the soul that strives and %\v& below. 84 MARY C. GILLINGTON. LXXXIV. INTRA MUROS. At last 'tis gone, the fever of the day, — Thank God, there comes an end to everything ; Under the night-cloud's deepened shadowing, The noises of the city drift away Thro' sultry streets and alleys ; and the grey Fogs round the great cathedral rise and cling. I long, and long, — but no desire will bring Against my face the keen wind salt with spray. O far away, green waves, your voices call. Your cool lips kiss the wild and weedy shore ; And out upon the sea-line, sails are brown, — White sea-birds, crying, hover, — soft shades fall, Deep waters diitiple round the dripping oar. And last rays light the little fishing-town. EDMUND W, GQSSE. 8s LXXXV. ON A LUTE FOUND IN A SARCOPHAGUS. What curled and scented sun-girls, almond-eyed, With lotus blossoms in their hands and hair, Have made their swarthy lovers call them fair, With these spent strings, when brutes were deified, And Memnon in the sunrise sprang and cried, And love- winds smote Bubastis, and the bare Black breasts of carven.Pasht received the prayer Of suppliants bearing gifts from far and wide !" This lute has outsung Egypt ; all the lives Of violent passion, and the vast calm art That lasts in granite only, all lie dead ; This little bird of song alone survives, As fresh as when its fluting smote the heart Last time the brown slave wore it garlanded. 86 EDMUND W. GOSSE. LXXXVI. ALCYONE. (A Sonnet in Dialogue.) Phoebus. What voice is this that wails above the deep ? Alcyone. A wife's, that mourns her fate and loveless days. Phoebus. What love lies buried in these waterways ? Alcyone. A husband's, hurried to eternal sleep. Phxbus. Cease, O beloved, cease to wail and weep ! Alcyone. Wherefore? Phoebus. The waters in a fiery blaze Proclaim the godhead of my healing rays. Alcyone. No god can sow where fate hath stood to reap. Phoebus. Hold, wringing hands ! cease, piteous tears, to fall. Alcyone. But grief must rain and glut the passionate sea. Phoebus. Thou shall forget this ocean and thy wrong. And I will bless the dead, though past recall. Alcyone. What can'st thou give to me or him in me ? Phoebus. A name in story and a light in song. EDMUND W. GOSSE. 87 LXXXVII. THE TOMB OF SOPHOCLES. A BOUNDING satyr, golden in the beard, That leaps with goat-feet high into the air, And crushes from the thyme an odour rare, Keeps watch around the marble tomb revered Of Sophocles, the poet loved and feared. Whose mighty voice once called out of her lair The Dorian muse severe, with braided hair, Who loved the thyrsus and wild dances weird. Here all day long the pious bees can pour Libations .of their honey ; round this tomb The Dionysiac ivy loves to roam ; The satyr laughs ; but He awakes no more. Wrapped up in silence at the grave's cold core, Nor sees the sun wheel round in the white dome. 88 DAVID GRAY. LXXXVIII. THE THRUSH'S SONG. Sweet Mavis ! at this cool delicious hour Of gloaming, when a pensive quietness Hushes the odorous air, — with what a power Of impulse unsubdued dost thou express Thyself a spirit ! While the silver dew Holy as manna on the meadow falls. Thy song's impassioned clarity, trembling through This omnipresent stillness, disenthrals The soul to adoration. First I heard A low thick lubric gurgle, soft as love, Yet sad as memory, through the silence poured Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows, Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move Lucidly linked together, till the close. DAVID GRAY. 89 LXXXIX. TO A FRIEND. Now, while the long delaying ash assumes The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, The thrush's song enchants the captive ear; Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, Stirring the still perfume that wakes around ; Now that doves mourn, and from the distance calling. The cuckoo answers with a sovereign sound, — Come with thy native heart, O true and tried ! But leave all books ; for what with converse high, Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide On smoothly, as a river floweth by, Or, as on stately pinion, through the grey Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way. 90 THOMAS GORDON HAKE. xc. VENUS UEANIA. Is this thy Paphos, — the devoted place Where rests, in its own eventide, thy shrine ? To thee not lone is solitude divine Where love-dreams o'er thy waves each other chase And melt into the passion of thy face ! The twilight waters, dolphin-stained, are thine ; The silvery depths and blue, night-orbed, entwine. And in bright films thy rosy form embrace, — Girdling thy loins with heaven-spun drapery Wove in the looms of thy resplendent sea. The columns point their shadows to the plain, And ancient days are dialed o'er again; The floods remember : falling at thy feet, Upon the sands of time they ever beat. ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM. 91 xci WRITTEN IN EDINBURGH. Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, Yea, an imperial city, that might hold Five times an hundred noble towns in fee, And either with their might of Babel old. Or the rich Roman pomp of empery Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled. Highest in arms ; brave tenement for the free, Who never crouch to thrones, or sin for gold. Thus should her towers be raised — with vicinage Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets, As if to vindicate 'mid choicest seats Of art, abiding Nature's majesty ; And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage Chainless alike, and teaching Liberty. 92 EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. XCIT. SEA-SHELL MURMURS. The hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood On dusty shelves, when held against the ear Proclaims its stormy parent ; and we hear The faint far murmur of the breaking flood. , We hear the sea. The sea ? It is the blood In our own veins, impetuous and near, And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear And with our feelings' ever shifting mood. Lo ! in my heart I hear, as in a shell. The murmur of a world beyond the grave, Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. Thou fool ! this echo is a cheat as well, — The hum of earthly instincts ; and we crave A world unreal as the shell-heard sea. EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. 93 XCIII. IDLE CHARON. The shores of Styx are lone for evermore, And not one shadowy form upon the steep Looms through the dusk, far as the eye can sweep. To call the ferry over as of yore ; But tintless rushes all about the shore Have hemmed the old boat in, where, locked in sleep, Hoar-bearded Charon lies ; while pale weeds creep With tightening grasp all round the unused oar. For in the world of Life strange rumours run That now the soul departs not with the breath, But that the Body and the Soul are one ; And in the loved one's mouth, now, after death. The widow puts no obol, nor the son, To pay the ferry in the world beneath. 94 EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. XCIV. LETHE. I HAD a dream of Lethe, of the brink Of leaden waters, whither many bore Dead, pallid loves, while others, old and sore, Brought but their tottering selves, in haste to drink. And, having drunk, they plunged, and seemed to sink Their load of love or guilt for evermore, Reaching with radiant brow the sunny shore That lay beyond, no more to think and think. Oh, who will give me, chained to Thought's dull strand, A draught of Lethe, salt with final tears, "Were it no more than fills the hollow hand ? bh, who will rid me of the wasted years, The thought of Life's fair structure vainly planned. And each false hope, that mocking re-appears ? EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. 95 xcv. SUNKEN GOLD. In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships, While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell Lie nestled in the ocean-flower's bell With Love's gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips. And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell, Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell, And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips. So he the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes, Beneath the now hushed surface of myself, In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes. They He deep, deep ; but I at times behold In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf, The gleam of irrecoverable gold. M 96 SIJi WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON. XCVl. TO DEATH. (on hearing of the illness of e. de v.) Hast thou then wrapped us in thy shadow, Death ! Already in the very dawn of joy ? And in cold triumph dreamest to destroy The last and dearest hope which lingereth Within my desolated heart ? to blast The young unfolding bud ? and dash away, As in some desert- demon's cruel play, The cup my parch'd lips had begun to taste? O Impotent ! O very Phantom ! know, Bounds are there to thy ravage even here ; Sanctuaries inaccessible to fear Are in the heart of man while yet below : Love, not of sense, can wake such communings As are among the Soul's eternal things. Sm WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON. 97 XCVII. SPIRIT OF WISDOM AND OF LOVE. O BROODING Spirit of Wisdom and of Love, Whose mighty wings even now o'ershadow me : Absorb me in thine own immensity, And raise me far my finite self above ! Purge vanity away and the weak care That name or fame of me should widely spread ; And the deep wish keep burning in their stead Thy blissful influence afar to bear, Or see it borne ! Let no desire of ease, No lack of courage, faith, or love, delay My own steps in that high thought-paven way, In which iriy soul her clear commission sees : Yet with an equal joy let me behold Thy chariot o'er that way by others roU'd. 98 LORD HANMER. XCVIII. ENGLAND. Arise up, England, from the smoky cloud That covers thee, the din of whirling wheels : Not the pale spinner, prematurely bowed By his hot toil, alone the influence feels Of all this deep necessity for gain : Gain still ; but deem not only by the strain Of engines on the sea and on the shore, Glory, that was thy birthright, to retain. O thou that knewest not a conqueror. Unchecked desires have multiplied in thee, Till with their bat-wings they shut out the sun : So in the dusk thou goest moodily, With a bent head, as one who gropes for ore. Heedless of living streams that round him run. LORD HANMER. 99 XCIX. TO THE FOUNTAIN AT FRASCATL Not by Aldobrandini's watery show, Still plashing at his portal never dumb Minishcd of my devotion, shalt thou come, Leaving thy natural fount on Algido, Wild wingfed daughter of the Sabine snow j Now creeping under quiet Tusculum'; Now gushing from those caverns old and numb ;- Dull were his heart who gazed upon thee so. Emblem thou art of Time, memorial stream, Which in ten thousand fancies, being here, We waste, or use, or fashion, as we deem ; But if its backward voice comes ever near, As thine upon the hill, how doth it seem Solemn and stern, sepulchral and severe I ROBERT STEPHEN HA WKER. "PATER VESTER PASCIT ILLA." Our bark is on the waters ! wide around The wandering wave ; above, the lonely sky : Hush ! a young sea-bird floats, and that quick cry Shrieks to the levelled weapon's echoing sound : Grasp its lank wing, and on, with reckless bound ! Yet, creature of the surf, a sheltering breast To-night shall haunt in vain thy far-off nest, A call unanswered search the rocky ground. Lord of Leviathan ! when Ocean heard Thy gathering voice, and sought his native breeze ; When whales first plunged with life, and the proud deep Felt unborn tempests heave in troubled sleep, Thou didst provide, even for this nameless bird, Home and a natural love amid the surging seas. JOHN HOGBEN. CI. TRUTH AND BEAUTY. Two souls there are in nature and in life — The soul of Beauty and the soul of Truth ; Towards which we yearn and strain with restless strife, Along paths fraught with malice or with ruth ; — In the red face of ridicule and scorn, Men sought, and still must seek these — for within, (In spite of all earth's sorrow and her sin), The soul is to the search and manner born. And still, in looking Beauty in the face. With strong prophetic joy we recognise Something of what we may be, as we trace Our own dim shadow in her lustrous eyes; Nor may we part such with a dull harsh rule — Beauty is true and Truth is beautifull EDMOND HOLMES. CII. NIGHT. Night comes, and stars their wonted vigils keep In soft unfathomable depths of sky : In mystic veil of shadowy darkness lie The infinite expanses of the deep, — Save where the silvery paths of moonlight sleep, And rise and sink for ever dreamily With the majestic heaving of the sea. Night comes, and tenfold gloom where dark and steep Into black waters of a land-locked bay The cliffs descend : there never tempest raves To break the awful slumber : far below Glimmer the foamy fringes white as snow ; And sounds of strangled thunder rise alway. And midnight meanings of imprisoned waves. THOMAS HOOD. 103 cm. SILENCE, There is a silence where hath been no sound ; There is a silence where no sound may be ; In the cold grave — under the deep, deep sea, Or in wide desert where no life is found, Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound No voice is hushed — no life treads silently, - But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, That never spoke, over the idle ground. But in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been; Though the dun fox, or wild hysena,, calls. And owls, that flit continually between, Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan. There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 104 THOMAS HOOD. CIV. DEATH. It is not death, that sometime in a sigh This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight; That sometime these bright stars, that now reply In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night, That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite, And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow ; That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite Be lapped in alien clay and laid below ; It is not death to know this, — but to know That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go So duly and so oft, — and when grass waves Over the past-away, there may be then No resurrection in the minds of men. CHARLES^ A. HOUFE. 105 cv. THE TIMES TO COME. The moon that borrows now a gentle light Once burned another sun ; then from on high The earth received a double day ; the sky Showed but faint stars, and never knew a night. The poles, now frigid and for ever white With the deep snows that on their bosoms lie, Were torrid as the moon that hung thereby And mingled rays as fiercely hot as bright. Mutations infinite ! Through shifting sea And lands huge monstrous beasts once took their range Where now our stately world shows pleasantly ! Then be not fearful at the thought of change, For though unknown the times that are to be, Yet shall they prove most beautifully strange. io6 LORD HOUGHTON. cvi. HAPPINESS. A SPLENDOUR amid glooms, — a sunny thread Woven into a tapestry of cloud, A merry child a-playing with the shroud That lies upon a breathless mother's bed, — A garland on the front of one new wed, Trembling and weeping while her troth is vowed, — A schoolboy's laugh that rises light and loud In licensed freedom from ungentle dread ; These are examples of the Happiness For which our nature fits us ; More and Less Are parts of all things to the mortal given. Of Love, Joy, Truth, and Beauty. Perfect Light Would dazzle, not illuminate our sight, — From Earth it is enough to glimpse at Heaven. LEIGH- HUNT. \qi CVII. THE NILE. It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands, — Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam. The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands. Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, As of a world left empty of its throng, And the void weighs on us ; and then we wake, And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along 'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take Our own calm journey on for human sake. io8 LEIGH HUNT. CVIII. THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET. Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass \ And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon. Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass ; Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine ; both, though small, are strong At your clear hearts ; and both were sent on earth To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song : In-doors and out, summer and winter, — Mirth. JOHN WILLIAM INCHBOLD. 109 cix. ONE DEAD. Is it deep sleep, or is it rather death ? Rest anyhow it is, and sweet is rest : — No more the doubtful blessing of the breath ; Our God hath said^that silence is the best, And thou art silent as the pale round moon, And near thee is our birth's great mystery : — Alas, we knew not thou would'st go so soon ! We cannot tell where sky is lost in sea, But only find life's bark to come and go, By wondrous Nature's hidden force impelled, — Then melts the wake in sea, and none shall know For certain which the course the vessel held; — The lessening ship by us no more is seen. And sea and sky are just as they have been. JEAN INGELOW. ex. AN ANCIENT CHESS KING. Haply some Rajah first in ages gone Amid his languid ladies finger'd thee, While a black nightingale, sun-swart as he, Sang his one wife, love's passionate orison : Haply thou mayst have pleased old Prester John Among his pastures, when full royally He sat in tent — grave shepherds at his knee — While lamps of balsam winked and glimmered on. What dost thou here ? Thy masters are all dead. My heart is full of ruth and yearning pain At sight of thee, O king that hast a crown Outlasting theirs, and tells of greatness fled Through cloud-hung nights of unabated rain And murmur of the dark majestic town. EBENEZER JONES. 1 1 1 CXI. HIGH SUMMER. I NEVER wholly feel that summer is high, However green the trees or loud the birds, However movelessly eye-winking herds Stand in field-ponds, or under large trees lie, Till I do climb all cultured pastures by. That, edged by hedgerows studiously trim, Smile like a lady's face with lace laced prim, And on some moor or hill that seeks the sky Lonely and nakedly, — utterly lie down, And feel the sunshine throbbing on body and limb, My drowsy t)rain in pleasant drunkenness swim, Each rising thought sink back and dreamily drown, Smiles creep o'er my face, and smother my lips, and cloy, Each muscle sink to itself, aiid separately enjoy. JOHN KEATS. CXII. ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne : Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : Tlien felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien. JOHN KEATS. 113 CXIII. TO AILSA ROCK. Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid ! Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams ! When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams ; When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid? How long is't since the mighty power bid Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams ! Sleep in the lap of thunder or sun-beams. Or when grey clouds are thy cold cover-lid ? Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep ! Thy life is but two dead eternities — The last in air, the former in the deep ; First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies — Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep. Another cannot wake thy giant size. 114 JOHN KEATS. CXIV. ON THE ELGIN MARBLES. My spirit is too weak ; mortality- Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceivfed glories of the brain Bring round the heart an indescribable feud ; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old Time — with a billowy main, A sun, a shadow of a magnitude. JOHN KEATS. 115 cxv. TO HOMER. Standing aloof in giant ignorance, Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, As one who sits ashore and longs perchance To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. So thou wast blind ! — but then the veil was rent, For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live, And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent, And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive : Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light. And precipices show untrodden green ; There is a budding morrow in mid-night; There is a triple sight in blindness keen ; Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell. ii6 JOHN KEATS. CXVI, THE DAY IS GONE. The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone ! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist ! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes. Faded the shape of beauty from my arms. Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise — Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve. When the dusk holiday — or holinight Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight ; But, as I've read love's missal through to-day, He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray. JOHN KEATS. HI CXVII. BRIGHT STAR! Bright Star ! would I were steadfast as thou art- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart. Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors — No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable. Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest. Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath. Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death. tl8 PRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. CXVIII. Art thou already weary of the way Thou who hast yet but half the way gone o'er ? Get up, and lift thy burthen ; lo, before Thy feet the road goes stretching far away. If thou already faint -who art but come Through half thy pilgrimage, with fellows gay, Love, youth, and hope, under the rosy bloom And temperate airs of early breaking day — Look yonder, how the heavens stoop and gloom ! There cease the trees to shade, the flowers to spring, And the angels leave thee. What wilt thou become Through yon drear stretch of dismal wandering. Lonely and dark ? — / shall take courage, friend. For comes not every step more near the end. JOSEPH KNIGHT. 1 1 9 CXIX. LOVE'S MARTYRDOM. Sweet — we will hold to Love for Love's sweet sake, Seeing Love to us must be his own reward : Haply we shall not find our task too hard, Nor suffer from intolerable ache. Yea, though henceforth our lives asunder break, From every comfort-giving hope debarr'd, Love may support his martyrs, and the scarr'd And wounded heart may triumph at the stake. Sweet — not for us Love's guerdons : not for us The boons which wont Love's constancy requite j No whisper of low voices tremulous, Kiss, or caress ; no breath of Love's delight : Yet will we hold our joyless troth and thus Achieve Love's victory in Fate's despite. ANDREW LANG. cxx. HOMERIC UNITY. The sacred keep of Ilion is rent With shaft and pit ; vague- waters wander slow Through plains where Simois and Scamander went To war with gods and heroes long ago : Not yet to dark Cassandra, lying low In rich Mycenae, do the Fates relent ; The bones of Agamemnon are a show. And ruined is his royal monument. The awful dust and treasures of the Dead Has Learning scattered wide ; but vainly thee, Homer, she measures' with her Lesbian lead, And strives to rend thy songs : too blind is she To know the crown on thine immortal head Of indivisible supremacy. ANDREW LANG. CXXI. COLONEL BURNABY. Thou that on every field of earth and sky- Didst hunt for Death — that seemed to flee and fear- How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie Slain in the Desert by some wandering spear! " Not here," alas ! may England say — " not here Nor in this quarrel was it meet to die, But in that dreadful battle drawing nigh, To shake the Afghan passes strait and sheer.'' Like Aias by the Ships shouldst thou have stood, And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight, The pillar of thy people and their shield, Till Helmund or till Indus ran with blood, And back, towards the Northlands and the Night, The stricken Eagles scattered from the field. EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY. CXXII. SOMETHING LOST. How changed is Nature from the Time antique ! The world we see to-day is dumb and cold : It has no word for us. Not thus of old It won heart-worship from the enamoured Greek. Through all fair forms he heard the Beauty speak ; To him glad tidings of the Unknown were told By babbling runlets, or sublimely rolled In thunder from the cloud- enveloped peak. He caught a message at the oak's great girth, While prisoned Hamadryads weirdly sang : He stood where Delphi's Voice had chasm-birth. And o'er strange vapour watched the Sibyl hang ; Or where, 'mid throbbings of the tremulous earth, The caldrons of Dodona pulsed and rang. EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY. 123 CXXIII. ON THE BEACH IN NOVEMBER. My heart's Ideal, that somewhere out of sight Art beautiful and gracious and alone, — Haply, where blue Saronic waves are blown On shores that keep some touch of old delight, - How welcome is thy memory, and how bright, To one who watches over leagues of stone These chilly northern, waters creep and moan From weary morning unto weary night. O Shade-form, lovelier than the living crowd, So kind to votaries, yet thyself unvowed. So free to human fancies, fancy-free. My vagrant thought goes out to thee, to thee. As wandering lonelier than the Poet's cloud, I listen to the wash of this dull sea. 124 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY. A THOUGHT FROM PINDAR. {Nem. V.) Twin immortalities man's art doth give To man : both fair ; both noble ; one supreme. The sculptor beating out his portrait scheme Can make the marble statue breathe and live ; Yet with a life cold, silent, locative ; It cannot break its stone-eternal dream, Or step to join the busy human stream. But dwells in some high fane a hieroglyph. Not so the poet. Hero, if thy name Lives in his verse, it lives indeed. For then In every ship thou sailest passenger To every town where aught of soul doth stir, Through street and market borne, at camp and game, And on the lips and in the hearts of men I EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY. 125 cxxv. SUBURBAN MEADOWS. How calmly drops the dew on tree and plant, While round each pendulous leaf the cool airs blow ! The neighbour city has no sign to show Of all its grim machines that toil and pant, Except a sky that coal makes confidant : But there the human rivers ebb and flow, And thither was I wonted once to go With heart not ill at ease or recusant. Here now I love to wander morn and eve, Till oaks and elms have grown oracular ; Yet conscious that my soberest thoughts receive A tinge of tumult from the smoke afar ; And scarcely know to which I most belong — These simple fields or that unsiraple throng. iz6 FREDERICK LOCKER. CXXVI. LOVE, DEATH, AND TIME. Ah me, dread friends of mine, — Love, Time, and Death ; Sweet Love, who came to me on sheeny wing. And gave her to my arms — her lips, her breath, And all her golden ringlets clustering : And Time, who gathers in the flying years, He gave me all, but where is all he gave ? He took my love and left me barren tears. Weary and lone I follow to the grave. There Death will end this vision half-divine. Wan Death, who waits in shadow evermore. And silent, ere he give the sudden sign ; Oh, gently lead me thro' thy narrow door. Thou gentle Death, thou trustiest friend of mine — Ah me, for Love — will Death my love restore? ROBERT, EARL OF LYTTON. 127 CXXVII. EVENING. Already evening ! In the duskiest nook Of yon dusk corner, under the Death!s-head, Between the alembics, thrust this legended, And iron-bound, and melancholy book, For I will read no longer. The loud brook Shelves his sharp light up shallow banks thin-spread ; The slumbrous west grows slowly red, and red : Up from the ripen'd corn her silver hook The moon is lifting : and deliciously Along the warm blue hills the day declines : The first star brightens while she waits for me, And round her swelling heart the zone grows tight : Musing, half-sad, in her soft hair she twines The white rose, whispering " He will come to-night ! " 128 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. CXXVIII. NOT THOU, BUT I. It must have been for one of us, my own, To drink this cup and eat this bitter bread. Had not my tears upon thy face been shed, Thy tears, had dropped on mine; if I alone Did not walk now, thy spirit would have known My loneliness, and did my feet not tread This weary path and steep, thy feet had bled For mine, and thy mouth had for mine made moan ; And so it comforts me, yea, not in vain, To think of thy eternity of sleep, To know thine eyes are tearless though mine weep : And when this cup's last bitterness I drain. One thought shall still its primal sweetness keep — Thou hadst the peace and I the undying pain. PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. 129 CXXIX. YOUTH AND NATURE. Is this the sky, and this the very earth I had such pleasure in when I was young ? And can this be the identical sea-song, Heard once within the storm-cloud's awful girth, When a great cloud from silence burst to birth, And winds to whom it seemed I did belong Made the keen blood in me run swift and strong With irresistible, tempestuous mirth ? Are these the forests loved of old so well, Where on May nights enchanted music was ? Are these the fields of soft, delicious grass, These the old hills with secret things to tell ? O my dead youth, was this inevitable. That with thy passing, Nature, too, should pass ! I30 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, cxxx. A DREAM. Here — where last night she came, even she, for whom I would so gladly live or lie down dead. Came in the likeness of a dream and said Some words that thrilled this desolate ghost-thronged room — I sit alone now in the absolute gloom. Ah ! surely on her breast was leaned my head, Ah ! surely on my mouth her kiss was shed, While all my life broke into scent and bloom. Give thanks, heart, for thy rootless flower of bliss, Nor think the gods severe though thus they seem Though thou hast much to bear and much to miss Whilst thou thy nights and days to be canst deem One thing, and that thing veritably this — The imperishable memory of a dream. PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. 131 CXXXI. THREE SONNETS ON SORROW. A CHILD, with mystic eyes and flowing hair, I saw her first, 'mid flowers that shared her grace ; Though but a boy, I cried, " How fair a face ! " And, coming nearer, told her she was fair. She faintly smiled, yet did not say " Forbear ! " But seemed to take a pleasure in my praise. She led ray steps through many a leafy place And pointed where shy birds and sweet flowers were. At length we stood upon a brooklet's brink — I seem to hear its sources babbling yet — She gave me water from her hand to drink, The while her eyes upon its flow were set. " Thy name ? " I asked ; she whispered low, " Regret," Then faded as the sun began to sink. 132 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. ex XXII. THREE SONNETS ON SORROW. II. We met again, as I foresaw we should ; Youth flooded all my veins, and she had grown To woman's height, yet seemed a rose half blown. Like sunset clouds that o'er a landscape brood Her eyes were, that they might not be withstood, And like the wind's voice when it takes the tone Of pine trees was her voice. I cried " My own ! " And kneeling there I worshipped her and wooed. O bitter marriage, though inevitable. Ordained by fate, who wrecks or saves our days ! Lo, the changed bride, no longer fair of face. And in her eyes the very fires of hell ! " Thy name ? " I cried ; and these words hissing fell — "Anguish — and madness comes of my embrace." PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. 133 CXXXIII. THREE SONNETS ON SORROW. III. What thing may be to come I cannot know. Her eyes have less of hell in them, meanwhile ; At times she almost smiles a ghastly smile, I have in all things done her bidding so. Chill are the rooms wherein no bright fires glow, Where no fair picture does the eye beguile ; Once awful laughter shook the gloomy pile, Unholy, riotous shapes went to and fro. There is no sound, now, in the house at all. Only outside the wind moans on, alway. My Lady Sorrow has no word to say, Seems half content ; for well she knows her thrall Shall not escape from her ; that should God call She would rise with him at the Judgment Day. 134 WESTLAND MARSTON. CXXXIV. MINE. In that tranced hush when sound sank awed to rest, Ere from her spirit's rose-red, rose-sweet gate Came forth to me her royal word of fate, Did she sigh " Yes," and droop upon my breast.; While round our rapture, dumb, fixed, unexpressed By the seized senses, there did fluctuate The plaintive surges of our mortal state, Tempering the poignant ecstasy too blest. Do I wake into a dream, or have we twain, Lured by soft wiles to some unconscious crime, Dared joys forbid to man ? Oh, Light supreme. Upon our brows transfiguring glory rain, Nor let the sword of thy just angel gleam On two who entered heaven before their time ! WESTLAND MARSTON. 135 cxxxv. IMMORTALITY. AN INFERENCE. If I had lived ere seer or priest unveiled A life to come, methinks that, knowing thee, I should have guessed thine immortality ; For Nature, giving instincts,'never failed To give the ends they point to. Never quailed The swallow, through air-wilds, o'er tracts of sea, To chase the summer ; seeds that prisoned be Dream of and find the daylight. Unassailed By doubt, impelled by yearnings for the main, The creature river-born doth there emerge ; So thou, with thoughts and longings which our earth Can never compass in its narrow verge, Shalt the fit region of thy spirit gain, And death fulfil the promptings of thy birth. 136 GEORGE MEREDITH. CXXXVI. LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT. On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o'er Africa careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars. Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law. ALICE MEYNELL. 137 CXXXVII. RENOUNCEMENT. MUST not think of thee ; and, tired yet strong, I shun the love that lurks in all delight — The love of thee — and in the blue Heaven's height, id in the dearest passage of a song. 1, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright; But it must never, never come in sight ; nust stop short of thee the whole day long. It when sleep comes to close each difficult day, When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, ust doff my will as raiment laid away, — With the first dream that comes with the first sleep I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. 138 ALICE MEYNELL. CXXXVIII. WITHOUT HIM. " Senza te son nulla." — Petrarca. I TOUCHED the heart that loved me, as a player Touches a lyre ; content with my poor skill No touch save mine knew my belov'd (and still I thought at times : Is there no sweet lost air Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share ?) ; Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will. He is dead, and silence takes me unaware. The songs I knew not he resumes, set free From my constraining love, alas for me ! His part in our tune goes with him ; my part Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute As one witli full strung music in his heart Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. ALICE MEYNELL. 139 CXXXIX. SPRING AMONG THE ALBAN HILLS. TO . " Silent with expectation." — Shellev. O'er the Campagna it is dim warm weather, The Spring comes with a full heart silently And many thoughts ; a faint flash of the sea Divides two mists ; straight, falls the falling feather. With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers. Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether. I fain would put my hands about thy face, Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring, And draw thee to me like a mournful child. Thou lookest on me from another place ; I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing That in thy silence makes thy sweet eyes wild. 140 COSMO MONKHOUSE. CXL. LIFE AND DEATH. From morn to eve they struggled — Life and Death. At first it seemed to me that tliey in mirth Contended, and as foes of equal worth, So firm their feet, so undisturbed their breath. But when the sharp red sun cut through its sheath Of western clouds, I saw the brown arms' girth Tighten and bear that radiant form to earth, And suddenly both fell upon the heath. And then the wonder came — for when I fled To where those great antagonists down fell I could not find the body that I sought, And when and where it went I could not tell. One only form was left of those who fought, The long dark form of Death — and it was dead. ERNEST MYERS. 141 CXLI. THE BANQUET. Now, as When sometime with high festival A conquering king new realms inaugurates, The souls of men go up within the gates Of their new-made mysterious palace-hall. And on their ears in bursts of triumph fall Marches of mighty music, while below, In carven cups with far-sought gems aglo\v-, And lamped by shapes of splendour on the wall, The new wine of man's kingdom flashes free. Yet some, among the wonders wondering there, Sit desolate, and shivering inwardly Lack yet some love to make the strange thing fair ; Yea, to their sad souls rather seem to be Sheep from the sheepfold strayed they know not where. 142 ERNEST MYERS. CXLII. THE NIGHT'S MESSAGE. Last night there came a message to mine ear, Saying : Come forth, that I may speak with thee. It was the Night herself that called to me. And I arose and went forth without fear And without hope ; and by the mountain-mere, In the great silence sitting silently, Drank in amazed the large moon's purity : Yet was my soul unsoothed of any cheer. But when the moon had set, a great mist lay On the earth and me, and to its wide soft breast Drew forth the secret woe we might not say. Then slowly, its brooding presence lightlier pressed, It heaved, and broke, and swayed, and soared away : And the Earth had morn, and I some space of rest. ERNEST MYERS. 143 CXLIII. MILTON. He left the upland lawns and serene air Wherefrom his soul her noble nurture drew, And reared his helm among the unquiet crew Battling beneath ; the morning radiance rare Of his young brow amid the tumult there Grew grim with sulphurous dust and sanguine dew ; Yet through all soilure they who marked him knew The signs of his life's dayspring, calm and fair. But when peace came, peace fouler far than war. And mirth more dissonant than battle's tone. He, with a scornful sigh of his clear soul, Back to his mountain clonib, now bleak and frore, And with the awful Night he dwelt alone. In darkness, listening to the thunder's roll. 144 FREDERICK W. H. MYERS. CXLIV. IMMORTALITY. So when the old delight is born anew And God re-animates the early bliss, Seems it not all as one first trembling kissi Ere soul knew soul with whom she has to do ? " O nights how desolate, O days how few, O death in life, if life be this, be this ! O weighed alone as one shall win or miss The faint eternity which shines therethrough ! " Lo, all but age is as a speck of sand Lost on the long beach where the tides are free, And no man metes it in his hollow hand Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be ; At ebb it lies forgotten on the land. And at full tide forgotten in the sea. FREDERICK W. H. MYERS. 145 CXLV. WOULD GOD IT WERE MORNING. My God, how many times ere I be dead Must I the bitterness of dying know ? How often like a corpse upon my bed Compose me and surrender me, and so Thro' hateful hours and ill-remembered Between the twilight and the twilight go, By visions bodiless obscurely led Thro' many a wild enormity of woe ? And yet I know not but that this is worst When with that light, the feeble and the first, I start and gaze into the world again, And gazing find it as of old accurst. And grey, and blinded with the stormy burst And blank appalling solitude of rain. 146 FREDERICK W. H, MYERS. CXLVI. HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT. No breath is on the glimmering ocean-floor, No blast beneath the windless Pleiades, But thro' dead night a melancholy roar, A voice of moving and of marching seas, — The boom of thundering waters on the shore Sworn with slow force by desolate degrees Once to go on, and whelm for evermore Earth and her folk and all their phantasies. Then half asleep in the great sound I seem Lost in the starlight, dying in a dream Where overmastering Powers abolish me, — Drown, and thro' dim euthanasy redeem My merged life in the living ocean-stream And soulrenvironing of shadowy sea. E. NESBIT. 147 CXLVII. PESSIMISM. Not Spring — too lavish of her bud arid leaf — But Autumn, with sad eyes and brow austere, When fields are bare, and woods are brown and sere, And leaden skies weep their exhaustless grief. Spring is so much too bright, since Spring is brief. And in our hearts is Autumn all the year, Least sad when the wide pastures are most drear, And fields grieve most robbed of the last gold sheaf. For when the plough goes down the brown wet field A delicate doubtful throb of hope is ours — What if this coming Spring at last should yield Joy, with her too profuse unasked-for flowers ? Not all our Springs of commonplace and pain Have taught us now that Autumn hope is vain. 148 JOHN HENRY, CARDINAL NEWMAN. CXLVIII. SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW. They do but grope in learning's pedant round Who on the phantasies of sense bestow An idol substance, bidding us bow low Before those shades of being which are found, Stirring or still, on man's brief trial-ground ; As if such shapes and modes, which come and go, Had aught of Truth or Life in their poor show, To sway or judge, and skill to sain or wound. Son of immortal seed, high-destined man ! Know thy dread gift, — a creature, yet a cause : Each mind is its own centre, and it draws Home to itself, and moulds in its thought's span. All outward things, the vassals of its will. Aided by Heaven, by earth unthwarted still. JOHN NICHOL. 149 CXLIX. LONDON. Dim miles of smoke behind — I look before, Through looming curtains of November rain, Till eyes and ears are weary with the strain : Amid the glare and gloom, I hear the roar Of life's sea, beating on a barren shore. Terrible arbiter of joy and pain ! A thousand hopes are wrecks of thy disdain ; A thousand hearts have learnt to love no more. Over thy gleaming bridges, on the street That ebbs and flows beneath the silent dome, Life's pulse is throbbing at a fever heat. City of cities^battlefield and home Of England's greatest, greatly wear their spoils, Thou front and emblem of an Empire's toils. 1 so JOHN NICHOL. CL. CROWNED. TO . I THOUGHT to track a world-disdaining Light, A dreadless Spirit, till our work was done. — Grown greater in men's eyes, his battle won. My hero fails me, wearied of the fight, And, late succeeding, finds Success is Right. Honoured and wise, his days unruffled run With grace and mellow music, tamed to shun The obdurate heart that wrestles with the .night. I was his homager, and shall remain, Through chance of time and change, his debtor still : But the old days can never come again Of love in exile knit, whose memories will Shine on the way, though shrinking throngs disown, That lies for me across the seas alone. JAMES ASHCRUFT NOBLE. 151 CLI. A CHARACTER— AND A QUESTION. A DUBIOUS, Strange, uncomprehended life, — A roll of riddles with no answer found, — A sea-like soul which plummet cannot sound, Torn by belligerent winds at mutual strife. The god in him hath taken unto wife A daughter of the pit, and — strongly bound By coils of snake-like hair about him wound — Dies straining hard to raise the severing knife. For such a sunken soul what room in Heaven ? For such a soaring soul what place in Hell ? Can these desires be damned, these doings shriven, Or in some lone mid-region rhust he dwell For ever ? Lo ! God sitteth with the seven Stars in His hand, and shall not He judge well? 152 JAMES ASHCROFT NOBLE. CLII. ONLY A WOMAN'S HAIR. " Only a woman's hair." — Swift. " A special despatch in ike ' Tagblatt,' siaies that Wagner's body was laid in the coffin by the widom herself, who, last night, cut off the beautiful hair her husband so admired and placed it in a red cushion under the head of the departed." — "Standard," ^«i. V]th, 1883 " Only a woman's hair ! " We may not guess If twere a mocking sneer or the sharp cry Of a great heart's o'ermastering agony That spake in these four words. Nevertheless One thing we know, — that the long clinging tress Had lived with Stella's life in days gone by, And, she being dead, lived on to testify Of love's victorious everlastingness. Such love, O mute musician, doth provide For thy dear head's repose a pillow rare : With red of heart's blood is the covering dyed, And underneath — canst thou not feel it there ? — The rippling wavy wealth that was thy pride, Now love's last gift — only a woman's hair ! ED WARD HENR Y NOEL. 1 53 CLIII. THE RAINBOW. The raindrops shimmered down the beamy sky : " Behold^' one sang, " how gloriously bright The golden garments of the King of light I " — " Golden! O drop, a beam is in thine eye! " A second cries : " jffis robe's of crimson dye." — • " Ye both are blind" another shouts : " my sight Is dear, and with the purple veil of night Our monarch is arrayed in mystery" Thus wrangling, shouting, hopeless to agree, The drops shot swiftly down the headlong steep, Until at last they fell into the sea. When they arose from out the cold, dark deep, The sun sat throned in stainless majesty. While down a cloud they saw the rainbow sweep. 1 54 HON. RODEN NOEL. CLIV. BY THE SEA. Ah ! wherefore do I haunt the shadowy tomb, My joyless days and nights among the dead ? Know you not He, my radiant Sun, who fled With hope ancertain, soothes yon awful gloom Afar, upon the weltering sea's wan lead ? Behold ! faint, tremulous, ghostly gleams illume The unrevealing mystery of Doom, Ash-pale dumb wastes, impenetrably dead, O'erwhelming purple incumbent o'er the coast. Into the Presence-Chamber of dim Death He hath been summoned ! and I hold ray post Here on the threshold, thirsty for one breath Released from yonder ! leave me ! I love my night, More than abounding pulses of your light ! FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE. 155 CLV. IN MEMORY OF F. C. C. 6th May, 1882. Fair Soul, who in this faltering age did show Manhood's true image, constant, courteous, pure. In silence strong to do and to endure, 'Neath selfsuppression veiling inner glow, — Justice at one with gentleness : — The throe Of lightning-death found thee, if any, fit, — ■ Secure in Faith, — to bare thy breast to it : Ah! Thine the joy, beloved, — ours the woe? For thou hast ta'en thine innocence on high, The child-simplicity of thy stainless years ; And on thy brows we see the diadem Of those who walk with Christ in purity. Fair souls, and wept, like thee, with lifelong tears Sword-slain in Ephratean Bethlehem. rs6 SIR NOEL PA TON. CLVI. " TIMOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME." Could I have sung one Song that should survive The singer's voice, and in my country's heart Find loving echo — evermore a part Of all her sweetest memories ; could I give One great Thought to the People, that should prove The spring of noble action in their hour Of darkness, or control their headlong power With the firm reins of Justice and of Love ; Could I have traced one Form that should express The sacred mystery that underlies All Beauty, and through man's enraptured eyes Teach him how beautiful is Holiness, — I had not feared thee. But to yield my breath, Life's Purpose unfulfilled ! — This is thy sting, O Death ! JOHN PAYNE, 157 CLVII. SIBYL. This is the glamour of the world antique ; The thyme-scents of Hymettus fill the air, And in the grass narcissus-cups are fair. The full brook wanders through the ferns to seek The amber haunts of bees ; and on the peak Of the soft hill, against the gold-marged sky, She stands, a dream from out the days gone by. Entreat her not. Indeed she will not speak ! Her eyes are full of dreams ; and in her ears There is the rustle of immortal wings ; And ever and anon the slow breeze bears The mystic murmur of the song she sings. Entreat her not : she sees thee not, nor hears Aught but the sights and sounds of bygone springs. 158 JOHN PAYNE. CLVIII. HESPERIA. My dream is of a city in the west, Built with fair colour, still and sad as flow'rs That wear the blazon of the autumn hours, Set by the side of some wide wave's unrest; And there the sun-fiU'd calm is unimprest Save by a flutter as of silver showers. Rain-rippled on dim Paradisal bowers, And some far tune of bells chimed softliest. About the still clear streets my love-thoughts go ; A many-coloured throng — some pale as pearl, Some gold as the gold brow-locks of a girl : And 'midst them where the saddest memories teem, My veiled hope wanders, musingly and slow, And hears the sad sea murmur like a dream. JOHN PAYNE. 159 CLIX. LIFE UNLIVED. How many months, how many a weary year My soul hath stood upon that brink of days, Straining dim eyes into the treacherous haze For signs of life's beginning. Far and near The grey mist floated, like a shadow-mere, Beyond hope's bounds ; and in the lapsing ways Pale phantoms flitted, seeming to my gaze The portents of the coming hope and fear. " Surely," I said, " life shall rise up at last, Shall sweep me by with pageant and delight ! " But as I spake, the waste shook with a blast Of cries and clamours of a mighty fight ; Then all was still. Upon me fell the night. And a voice whisper'd to me, " Life is Past." 1 60 El^IL Y PFEIFFER. CLX. EVOLUTION. Hunger that strivest in the restless arms Of the sea-flower, that drivest rooted things To break their moorings, that unfoldest wings In creatures to be rapt above thy harms ; Hunger, of whom the hungry-seeming waves Were the first ministers, till, free to range, Thou mad'st the Universe thy park and grange, What is it thine insatiate heart still craves? Sacred disquietude, divine unrest ! Maker of all that breathes the breath of life, No unthrift greed spurs thine unflagging zest, No lust self-slaying hounds thee to the strife ; Thou art the Unknown God on whom we wait : Thy path the course of our unfolded fate. EMILY PFEIFFER. i6i CLXI. TO NATURE, n. Dread force, in whom of old we loved to see A nursing mother, clothing with her life The seeds of Love divine, with what sore strife We hold or yield our thoughts of Love and thee ! Thou art not '• calm," but restless as the ocean, Filling with aimless toil the endless years — Stumbling on thought and throwing off the spheres, Churning the Universe with mindless motion. Dull fount of joy, unhallowed source of tears, Cold motor of our fervid faith and song. Dead, but engendering life, love, pangs, and fears, Thou cro\vnedst thy wild work with foulest wrong When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal And darkly blundered on man's suffering soul. 162 EMIL Y PFEIFFER. CLXII. TO NATURE. III. Blind Cyclops, hurling stones of destiny, And not in fury ! — working bootless ill, In mere vacuity of mind and will — Man's soul revolts against thy work and thee ! Slaves of a despot, conscienceless and nil. Slaves by mad chance befooled to think them free, We still might rise and with one heart agree To mar the ruthless grinding of thy mill ! Dread Tyrant, tho' our cries and groans pass by thee, Man, cutting off from each new " tree of life" Himself, its fatal flower, could still defy thee, In waging on thy work eternal strife,^ The races come and coming evermore. Heaping with hecatombs thy dead-sea shore. EMILY PFEIFFER. 163 CLXIII. TO A MOTH THAT DRINKETH OF THE RIPE OCTOBER. A MOTH belated, — sun and zephyr-kist, — Trembling about a pale arbutus bell, Probing to wildering depths its honeyed cell, — A noonday thief, a downy sensualist ! Not vainly, sprite, thou drawest careless breath, Strikest ambrosia from the cool-cupped flowers. And flutterest through the soft, uncounted hours. To drop at last in unawaited death ; — 'Tis something to be glad ! and those fine thrills Which move thee, to my lip have drawn the smile Wherewith we look on joy. Drink! drown thine ills, If ill have any part in thee ; erewhile May the pent force — thy bounded life — set free Fill larger sphere with equal ecstasy ! i64 BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. CLXIV. A STILL PLACE. Under what beechen shade or silent oak Lies the mute, sylvan, now mysterious Pan ? - Once (when rich P^neus and Ilissus ran Clear from their fountains) as the morning broke, 'Tis said the Satyr with Apollo spoke, And to harmonious strife with his wild reed, Challenged the God, whose music was indeed Divine, and fit for heaven. Each played, and woke Beautiful sounds to life — deep melodies ; One blew his pastoral pipe with such nice care. That flocks and birds all answered him ; and one Shook his immortal showers upon the air. That music has ascended to the sun : But where the other ? Speak, ye dells and trees. BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 165 CLXV. THE SEA— IN CALM. Look what immortal floods the sunset pours Upon us ! — Mark how still (as though in dreams Bound) the once wild and terrible Ocean seems ! How silent are the winds ! No billow roars, But all is tranquil as Elysian shores ; The silver margin which aye runneth round The moon-enchanted sea hath here no sound : Even Echo speaks not on these radiant moors. What ! is the giant of the ocean dead, Whose strength was all unmatched beneath the sun ? No : he reposes Now his toils are done, More quiet than the babbling brooks is he. So mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed. And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be. 1 66 MAJiK ANDRE RAFFALOVICH. CLXVI. MORE THAN TRUTH. No longer do I know if thou art fair Or if the truth my vision might disgrace, Nor do I know if other men would care To make their sweetest heaven of thy face, But what to me the words that others speak, Their thoughts, their laughter, or their foolish gaze ? For hast thou not a herald on my cheek To tell the coming nearer of thy ways, And in my veins a stranger blood that flows, A bell that strikes on pulses of my heart, Submissive life that proudly comes and goes Through eyes that burn, and speechless lips that part ? And hast thou not a hidden life in mine. In thee a soul which none may know for thine ? MARK ANDRE RAFFALOVICH. 167 CLXVII. THE BODY FAIR. The empty marvel of a splendid cage With fretted gold and twisted silver wire Thy body seems, and mine a lover's rage That gilds thy painted shows with rich desire. And round the precious metal of the bars Flowers scarlet-hearted, and pale passion flowers, And crowded jasmine mingle as the stars, Dewy with scent of kisses, warm with showers. Of marble, lily and pure snow, the floor ; The window stained with sunlit ruby shine ; Of azure water clear the sapphire door That never turns on hinges crystalline : The bird within is mute and does not sing, And dull his tuneless throat, and dipt his wing. 1 68 ERNEST RHYS. CLXVIII. THE STUDENT'S CHAMBER. Strange things pass nightly in this little room, ■AH dreary as it looks by light of day ; Enchantment reigns here when at evening play Red firelit glimpses through the pallid gloom : Then come — perchance the shadows thrown assume That guise — heroic guests in dim array, — The Kings of eld, returned the human way By Bridge of Dread, from star to straitening tomb. High dreams they bring that never were dreamt in sleep : These walls yawn wide to Time, to Death, and Hell, To the last abyss of men's wild cries to Heaven ; While night uncurtains on a sobbing deep. And lo ! the land wherein the Holy Grail, In far Monsalvat, to the soul is given. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS. 169 CLXIX. THE POTATO HARVEST. A HIGH bare field, brown from the plough, and borne Aslant from sunset ; amber wastes of sky- Washing the ridge ; a clamour of crows that fly- In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn ; A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by A pond, and cattle ; from the homestead nigh The long deep summonings of the supper horn. Black on the ridge, against the lonely flush, A cart, and stoop-necked oxen ; ranged beside, Some barrels ; and the day-worn harvest folk, Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush With hollow thunders : down the dusk hillside Lumbers the wain ; and day fades out like smoke. I70 ERIC SUTHERLAND ROBERTSON. CLXX. THE LOST IDEAL OF THE WORLD. A NOVICE in the School of Paradise, I leant beside the Golden Gate one day : Eternity's blue deeps before me lay That girdle the Queen Island of the skies, And soul-content was lit within mine eyes, Calm with the calm that lists not of decay, — A dreamy sense of dreams come true for aye, And Darkness burnt up in a last Sunrise. O God, what was She, there, without the Gate — Sad in such beauty Heav'n seemed incomplete? Drawn by a nameless star's young whisperings. With hands stretch'd forth as if to pass by Fate She drifted on — so near Thy mercy-seat — Blind, and in all the loneliness of wings ! A. MAR Y F. ROBINSON. 1 7 1 CLXXI. TWO LOVERS. I LOVE my lover ; on the heights above me He mocks my poor attainment with a frown. I, looking up as he is looking down, By his displeasure guess he still doth love me ; For his ambitious love would ever prove me More excellent than I as yet am shown, So, straining for some good ungrasped, unknown, I vainly would become his image of me. And, reaching through the dreadful gulfs that sever Our souls, I strive with darkness nights and days, Till my perfected work towards him I raise, Who laughs thereat, and scorns me more than ever ; Yet his upbraiding is beyond all praise. This lover that I love I call : Endeavour. 172 A. MARY F. ROBINSON. CLXXII. TWO LOVERS. II. I HAVE another lover loving me, Himself beloved of all men, fair and true. He would not have me change altho' I grew Perfect as Light, because more tenderly He loves myself than loves what I might be. Low at my feet he sings the winter through, And, never won, I love to hear him woo. For in my heaven both sun and moon is he, To my bare life a fruitful-flooding Nile, His voice like April airs that in our isle Wake sap in trees that slept since autumn went. His words are all caresses, and his smile The relic of some Eden Ravishment; And he that loves me so I call : Content. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. 173 CLXXIII. LOVER'S SILENCE. When she whose love is even my air of life Enters, delay being past, to bless my home, And ousts her phantom from its place, being come Herself to fill it ; when the importunate strife Of absence with desire is stilled, and rife With heaven is earth ; why am I stricken dumb, Abashed, confounded, awed of heart and numb. Waking no triumph of song, no welcoming fife ? Be thine own answer, soul, who long ago Did'st see the awful light of Beauty shine. Silent ; and silently rememberest yet That glory which no spirit may forget, Nor utter save in love a thought too fine For souls to ignore, or mortal sense to know. 174 WILLIAM CALDWELL ROSCOE. CLXXIV. THE POETIC LAND. The bubble of the silver-springing waves, Castalian music, and that flattering sound, Low rustling of the loved Apollian leaves. With which my youthful hair was to be crowned, Grow dimmer in my ears ; while Beauty grieves Over her votary, less frequent found ; And, not untouched by storms, my life-boat heaves Through the splashed ocean-waters, outward bound. And as the leaning mariner, his hand Clasped on his oar, strives trembling to reclaim Some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand, So lean I back to the poetic land ; Arid in my heart a sound, a voice, a name Hangs, as^ above the lamp hangs the expiring flame. WILLIAM CALDWELL ROSCOE. 175 CLXXV. DAYBREAK IN FEBRUARY. Over the ground white snow, and in the air Silence. The stars hke lamps soon to expire, Gleam tremblingly ; serene and heavenly fair, 'Ihe eastern hanging crescent climbeth higher. See, purple on the azure softly steals, And Morning, faintly touched with quivering fire. Leans on the frosty summits of the hills. Like a young girl over her hoary sire. Oh, such a dawning over me has come, The daybreak of thy purity and love ; — The sadness'of the never satiate tomb Thy countenance hath power to remove, And from the "sepulchre of Hope thy palm Can roll the stone, and raise her bright and calm. '76 WILLIAM CALD WELL ROSCOE. CLXXVI. "LIKE A MUSICIAN." Like a musician that with flying finger Startles the voice of some new instrument, And, though he know that in one string are blent All its extremes of sound, yet still doth linger Among the lighter threads, fearing to start The deep soul of that one melodious wire. Lest it, unanswering, dash his high desire, And spoil the hopes of his expectant heart ; — Thus with my mistress oft conversing, I Stir every lighter theme with careless voice, Gathering sweet music and celestial joys From the harmonious soul o'er which I fly ; Yet o'er the one deep master-chord I hover, And dare not stoop, fearing to tell^I love her. WILLIAM STANLE Y ROSCOE. 1 7 7 CLXXVII. TO THE HARVEST MOON. Again thou rdgnest in thy golden hall, Rejoicing in thy sway, fair queen of night ! The ruddy reapers hail thee with delight : Theirs is the harvest, theirs the joyous call For tasks well ended ere the season's fall. Sweet orb, thou smilest from thy starry height ; But whilst on them thy beams are shedding bright, To me thou com^st o'ershadowed with a pall ; To me alone the year hath fruitless flown ; Earth hath fulfilled her trust through all her lands, The good man gathereth where he had sown. And the Great NUster in his vineyard stands ; But I, as if my task were all unknown. Come to his gates alas ! with empty hands. 178 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. CLXxvm. REMEMBER. Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land ; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more, day by day, You tell me of our future that you planned : Only remember me ; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve ; For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. CHRISTINA G. R0SSET7I. 179 CLXXIX. ONE CERTAINTY. Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith, All things are vanity. The eye and ear Cannot be filled with what they see and hear. Like early dew, or like the sudden breath Of wind, or like the grass that withereth, Is man, tossed to and fro by hope and fear : So little joy hath he, so little cheer. Till all things end in the long dust of death. To-day is still the same as yesterday, To-morrow also even as one of them : And there is nothing new under the sun : Until the ancient sea of Time be run, The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem, And morning shall be cold, and twilight grey. I So CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTL CLXXX. THE WORLD. By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair : But all night as the moon so changeth she ; Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy, And subtle serpents gliding in her hair. By day she wooes me to the outer air, Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety : ]5ut through the night, a beast she grins at me, A very monster void of love and prayer. By day she stands a lie : by night she stands, In all the naked horror of the truth, With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands. Is this a friend indeed ; that I should sell My soul to her, give her my life and youth, Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell. CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. i8i CLXXXI. VANITY OF VANITIES. Ah, woe is me for pleasure that is vain, Ah, woe is me for glofy that is past : Pleasure that bringeth sorrow at the last, Glory that at the last bringeth no gain ! So saith the sinking heart ; and so again It shall say till the mighty angel-blast Is blown, making the sun and moon aghast, And showering down the stars like sudden rain. And evermore men shall go fearfully. Bending beneath their weight of heaviness; . And ancient men shall lie down wearily. And strong men shall rise up in weariness ; Yea, even the young shall answer sighingly, Saying one to another : How vain it is ! i82 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. CLXXXII. LOVE LIES BLEEDING. Love that is dead and buried, yesterday Out of his grave rose up before my face, No recognition in his look, no trace Of memory in his eyes dust-dimmed and grey. While I, remembering, found no word to say, But felt my quickened heart leap in its place ; Caught afterglow thrown back from long set days. Caught echoes of all music passed away. Was this indeed to meet? — I mind me yet In youth we met when hope and love were quick, We parted with hope dead, but love alive : I mind me how we parted then heart sick, Remembering, loving, hopeless, weak to strive :- Was this to meet ? Not so, we have not met. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 183 CLXXXIII. SIBYLLA PALMIFERA. Under the arch of Life, where love and death, Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath. The sky and sea bend on thee, — which can draw. By sea or sky or woman, to one law, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise Thy voice and hand shake still — long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem, — the beat Following her daily of thy^heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably. In what fond flight, how many ways and days I i84 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. CLXXXIV. FOR A VENETIAN PASTORAL. BY GIORGIONE. *-«^!' {In the Louvre.) Water, for anguish of the solstice : — nay, But dip the, vessel slowly, — nay, but lean And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in Reluctant. Hush ! beyond all depth away The heat lies silent at the break of day : Now the hand trails upon the viol-string That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing, Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass , Is cool against her naked side ? Let be : Say nothing now unto her lest she weep, Nor name this ever. Be it as it was, — Life touching lips with Immortality. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 185 CLXXXV. ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS. Not that the earth is changing, O my God ! Nor that the seasons totter in their walk, — Not that the virulent ill of act and talk Seethes ever as a wine-press ever trod, — Not therefore are we certain that the rod Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world ; though now Beneath thine hand so many nations bow, So many kings : — not therefore, O my God ! But because Man is parcelled out in men To-day; because, for any wrongful blow. No man not stricken asks, " I would be told Why thou dost strike ; " but his heart whispers then, " He is he, I am I." By this we know That the earth falls asunder, being old. 1 86 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. CLXXXVI. LOVESIGHT. (House of Life. — IV.) When do I see thee most, beloved one ? When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known ? Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own ? O love, my love ! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, — How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing ? DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETU. 187 CLXXXVII. THE DARK GLASS. {House of Life. — xxxiv.) Not I myself know all my love for thee : How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday ? Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray ; And shall my sense pierce love ? — the last relay And ultimate outpost of eternity ? Lo ! what am I to Love, the Lord of all ? One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, — One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand. Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call And veriest touch of powers primordial, That any hour-girt life may understand. i88 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. CLXXXVIII. WITHOUT HER. I^House of Life.— zin.) What of her glass without her ? The blank grey There where the pool is blind of the moon's face. Her dress without her ? The tossed empty space Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away. Her paths without her ? Da/s appointed sway Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place V/ithout her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace, And cold forgetfiilness of night or day. What of the heart without her ? Nay, poor heart, Of thee what word remains ere speech be still ! A way-farer by barren ways and chill. Steep ways and weary, without her thou art, Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart, Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 189 CLXXXIX. TRUE WOMAN -HER HEAVEN. (house of Life. — LVII J If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young, (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be 'I'rue Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung Here and hereafter, — choir-strains of her tongue, — Sky-spaces of her eyes, — sweet signs that flee About her soul's immediate sanctuary, — Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among. The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill Like any hillflower ; and the noblest troth Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe Even yet those lovers who have cherished still This test for love : — in every kiss sealed fast To feel the first kiss and forebode the last. 1 9° DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETII. cxc. TRUE WOMAN— HER LOVE. (House of Life. — LViii.) She loves him ; for her infinite soul is Love, And he her lode-star. Passion in her is A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove. And it shall turn, by instant contraries, Ice to the moon ; while her pure fire to his For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove. Lo ! they are one. With wifely breast to breast And circling arms, she welcomes all command Of love,' — her soul to answering ardours faijn'd : Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest. Ah ! who shall say she deertis not loveliest The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand ? DANTE GABRIEL HOSSETTL 191 CXCI. THE CHOICE. (House of Life. — Lxxii.) Think thou and act ; to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st : " Man's measured path is all gone o'er : Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touched the truth ; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for." How should this be ! Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby ? Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me ; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the last line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, — Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea. 192 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. CXCII. LOST DAYS. {House of Life. — Lxxxvi.) The lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay ? Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ? Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway ? I do not see them here ; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. " I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me ? " " And I — and I — thyself," (lo ! each one saith,) " And thou thyself to all eternity ! " DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 193 CXCIII. "RETRO ME, SATHANAl" (House of Life. — xc.) Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, Stooping against the wind, a charioteer Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, So shall Time be ; and as the void car, hurled Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world : Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air, It shall be sought and not found anywhere. Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled. Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath Much mightiness of men to win thee praise. Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways. Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath For certain years, for certain months and days. 194 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETII. CXCIV. A SUPERSCRIPTION. (House of Life. — xcvii.) Look in my face ; my name is Might-have-been ; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell ; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between ; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable. Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am ! But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that wing'd Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,— Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes. _ WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. 195 cxcv. DEMOCRACY DOWNTRODDEN. How long, O Lord ? — The voice is sounding still : Not only heard beneath the altar-stone. Not heard of John Evangelist alone In Patmos. It doth cry aloud and will Between the earth's end and earth's end, until The day of the great reckoning — bone for bone, And blood for righteous blood, and groan for groan j Then shall it cease on the air with a sudden thrill ; Not slowly growing fainter if the rod Strikes here or there amid the evil throng Or one oppressor's hand is stayed and numbs ; Not till the vengeance that is coming comes. For shall all hear the voice excepting God, Or God not listen, hearing? — Lord, how long? 196 WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTL CXCVI. EMIGRATION. Weave o'er the world your weft, yea weave yourselves, Imperial races weave the warp thereof. Swift like your shuttle speed the ships, and scoff At wind and wave. And, as a miner delves For hidden treasure bedded deep in stone. So seek ye and find the treasure patriotism In lands remote and dipped with alien chrism, And make those new lands heart-dear and your own. Weave o'er the world yourselves. Half-human man Wanes from before your faces like a cloud Sun-stricken, and his soil becomes his shroud. But of your souls and bodies ye shall make The sov'reign vesture of its leagueless span, Clothing with history cliff and wild and lake. THOMAS RUSSELL. 197 CXCVII. AT LEMNOS. On this lone isle whose rugged rocks affright The cautious pilot, ten revolving years Great Psean's son, unwonted erst to tears, Wept o'er his wound ; alike each rolling light Of heaven he watched, and blamed its lingering flight ; By day the sea-mew screaming round his cave Drove slumber from his eyes ; the chiding wave And savage howlings chased his dreams by night. Hope still was his : in each low breeze that sighed Through his low grot he heard a coming oar — In each white cloud a coming sail he spied ; Nor seldom listened to the fancied roar Of Oeta's torrents, or the hoarser tide That parts famed Trachis from the Euboic shore. 198 WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. CXCVIII. THE UNIVERSE VOID. Kevolving worlds, revolving systems, yea. Revolving firmaments, nor there we end : Systems of firmaments revolving, send Our thought across the Infinite astray, Gasping and lost and terrified, the day Of life, the goodly interests of home. Shrivelled to nothing ; that unbounded dome Pealing still on, in blind fatality. No rest is there for our soul's winged feet, She must return for shelter to her ark — The body, fair, frail, death-born, incomplete, And let her bring this truth back from the dark : Life is self-centred, man is nature's god ; Space, time, are but the walls of his abode. WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. 199" CXCIX. BELOW THE OLD HOUSE. Beneath those buttressed walls with lichen grey, Beneath the slopes of trees whose flickering shade Darkens the pools by dun green velveted, The stream leaps like a living thing at play, — In haste it seems : it cannot cannot stay ! The great boughs changing there from year to year, And the high jackdaw-haunted eaves, still hear The burden of the rivulet — Passing away I And some time certainly that oak no more Will keep the winds in check ; his breadth of beam Will go to rib some ship for some far shore ; Those coigns and eaves will crumble, while that stream WiU still run whispering, whispering night and day, That oversong of Father Time — Passing away ! WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. cc. PARTED LOVE. Methinks I have passed through some dreadful door, Shutting off summer and its sunniest glades From a dark waste of marsh and ruinous shades : And in that sunlit past, one day before All other days is crimson to the core ; That day of days'when hand in hand became Encircling arms, and with an effluent flame Of terrible surprise, we knew love's lore. The rose-red ear that then my hand caressed, Those smiles bewildered, that low voice so sweet, The truant threads of silk about the brow Dishevelled, when our burning lips were pressed Together, and the temple-pulses beat ! All gone now — where am I, and where art thou ? WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. cci. SEEKING FORGE-^FULNESS. And yet I am as one who looks behind, A traveller in a shadowed land astray, Passing and lost upon the boundary Of actual things, who turns against the wind, An hundred simulacral ghosts to find Close following, an hundred pairs of eyes Shining around like phosphorescent flies, — And all of them himself, yet changed in kind. Those once I was, which of them now am I ? Not one, all alien, long abandoned masks. That in some witches' sabbath long since past. Did dance awhile in my life's panoply. And drank with me from out of the same flasks ; Am I not rid of these, not even at last ? WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. ecu. EXPERIENCE. Steadily burning like a lamp enshrined, The Sanscrit says our lives should pass away \ Even so, but how to guard by night and day This priceless lamp ? From the Unknown God's wind Fans it for ever, joys and cares combined, The plague of fire and hail, in through the bars Of this our prison-house make constant jars ; No heart of flesh can hold their powers confined. Not then for us in Western lands is it, Where every hour brings loads enough for years. Naked on contemplation's mat to sit ; But woe to him who finds no tirrie at all For questioning, who sleeps in a festive hall ; Who finds no gains in long-remembered tears. WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. 203 CCIII. A GARLAND FOR ADVANCING YEARS. Wear thou this fresh green garland this one day, This white-flowered garland wear for Love's delight, While still the sun shines, ere the lessening light Declines into the shadows cold and grey : . Wear thou this myrtle leaf while yet ye may, Love's wings are wings that hate the dews of night, Nor will he rest still smiling in our sight, And still companioning our western way. Wear then this plain green garland this one day, To please Love's eyes, else not for all the might Of all the gods, nor any law of right, Will he, content with age's disarray. For us pass by the youthful and the gay ; And it were hard to live in love's despite. 204 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. CCIV. OZYMANDIAS. I MET a traveller from an antique land Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown. And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command. Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed : And on the pedestal these words appear : " My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair ! " Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX. 205 ccv. A CHILL IN SUMMER. I WENT upon a meadow bright with gold Of buttercups, which glistened on the green Of summer grass, veiled with a filmy sheen Of gossamer, whereby a river rolled His shrunken waters by a city old, Leaving large space of poisonous ooze between The herbage and his waves, which were not clean, And in the air there was a touch of cold. Then my thoughts troubled me, I knew not why ; But everything seemed still, and nought at rest. The sun grew dim, the faint wind seemed to sigh, The pale blue seemed to shiver as unblest, White fleecy clouds came scudding up the sky. And turned to ashen darkness in the west. 205 ALEXANDER SMITH. CCVI. BEAUTY. Beauty still walketh on the earth and air ; Our present sunsets are as rich in gold As ere the Iliad's music was out-rolled, The roses of the Spring are ever fair, 'Mong branches green still ring-doves coo and pair, And the deep sea still foams its music old; So if we are at all divinely souled, This beauty will unloose our bonds of care. 'Tis pleasant when blue skies are o'er us bending Within old starry-gated Poesy, To meet a soul set to no worldly tune. Like thine, sweet friend ' Ah, dearer this to me Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon, Or noble music with a golden ending. ROBERT SO UTHE Y. 207 CCVII. WINTER. A WRINKLED crabbbd man they picture thee, Old Winter, with a ragged beard as grey. As the long moss upon the apple-tree ; Blue-lipt, an ice drop at thy sharp blue nose, Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows. They should have drawn thee by the. high-heapt hearth, Old. Winter! seated in thy great armed chair, Watching the children at their Christmas mirth ; Or circled by them as thy lips declare Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire. Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night ; Pausing at times to rouse the smouldering tire, Or taste the old October brown and bright. 2o8 ROBERT LOUIS STE VENSON. CCVIII. THE TOUCH OF LIFE. I SAW a circle in a garden sit Of dainty dames and solemn cavaliers, Whereof some shuddered at the burrowing nit, And at the carrion worm some burst in tears : And all, as envying the abhorred estate Of empty shades and disembodied elves, Under the laughing stars, early and late, Sat shamefast at their birth and at themselves. The keeper of the house of life is fear ; In the rent lion is the honey found By him that rent it ; out of stony ground The toiler, in the morning of the year. Beholds the harvest of his grief abound And the green corn put forth the tender ear. CHARLES STRONG. 209 CCIX. EVENING. My window's open to the evening sky ; The solemn trees are fringed with golden light ; The lawn here Shadow'd lies, there kindles bright ; And cherished roses lift their incense high. The punctual thrush, on plane-tree warbling nigh, With loud and luscious cries calls down the night ; Dim waters, flowing on with gentle might, Between each pause are heard to murmur by. The book that told of wars in holy-land, (Nor less than Tasso sounded in mine ears) Escapes unheeded from my listless hand. Poets whom Nature for her service rears, Like Priests in her great temple ministering stand. But in her glory fade when she appears. CHARLES STRONG. ccx. TO TIME. Time, I rejoice, amid the ruin wide That peoples thy dark empire, to behold ■ Shores against which thy waves in vaih have rolled. Where man's proud works still frown above thy tide. The deep-based Pyramids still turn aside Thy wasteful current ; vigorously old, Lucania's temples their array unfold. Pillar and portico, in simple pride. Nor less thy joy, when, sheltered from thy storms In earth's fond breast, hid treasure bursts the sod — Elaborate stone in sculpture's matchless forms. Oft did I mock thee, spoiler, as I trod The glowing courts where still the Goddess warms, And stern in beauty stands the quivered God. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 211 CCXI. TO THEODORE WATTS. (Dedicatory Sonnet, Tristram of Lyonesse : And other Poems.') Spring speaks again, and all our woods are stirred, And all our wide glad wastes a-flower around, That twice have heard keen April's clarion sound Since here we first together saw and heard Spring's light reverberate and reiterate word Shine forth and speak in season. Life stands crowned Here with the best one thing it ever found, As of my soul's best birthdays dawns the third. There is a friend that as the wise man saith Cleaves closer than a brother : nor to me Hath time not shown, through days like waves at strife, This truth more sure than all things else but death, This pearl most perfect found in all the sea That washes towards your feet these waifs of life. 212 ALGERNON' CHARLES SWINBURNE. CCXII. JOHN FORD. Hew hard the marble from the mountain's heart Where hardest night holds fast in iron gloom ' Gems brighter than an April dawn in bloom, That his Memnonian likeness thence may start Revealed, whose hand with high funereal art Carved night, and chiselled shadow : be the tomb That speaks him famous graven with signs of doom Intrenched inevitably in lines athwart. As on some thunder-blasted Titan's brow His record of rebellion. Not the day Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord, Touching this marble : darkness, none knows how, And stars impenetrable of midnight, may. So looms the likeness of thy soul, John Ford. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 213 CCXIII. JOHN WEBSTER. Thunder : the flesh quails, and the soul bows down. Night : east, west, south, and northward, very night. Star upon struggling star strives into sight, Star after shuddering star the deep storms drown. The very throne of night, her very crown, A man lays hand on, and usurps her right. -Song from the highest of heaven's imperious height Shoots, as a fire to smite some towering town. Rage, anguish, harrowing fear, heart-crazing crime, Make monstrous all the murderous face of Time Shown in the spheral orbit of a glass Revolving. Earth cries out from all her graves. Frail, on frail rafts, across wide-wallowing waves, Shapes here and there of child and mother pass. 214 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. CCXIV, ON THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. {Written fune, 1882.) O SON of man, by lying tongues adored, By slaughterous hands of slaves with feet red-shod In carnage deep as ever Christian trod Profaned with prayer and sacrifice abhorred And incense from the trembling tyrant's horde, Brute worshippers of wielders of the rod, Most murderous even of all that call thee God, Most treacherous even that ever called thee Lord j — Face loved of little children long ago, Head hated of the priests and rulers then, If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine Run ravening as the Gadarean swine. Say, was not this thy Passion to foreknow In death's worst hour the works of Christian men ? ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 215 ccxv. HOPE AND FEAR. Bkneath the shadow of dawn's aerial cope, With eyes enkindled as the sun's own sphere, Hope from the front of youth in godlike cheer Looks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope Round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, And makes for joy the very darkness dear That gives her wide wings play ; nor dreams that fear At noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope. Then, when the soul leaves off to dream and yearn, May truth first purge her eyesight to discern What once being known leaves time no power to appal; Till youth at last, ere yet youth be not, learn The kind wise word that falls from years that fall — " Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all." 2i6 JOHN- ABiDINGTON SYMONBS. ecxvi. TO THE GENIUS OF ETERNAL SLUMBER. Sleep, thou art named eternal !■ Is there then No chance of wakmg in thy noiseless realm ? Come there no fretful dreams to overwhelm The feverish spirits of o'erlaboured men ? Shall conscience sleep where thou art ; and shall pain Lie folded with tired arms around her head, And memory be stretched upon a bed Of ease, whence she shall never rise again ? O Sleep, that art eternal ! Say, shall Love Breathe like an infant slumbering at thy breast ? Shall hope there cease to throb ; and shall the smart Of things impossible at length find rest ? Thou answerest not. The poppy-heads above Thy calm brows sleep. How cold, how still thou art ! JOHN ADBINGTON S YMONDS. 2 1 7 CCXVII. INEVITABLE CHANGE. Rebuke me not ! I have nor wish nor skill To alter one hair's breadth in all this house Of Love, rising with domes so luminous And air-built galleries on life's topmost hill ! Only I know that fate, chance, years that kill, Change that transmutes, have aimed their darts at us ; Envying each lovely shrine and amorous Reared on earth's soil by man's too passionate will. Dread thou the moment when these glittering towers, These adamantine walls and gates of gems, Shall fade like forms of sun-forsaken cloud ; When dulled by imperceptible chill hours. The golden spires of our Jerusalems Shall melt to mist and vanish in night's shroud ! 2 1 8 JOHN ADDINGTON. S YMONDS. CCXVIII. THE JEWS' CEMETERY. Lido of Venice. A TRACT of land swept by the salt sea-foam, Fringed with acacia flowers, and billowy deep In meadow-grasses, where tall poppies sleep. And bees athirst for wilding honey roam. How many a bleeding heart hath found its home Under these hillocks which the sea-mews sweep ! Here knelt an outcast race to curse and weep. Age after age, 'neath heaven's unanswering dome. Sad is the place," and solemn. Grave by grave, Lost in the dunes, with rank weeds overgrown. Pines in abandonment ; as though unknown, Uncared for, lay the dead, whose records pave This path neglected ; each forgotten stone Wept by no mourner but the moaning wave. JOHN ADDINGTON S YMONDS. 2 1 9 CCXIX. A CRUCIFIX IN THE ETSCH THAL. Blue mists lie curled along the sullen stream : Clouds furl the pine-clad highlands whence we came ; Stage after stage, interminably tame, Stretch the gaunt mountain-flanks without one gleam. AU things are frozen in a dull dead dream : It is a twilight land without a name : Each half-awakened hamlet seems the same Home of grey want and misery supreme. Heart-breaking is the world-old human strife With niggard nature traced adown this vale In records fugitive as human life. Ah Christ ! The land is thine. Those tortured eyes. That thorn-crowned brow, those mute lips, thin and pale, Appeal from man's pain to the impiteous skies. 220 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. ccxx. A DREAM OF BURIAL IN MID-OCEAN. Down through the deep deep grey-green seas, in sleep, Plunged rny drowsed soul ; and ever on and on, Hurrying at first, then where the faint light shone Through fathoms twelve, with slackening fall did creep ; Nor touched the bottom of that bottomless steep, But with a slow sustained suspension, Buoyed 'mid the watery wildernesses wan. Like a thin cloud in air, voyaged the deep. Then all those dreadful faces of the sea, Horned things abhorred and shapes intolerable, Fixing glazed lidless eyes swam up to me. And pushed me with their snouts, and coiled and fell In spiral volumes writhing horribly — Jagged fins grotesque, fanged ghastly jaws of hell. JOHN ADDINGTON S YMONDS. 122 1 CCXXI. VENETIAN SUNRISE. How often have I now outwatched the night Alone in this grey chamber toward the sea Turning its deep-arcaded balcony ! Round yonder sharp acanthus-leaves the light Comes stealing, red at first, then golden bright ; Till when the day-god in his strength and glee Springs from the orient flood victoriously, Each cusp is tipped and tongued with quivering white. The islands that were blots of purple bloom, Now tremble in soft liquid luminous haze, Uplifted from the sea-floor to the skies ; And dim discerned erewhile through roseate gloom, A score of sails now stud the waterways, Ruffling like swans afloat from paradise. 222 LORD TENNYSON. ccxxn. MONTENEGRO. They rose to where their sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night Against the Turk ; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. O smallest among peoples ! rough rock-throne Of Freedom ! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years. Great Tsernogora ! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. LORD TENNYSON. 323 CCXXIII. SONNET. Written on Hearing of the Outbreak of the Polish Insurrection, Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar The hosts to battle : be not bought and sold. Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold ; Break through your iron shackles — fling them far. O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar Grew to his strength among his deserts cold ; When even to Moscow's cupolas were rolled The. growing murmurs of the Polish war ! Now must your noble anger blaze out more Than when from Sobieski, clan bjy clan, The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before — Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan 1 Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore Boleslas drove the Pomeranian. 224 JAMES THOMSON. CCXXIV. A RECUSANT. The Church stands there beyond the orchard-blooms ; How yearningly I gaze upon- its spire ! Lifted mysterious through the twilight glooms, Dissolving in the sunset's golden fire, Or dim as slender incense morn by morn Ascending to the blue and open sky. For ever when my lieart feels most forlorn It murmurs to -me with a weary sigh, How sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray With all the others whom we love so well ! All disbelief and doubt might pass away, All peace float to us with its Sabbath bell. Conscience replies. There is but one good rest, Whose head is pillowed upon Truth's pure breast. R. A. THORPE. 2 25 ccxxv. rORGETFULNESS. I ASK one boon of heaven ; I have indeed, And I will tell it thankfully, filled high, Nor ruffled, as I drank it, with a sigh, The cup of joy ; to love has been my meed, And to be loved — and ofttimes could I read In others' hearts with mine a sympathy : But joy and love beam on us but to die And foster memory, most bitter weed. And this has been my bane, to fling behind One look into the west, where day dwells yet, Then turn me shivering to the cold night wind And dream of joys and loves that long have set : 'Tis for this sleepless viper of the mind I ask one boon of heaven — to forget. 226 LORD THURLOW. CCXXVI. TO A BIRD That Haunted the Waters of Laken in the Winter. O MELANCHOLY bird ! — a winter's day Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And taught by God dost thy whole being school To patience, which all evil can allay ; God has appointed thee the fish thy prey ; And given thyself a lesson to the fool Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh. There need not schools nor the professor's chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart ; He who has not enough for thee to spare Of time or gold, may yet amend his heart. And teach his soul by brooks and rivers fair : Nature is always wise in every part. LORD THURLOW. 227 CCXXVII. THE HARVEST HOME. The crimson moon, uprising from the sea, With large delight foretells the harvest near : Ye shepherds, now prepare your melody To greet the soft appearance of her sphere ; And, like a page enamoured of her train. The star of evening glimmers in the west : Then raise, ye shepherds, your observant strain, That so of the Great Shepherd here are blest. Our fields are full with the time-ripened grain, Our vineyards with the purple clusters swell; Her golden splendour glimmers on the main, And vales and mountains her bright glory tell : Then sing, ye shepherds, for the time is come When we must bring the enriched harvest home. 228 JOHN TQDHUNTER. CCXXVIII. A DREAM OF EGYPT. " Where's my Serpent of old Nile ? " Night sends forth many an eagle-wingbd dream To soar through regions never known by day ; And I by one of these was rapt away To where the sunburnt Nile, with opulent stream Makes teem the desert sand. My pomp supreme Enriched the noon ; I spurned earth's common clay ; For I was Antony and by me lay That Snake whose sting was bliss. Nations did seem But camels for the burden of our joy ; Kings were our slaves ; our wishes glowed in the air And grew fruition ; night grew day, day night. Lest the high bacchanal of our loves should cloy ; We reined the tiger, Life, with flower-crowned hair, Abashlessly abandoned to delight. JOHN TODHUNTER. 229 CCXXIX. IN -THE LOUVRE. A DINGY picture : others passed it by Without a second glance. To me it seemed Mine somehow, yet I knew not how, nor why : It hid some mystic thing I once had dreamed, As I suppose. A palace porch there stood, With massy pillars and long front, where gleamed Most precious sculptures ; but all scarred and seamed By ruining Time. There, in a sullen mood, A man was pacing o'er the desolate floor Of weedy marble ; and the bitter waves Of the encroaching sea crawled to his feet, Gushing round tumbled blocks. I conned it o'er. " Age-mouldering creeds ! " said I, " a dread sea raves To whelm the temples of our fond conceit." 2 30 JOHN TODHUNTER. ccxxx. WITCHES. Methought I saw three sexless things of storm, Like Macbeth's witches — creatures>of the- curse That broods, the nightmare of the universe, Over the womb and mortal births of form ; And cloudlike in their train a vampyre swarm Of hovering ills, each than the other worse, Letcheries and hates that make this world a hearse Wherein the heart of life is coffined warm. Said the First Witch : " I am Lust, the worm that feeds Upon the buds of love ; " the Second said : " I am the tyrant's tyrant, cruel Fear ; " The Third : " I am the blight of evil deeds, The murrain of sick souls," and in my ear Whispered a name of paralysing dread. ARCHBISHOP TRENCH. 231 CCXXXI. THE HEART'S SACREDNESS. A WRETCHED thing It were to have our heart Like a broad highway or a populous street, Where every idle thought has leave to meet, Pause or pass on as in ^n open mart ; Or like some roadside pool, which no nice art Has guarded that the cattle may not beat And foul it with a multitude of feet. Till of the heavens it give back no part. But keep thou thine a holy solitude, For He who would walk there would walk alone ; He who would drink there must be first endued With single right to call that stream his own ; Keep thou thine heart close fastened, unrevealed, A fenced garden and a fountain sealed. 232 F. HERBERT TRENCH. CCXXXII. IN MEMORIAM : RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, Late Archbishop of Dublin. Hast known at eve the se^ without a sound Lying in the beauty of descended rest, Calm'd by the floating light upon its breast, Stretch from thy foot ufito the distant round ? So gentle to the heart, and so profound The sight of this man dead : for such a sleep Hath followed on all tumult of the deep. And surgy war of elements unbound. The brow is changed that hath looked up alway. Through shifting sky, on immortalities. The soul that, spreading beyond life and death, Glassed heaven the clearer as it grew in peace, Now, after the last motion of the breath, Tarrieth in the face. Oh, let us pray ! CHARLES TENNYSON-TORNER. 233 CCXXXIII. THE LATTICE AT SUNRISE. As on my bed at dawn I mused and prayed, I saw my lattice prankt upon the wall, The flaunting leaves and flitting birds withal — A sunny phantom interlaced with shade ; " Thanks be to heaven ! " in happy mood I said, " What sweeter aid my matins could befall Than this fair glory from the East hath made ? What holy sleights hath God, the Lord of all, To bid us feel and see ! we are not free To say we see not, for the glory comes fJightly and daily, like the flowing sea ; His lustre pierceth through the midnight glooms \ And, at prime hour, behold ! He follows me With golden shadows to my secret rooms I " 234 CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER. CCXXXIV. THE BUOY-BELL. How like the leper, with his own sad cry Enforcing its own solitude, it tolls ! That lonely bell set in the rushing shoals, To warn us from the place of jeopardy ! O friend of man ! sore-vexed by Ocean's power, The changing tides wash o'er thee day by day ; Thy trembling mouth is filled with bitter spray, Yet still thou ringest on from hour to hour ; High is thy mission, though thy lot is wild — To be in danger's realm a guardian sound : In seamen's dreams a pleasant part to bear. And earn their blessing as the year goes round ; And strike the key-note of each grateful prayer, Breathed in their distant homes by wife or child. CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER. 235 ccxxxv. ON STARTLING SOME PIGEONS. A HUNDRED wings are dropt as soft as one Now ye are lighted — lovely to my sight The fearful circle of your gentle flight. Rapid and mute, and drawing homeward soon ; And then the sober chiding of your tone As there ye sit from your own roof arraigning My trespass on your haunts, so boldly done, Sounds like a solemn and a just complaining! O happy happy race ! for tho' there clings A feeble fear about your timid clan, Yet ye are blest ! with not a thought that brings Disquietude, while proud and sorrowing man, An eagle, weary of his mighty wings, With anxious inquest fills his little span. 236 CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER. CCXXXVI. THE OCEAN. ' The ocean at the bidding of the moon For ever changes with his restless tide ; Flung shoreward now, to be regathered soon With kindly pauses of reluctant pride And semblance of return : Anon — ^from home He issues forth anew, high ridg'd and free — The gentlest murmur of his seething foam Like armies whispering where great echoes be ! O leave me here upon this beach to rove. Mute listener to that sound so grand and lone — A glorious sound, deep drawn and strongly thrown, And reaching those on mountain heights above, To British ears (as who shall scorn to own ?) A tutelar fond voice, a saviour-tone of Love ! CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER. 237 CCXXXVII. SUMMER GLOAMING. It is a Summer's gloaming, faint and sweet, A gloaming brightened by an infant moon Fraught with the fairest light of middle June ; The garden path rings hard beneath my feet, And hark, O hear I not the gentle dews Fretting the gentle forest in his sleep ? Or does the stir of housing insects creep Thus faintly on mine ear ? day's many hues Waned with the paling light and are no more, And none but drowsy pinions beat the air — The bat is circling softly by my door, And silent as the snow-flake leaves his lair, In the dark twilight flitting here and there Wheeling the self-same circuit o'er and o'er. 238 SAMUEL WADDINGTON. CCXXXVIII. "FROM NIGHT TO NIGHT." From night to night, through circling darkness whirled, Day dawns, and wanes, and still leaves, as before The shifting tides and the eternal shore : Sources of life, and forces of the world, Unseen, unknown, in folds of mystery furled, Unseen, unknown, remain for evermore : — To heaven-hid heights man's questioning soul would soar, Yet falls from darkness unto darkness hurled ! Angels of light, ye spirits of the air. Peopling of yore the dreamland of our youth. Ye who once led us through those scenes so fair, Lead now, aind leave us near the realm of Truth : Lo, if in dreams some truths we chanced to see. Now in the truth some dreams may haply be. SAMUEL WADDINGTON. 239 CCXXXIX. THE AFTERMATH. It was late summer, and the grass again Had grown knee-deep, — we stood, my love and I, Awhile in silence where the stream runs by ; Idly we listened to a plaintive strain, — A young maid singing to her youthful swain, — Ah me, dead days remembered make us sigh, And tears will sometimes flow we know not why ; If spring be past, I said, shall love remain? She moved aside, yet soon she answered me, Turning her gaze responsive to mine own, — Spring days are gone, and yet the grass, we see Unto a goodly height again hath grown ; Dear love, just so lovis aftermath may be A richer growth than e\r spring-days have known. 240 WILLIAM WATSON. CCXL, GOD-SEEKING. God-seeking thou hast journeyed far and nigh. On dawn-lit mountain-tops thy soul did yearn To hear His trailing garments wander by ; . And where 'mid thunderous glooms great sunsets burn, Vainly thou sought'st His shadow on sea and sky ; Or gazing up, at noontide, could'st discern Only a neutral heaven's indifferent eye And countenance austerely taciturn. Yet whom thou soughtest I have found at last ; Neither where tempest dims the world below Nor where the westering daylight reels aghast In conflagrations of red overthrow : But where this virgin brooklet silvers past, And yellowing either bank the king-cups blow. WILLIAM WATSON. 241 CCXLI. HISTORY. Darkly, as by some gloombd mirror glassed, Herein at times the brooding eye beholds The great scarred visage of the pompous Past ; But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled regality of his rent robe, Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties And cumber with their trailing pride the globe, And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes ; Till the world seems a world of husks and bones Where sightless Seers and Immortals dead, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Invincible armies long since vanquished, And powerless potentates and foolish sages Lie 'mid the crumbling of the massy ages. 242 THEODORE WATTS. CCXI.II, THE FIRST KISS. If only in dreams may Man be fully blest, Is heav'n a dream ? Is she I claspt a dream ? — Or stood she here even now where dew-drops gleam And miles of furze shine golden down the West? I seem to clasp her still — still on my breast Her bosom beats — I see the blue eyes beam : — I think she kiss'd these lips, for now they seem Scarce mine : so hallow'd of the lips they press'd ! Yon thicket's breath — can that be eglantine ? Those birds — can they be morning's choristers ? Can this be Earth ? Can these be banks of furze ? Like burning bushes fired of God they shine ! I seem to know them, though this body of mine Pass'd into spirit at the touch of hers ! THEODORE WATTS. 243 CCXLIII. FORESHADOWINGS. (the stars in the river.) The mirrored stars lit all the bulrush spears, And all the flags and broad-leaved lily-isles ; The ripples shook the stars to golden smiles, Then smoothed them back to happy golden spheres. We rowed — we sang ; her voice seemed, in mine ears, An angel's, yet with woman's dearest wiles ; But shadows fell from gathering cloudy piles And ripples shook the stars to fiery tears. God shaped the shadows like a phantom boat Where sate her soul and mine in Doom's attire ; Along the lily-isles I saw it float Where ripples shook the stars to symbols dire ; We wept — we kissed, while starry fingers wrote. And ripples shook the stars to a snake of fire. 244 THEODORE WATTS. CCXLIV. , THE HEAVEN THAT WAS. (A sleepless night in Venice.) When Hope lies dead — Ah, when 'tis death to live, And wrongs remembered make the heart still bleed, Better are Sleep's kind lies for Life's blind need Than truth, if lies a little peace can give ; A little peace ! 'tis thy prerogative O Sleep ! to lend it ; thine to quell or feed This love that starves— this starving soul's long greed, And bid Regret, the queen of hell, forgive. Yon moon that mocks me thro' the uncurtained glass Recalls that other night, that other moon. That hour with her along the grey lagoon. The voices from the lantern'd gondolas, The kiss, the breath, the flashing eyes, the swoon Of throbbing stillness : all the heaven that was ! THEODORE WATTS. 245 CCXLV. NATURA' BENIGNA. What power is this ? what witchery wins my feet To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow All silent as the emerald gulfs below, Down whose ice-walls' the wings of twilight beat ? What thrill of earth and heaven — most wild, most sweet- What answering pulse that all the senses know, Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet ? Mother, 'tis I once more : I know thee well. Yet that throb comes, an ever-new surprise ! O Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies ! Dumb mother, struggling with the years to tell The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes ! 246 THEODORE WATTS. CCXLVI. NATURA MALIGNA. The Lady of the Hills with crimes untold Followed my feet, with azure eyes of prey ; By glacier-brink she stood, — by cataract-spray, — When mists were dire, or avalanche-echoes rolled. At night she glimmered in the death-wind cold, And if a foot-print shone at break of day, My flesh would quail but straight my soul would say : " 'Tis her's whose hand God's mightier hand doth hold." I trod her snow-bridge, for the moon was bright, Her icicle-arch across the sheer crevasse, When lo, she stood ! . . . God bade her let me pass : Then fell the bridge; and, in the, sallow light Adown the chasm, I saw her cruel-white. And all my wondrous days as in a glass. THEODORE WATTS. 247 CCXLVII. A DREAM. Beneath the loveliest dream there coils a fear : — Last night came she whose eyes are memories now, Her far-off gaze seemed all-forgetful how Love dimmed them once ; so calm they shone and clear "Sorrow (I said) hath made me old, my dear; 'Tis I, indeed, but grief doth change the brow, — A love like mine a seraph's neck might bow, — Vigils like mine would blanch an angel's hair." Ah, then I saw, I saw the sweet lips move ! I saw the love-mists thickening in her eyes, — I heard wild wordless melodies of love Like murmur of dreaming brooks in Paradise ; And, when upon my neck she fell, my dove, I knew her hair though heavy of amaranth-spice. 248 AUGUSTA WEBSTER. CCXLVIII. THE BROOK RHINE. Small current of the wilds afar from men, Changing and sudden as a baby's mood ; Now a green babbling rivulet in the wood, Now loitering broad and shallow through the glen, Or threading 'mid the naked shoals, and then Brattling against the stones, half mist, half flood, Between the mountains where the storm-clouds brood j And each change but to wake or sleep again. Pass on, young stream, the world has need of thee j Far hence a mighty river on its breast Bears the deep-laden vessels to the sea ; Far hence wide waters feed the vines and corn. Pass on, small stream, to so great purpose born, On to the distant toil, the distant rest. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE. 249 CCXLIX. TO NIGHT. Mysterious Night ! when our first parent "knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue ? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo 1 Creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun ! or who could find. Whilst floVr and leaf and insect stood revealed. That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife ? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? 250 HENRY KIRKE WHITE.' CCL. What art Thou, Mighty One, and where Thy seat ? Thou broodest on the ealm that cheers the lands, And Thou dost bear within Thine awful hands The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet : Stern on Thy dark-wrought car- of cloud and wind Thou guid'st the northern storm at night's dead noon, Or on the red wing of the fierce monsoon Disturb'st the sleeping giant of the Ind. In the drear silence of the Polar span Dost Thou repose ? or in the solitude Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood? Vain thought, the confines of His throne to trace Who glows through all the fields of boundless space ! CHARLES WHITEHEAD. 251 CCLI. As yonder lamp in my vacated room With arduous flame disputes the darksome night, And can, with its involuntary light, But lifeless things that near it stand, illume ; Yet all the while it doth itself consume ; And, ere the sun begin its heavenly height With courier beams that meet the shepherd's sight, There, whence its life arose, shall be its tomb. So wastes my light away. Perforce confined To common things, a limit to its sphere. It shines on worthless trifles undesigned, With fainter ray each hour imprison'd here. Alas ! to know that the consuming mind Shall leave its lamp cold, ere the sun appear ! 252 WILLIAM HENRY WHITWORTH. CCLII. TIME AND DEATH. I SAW old Time, destroyer of mankind ; Calm, stern, and cold he sate, and often shook And turned his glass, nor ever cared to look How many of life's sands were still behind. And there was Death, his page, aghast to find How tremblingly, like aspens o'er a brook His blunted dart fell harmless ; so he took His master's scythe, and idly smote the wind. Smite on, thou gloomy one, with powerless aim ! For Sin, thy mother, at her dying breath Withered that arm, and left thee but a name. Hope closed the grave, when He of Nazareth, Who led captivity His captive, came And vanquished the great conquerors, Time and Death. OSCAR WILDE. 253 CCLIII. LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES. Albeit nurtured in democracy, And liking best that state republican Where every man is kinglike and no man Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see, Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, Better the rule of One, whom all obey, . Than to let clamorous demagogues betray Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy. Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, And Murder with his silent bloody feet. 254 JOHN WILSON. CCLIV. THE EVENING CLOUD. A CLOUD lay cradled near the setting sun, A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow ; Long had I watched the glory moving on O'er the still radiance of the Lake below. Tranquil its spirit seem'd, and floated slow ! Even in its very motion there was rest : While every breath of eve that chanced to blow, Wafted the traveller to the beauteous West. Emblem, methought, of the departed soul ! To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given ; And by the breath of mercy made to roll Right onwards to the golden gate of Heaven, Where to the eye of Faith it peaceful Ues, And tells to man his glorious destinies. RICHARD WILTON. 255 CCLV. FROSTED TREES. Oh, what a goodly and a glorious show ! The stately trees have decked themselves with white, And stand transfigured in a robe of light ; Wearing for each lost leaf a flake of snow. The rising sun shines through them with a glow Of gold amid the silver; while a bright But hapless bird comes hovering into sight, Amazed at the wan world above, below. What was the ivory house which Ahab made Compared with Nature's fretwork rich and rare. In every grove with lavish wealth displayed ? And oh, if frozen mist appears so fair, How will those "many mansions " be arrayed, Which Love is fashioning in celestial air ! 256 JAMES C. WOODS. CCLVI. THE WORLD'S DEATH-NIGHT. I THINK a stormless night-time shall ensue Unto the world, yearning for hours of calm : Not these the end, — nor sudden-closing palm Of a God's hand beneath the skies we knew, Nor fall from a fierce heaven of fiery dew In place of the sweet dewfall, the world's balm, Nor swell of elemental triumph-psalm Round the long-buffeted bulk, rent through and through. But in the even of its endless night, With shoreless floods of moonlight on its breast, And baths of healing mist about its scars. An instant sums its circling years of flight, And the tired earth hangs crystalled into rest, Girdled with gracious watchings of the stars. JAMES C. WOODS. 257 CCLVII. THE SOUL STITHY. My soul, asleep between its body-throes, Mid leagues of darkness watched a furnace glare, And breastless arms that wrought laborious there, — Power without plan, wherefrom no purpose grows, — Welding white metal on a forge with blows, Whence streamed the singing sparks like flaming hair. Which whirling gusts ever abroad would bear : And still the stithy hammers fell and rose. And then I knew those sparks were souls of men, And watched them driven like stars before the wind, A myriad died and left no trace to tell ; An hour like will-o'-the-wisps some lit the fen ; Now one would leave a trail of fire behind : And still the stithy hammers rose and fell. 2SS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLVIII. "FAIR STAR OF EVENING." Fair Star of Evening, Splendour of the West, Star of my country ! — on the horizon's brink Thou hangest, stooping, as might seem, to sink On England's bosom ; yet well pleased to rest, Meanwhile, and be to her a glorious crest Conspicuous to the Nations. Thou, I think, Should'st be my Country's emblem ; and should'st wink Bright Star ! with laughter on her banners, drest In thy fresh beauty. There ! that dusky spot Beneath thee, it is England j there it lies. Blessings be on you both ! one hope, one lot, One life, one glory ! I with many a fear For my dear Country, many heartfelt sighs, Among men who do not love her, linger here. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 259 CCLIX. ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC. Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee ; And was the safeguard of the West : the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the feldest Child of Liberty. She was a Maiden City, bright and free ; No guile seduced, no force could violate j And, when She took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea. And what if she has seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay ; Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid When her long life hath reached its final day : Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great, is passed away. . 26o WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLX. TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. ToussAiNT, thou most unhappy man of men ! Whether the whistling rustic tend his plough Within thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den ; — O miserable Chieftain ! where and when Wilt thou find patience ? Yet die not ; do thou Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow ; Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou has left behind Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies ; There's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and Man's unconquerable mind. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 261 CCLXI. ON THE SUBJUGATION OF SWITZERLAND. Two Voices are there ; one is of the Sea, One of the Mountains ; each a mighty Voice ; In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen Music, Liberty ! There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee Thou fought'st against him ; but hast vainly striven : Thou from the Alpin? holds at length art driven, Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft : Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left; For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be That moimtain Floods should thunder as before, And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore. And neither awful Voice be heard by thee ! 262 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLXII, MILTON. Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : England hath need of thee : she is a fen Of stagnant waters ; altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea : Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 263 CCLXIII. TRANSIENT JOY, Surprised by joy — impatient as the wind I turned to share the transport — Oh ! with whom But Thee, deep-buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find ? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind — But how could I forget thee ? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss ! — That thought's return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more ; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. 264 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLXIV. THE TIMES THAT ARE. O Friend ! I know not which way I must look For comfort, being, as I am, opprest, To think that now our Life is only drest For show ; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, Or groom ! — ^We must run glittering like a Brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest : The wealthiest man among us is the best ; No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense. This is idolatry ; and these we adore : Plain living and high thinking are no more : The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone : our peace, our fearful innocence. And pure religion breathing household laws. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 265 CCLXV. TO SLEEP. A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by, One after one ; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky By turns have all been thought of, yet I he Sleepless ; and soon the small birds' melodies Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees ; And the first Cuckoo's melancholy cry. Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay. And could not win thee. Sleep ! by any stealth : So do not let me wear to-night away : Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth ? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health! 266 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLXVI. AFTER-THOUGHT. (Conclusion to the Sonnets to the River Duddon.) I THOUGHT of Thee, my partner and my guide, As being past away. — Vain sympathies ! For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes, I see what was, and is, and will abide ; Still glides the stream and shall for ever glide ; The Form remains, the Function never dies ; While we the brave, the mighty, and the wise, We men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish; — be it so! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; And if, as toward the silent land we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, W^e feel that we are greater than we know. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 267 CCLXVII. « THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US." The world is too much with us ; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; It moves us not — Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 268 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLXVIII. COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. (Early Morning.) Earth has not anything to show more fair : Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty : This city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky ; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill ; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! The river glideth at his own sweet will : Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; And all that mighty heart is lying still ! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 269 CCLXIX. BY THE SEA: EVENING. It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free ; The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; The gentleness of heaven is on the sea : Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly. Dear Child ! dear Girl ! that walkest with me here. If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine : Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not. 2 70 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. CCLXX. MUTABILITY. From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail : A musical but melancholy chime, Which they can hear who meddle not with crime. Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. Truth fails not ; but her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime. That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more ; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air. Or the unimaginable touch of Time. The Editor desires to express here his genuine indebtedness to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., for Itindly waiving their copyright in the sonnets of Lord Tennyson, and in those of one or two otlier writers : to Messrs. Bentley & Sons, in connection with the sonnet by Mrs. Butler (Frances Anne Kemble) ; and to all copyright-holders with whom he has had communication — begging them to accept this aclcnowledg- ment of their uniform courtesy. NOTES. No. i. Dean Alfoed (1810-1871). The poems of the late Dean Alford are characterised by refinement and depth of feeling. No. iv. William Allingham. This sonnet first appeared in a little book edited by Mrs. Isa Knox Craig, published in 1863, and entitled Poems: An Offering to Lancashire. Mr. AUinghaln's several volumes are all noteworthy for the same keenness of vision as regards the aspects of nature': and I may draw special atten- tion to his charming sonnet-transcripts from nature, which have lately, at intervals, appeared in The Athenaeum. Nos. v.-vii. Matthew Arnold. These sonnets adequately represent the work of Mr. Arnold in this direction. They are to be found in the volumes entitled Poems: Narrative and Elegiac, and Poems: Dramatic and Lyric, published by Macmillan & Co. Familiar portions of the Jamiliar work of one of the leading poets of our time, they thus call for no special comment. Nos. viii.-xi. Alfred Austin. Mr. Alfred Austin has written some' fine sonnets, his preferred form evidently being the Shakespearian. Mr. Austin's work is mostly purely lyric and dramatic, though he shows such unmistakable faculty for sonnet-writing that he might well publish a short volume of poetic work in this form, and thus, enter more directly into the lists with acknowledged masters of the craft. His earlier volumes are entitled The Hutiian Tragedy, The Tower of Babel, Interludes, The Golden Age, and The Season (Blackwood & Sons) ; and his later, Savonarola, Soliloquies in Song, At the Gate of the Convent, and Prince Lucifer (Macmillan & Co.) — the last-named published in 1887. One of Mr. Austin's pleasantest characteristics as a poet is his intense love of nature, more especially of nature in her spring aspects : also, I may add, a very ardent love ofCountry and pride therein. The four sonnets I have selected seem to me among the best, but here is another excellent one representing. Mr. Austin in his last-named char- acteristic : it is one of three addressed to England. 274 NOTES. To England. , (Written in Mid-Channel.) Now upon English soil I soon shall stand, Homeward from climes that fancy deems more fair ; And well I know that there will greet me there No soft foam fawning upon smiling strand, No scent of orange-groves, no zephyrs bland ; But Amazonian March, with breast half bare And sleety arrows whistling through the air, Will be my welcome from that burly land. Yet he who boasts his birth-place yonder lies Owns in his heart a mood akin to scorn For sensuous slopes that bask 'neath Southern skies. Teeming with wine and prodigal of corn, , And, gazing through the mist with misty eyes, Blesses the brave bleak land where he was born. Since the above note was written, the following fine sonnet has appeared in The Athenaum : — When acorns fall, and swallows troop for flight. And hope matured slow mellows to regret, And Autumn, pressed by Winter for his debt. Drops leaf on leaf till she be beggared quite ; Should then the crescent moon's unselfish light Gleam up the sky just as the sun doth set. Her brightening gaze, though day and dark have met. Prolongs the gloaming and retards the night. So, fair young life, new risen upon mine Just as it owns the edict of decay And Fancy's fires should pale and pass away. My menaced glory takes a glow from thine. And, in the deepening sundown of my day, Thou with thy dawn delayest my decline. • Benjamin D'Israeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Lord Beaconsfield, even his most ardent admirers would admit, gave no evidence that he was possessed of the creative faculty in verse ; an ardent im- agination he undoubtedly had. He wrote, so far as I am aware, only two sonnets, one of which — that on Wellington — certainly deserves a place in any sonnet-anthology. I do not insert it in the body of this book, however, as its composition was fortuitous, and as its author has no broader claim to appear amonggenuine poets. There is a certain applicability to himself, in Lord Beaconsfield's words addressed to Wellington, for even the most bigoted oppo- nent of the great statesman would hardly deny his possession of " a continuous state of ordered impulse," or his "serenity" when all were "troubled," NOTES. 27s Wellington. Not only that thy puissant arm could bind The tyrant of a world ; and, conquering Fate, Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great ; But that in all thy actions I do find Exact propriety : no gusts of mind Fitful and wild, but that continuous state Of ordered impulse mariners await In some benignant and enriching wind, — The breath ordained of Nature. Thy calm mien Recalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed ; Duty thine only idol, and serene When all are troubled ; in the utmost need Prescient ; thy country's servant ever seen, Yet sovereign of thyself, whate'er may speed. No. xii. H. T. Mackenzie Bell. From Old Year Leaves: A Volume of Collected Verse (1883). Mr. Mackenzie Bell is also the author of an interesting biography of Charles Whitehead (q.v.) published in 1885 (Fisher Unwin) under the title A Forgotten Genius. No. xiii. Louisa S. Bevington (Goggenbkrger). From Poems and Sonnets (Stock, 1882). Probably Miss Bevington's — to call her by the name she is publicly known by — ^highest poetic accom- plishment is the piece in lyrical measures entitled " In the Valley of Remorse," printed in the same volume. No. xiv. S. L. Blanchard (1804-1845). From Lyric 0fferings,l%2%. The poems of this writer have a certain delicacy of sentiment rather than any robuster qualities. " Wishes and Youth" is one .of his strongest. No. XV. Mathilde Blind. Miss Blind, well-known through her ad- mirable translation of Strauss, her edition of Shelley's Poems in Baron Tauchnitz's series, her genuinely romantic novel, Tarantella, her interesting monograph of "George Eliot," and her highly sympathetic study of Madame Roland, both in the Eminent Women series, and various miscellaneous writings, has not pub- lished much in verse, but what she has given to the public is of no ordinary quality. Her slight first volume, entitled St. Oran : and other Poems, had a deserved success on its appearance two or three years ago, and at once gave her high rank as a poet. This year (1886) she published a narrative poem entitled The Heather on Fire, an eloquent protest against the wrongs inflicted on the crofters of the West Highlands. (No. XV. ) This very beautiful sonnet has an interesting history. I have heard that, shortly after the death of the late Bishop of Manchester, it was reprinted without the author's knowledge and sent in the name of locx) operatives to Mrs. Eraser, the much- 2 76 NOTES. esteemed Bishop's widow. It is the lot of few authors to have so genuine, unsolicited, and unexpected a compliment paid to them, in this case all the more remarkable from the fact of Miss Blind having been quite unknown to those who at once paid this compliment to poetry and showed a fine and noble sympathy. No. xvi. is interesting, as the author's first sonnet. It certainly does not read like a tentative effort. Nos. xviii.-xxii. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. These sonnets are ex- cerpted from the third edition of that remarkable volume. The Love Sonnets of Proteus. They have more of the Shakespearian ring than perhaps any sonnets of our time. That " Proteus " can at times touch a very high note indeed will be understood by any one who reads the sonorous and majestic sonnet on " The Sublime " (xxii,). Structurally they cannot be considered satisfactory. No. xxiii. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850). The' sonnets of the Rev. W. L. Bowles are now more interesting historically than intrinsically. Graceful, with an air of plaintive melancholy, as they are, they would be practically entirely forgotten were it not for the influence they undoubtedly exercised over Coleridge. It must, of course, be borne in mind that they appeared at a time when a new and natural . note was' as welcome' as the humblest bird-strain in a delayed Spring. Nor was Coleridge alone in admiring Bowles' sonnets, for they were undoubtedly widely read and appreciated. The fount of his poetic genius, however, soon ran dry, and he is now read more by the student or the critic than by the general poetry-loving public. Among the best of his sonnets are the two not very impressive pieces on " Parted Love," beginning "How shall I meet thee. Summer, wont to fill," and "There is strange music in the stirring wind." No. xxiv. E, H. Brodie. From a volume containing many excellent and a few noteworthy sonnets. Sonnets. By E. H. Brodie, (G. Bell & Sons) 1885. No. XXV. Oliv-er Madox Brown (1855-1874). No sonnet-anthology would be complete without this sombre example ; not only because of its manifest intrinsic merit, but also on account of the author's unique position among creative minds. The son of Mr. Ford Madox Brown, the eminent artist (whose mural paintings in the New Town Hall at Manchester, now nearing completion, will one day be the goal of many art-lovers), Oliver seemed to have been destined by nature to fill ably the positions of a poet, a novelist, and an artist. One can almost imagine any greatness for the man- hood of that writer who, as a boy, achieved such marvellous success. Dying at the early age of nineteen, he was an even more "marvellous boy" than Chatterton, in so much that he was essentially a less morbid development. He had, of course, innumerable advantages which his more unfortunate predecessor NOTES. 277 had not : among them his father's household, confortable circum- stances, and the friendship of men like Rossetti. The Black Swan, with all its demerits, remains a story of tragic power and beauty, perhaps to be read and valued in the future as we now read and value Wuthenng Heights. It is from the MS. of this romance that the sonnet I have quoted is taken, that is, indirectly, for it occurs in print in the Memoir and Literary Remains of O.M.B., edited by William M. Rossetti and Dr. F. Hueffer. Those who only know (if, indeed, they can thus be said to know) this brilliant and precocious genius by Gabriel Denver, as The Black Swan was called in its mutilated published form, should not fail to peruse the two fascinating volumes edited by Mr. W. M. Rossetti and Dr. Hueffer. Here, in addition to the original version of The Black Swan, are The Dwale Bluth, HeiditcKs Legacy, and other deeply interesting fragments. Considerable personal information will also be found in Mr. John H. Ingram's interesting monograph, published in 1883, by Elliot Stock. There exist two other sonnets by Brown, One- was written for a picture by Miss Spartali (Mrs. Stillman) ; but although it has one notice- ably fine line — the third — its chief interest lies in the fact that it was written in the author's fourteenth year, and was one of several of contemporaneous compositions destroyed by Brown in a moment of irritation or dissatisfaction. It survived the fate of its brethren owing to its having been inscribed on the frame of Miss Spartali's picture. The first three lines run — " Leaning against the window, rapt in thought. Of what sweet past do thy soft brown eyes dream, That so expressionlessly sweet they seem ? " His third remaining sonnet, more recently come to light, was first printed in Mr. Ingram's Biographical Sketch — and has not, so far as I know, appeared elsewhere. It has no title, but I fancy that " The Past World " would be an applicable one : — The Past World. Made indistinguishable 'mid the boughs, With saddened weary ever-restless eyes The weird Chameleon of the Past World lies, — Like some old wretched man whom God allows To linger on : still joyless life endows His wasted frame, and memory never dies Within him, and his only sympathies Withered with his last comrade's last carouse. Methinks great Dante knew thee not of old, — Else some fierce glutton all insatiate Compelled within some cage for food to wait He must have made thee, and his verse have told How thou in vain thy ravening tried'st to sate On flylike souls of triflers overbold. 2 78 NOTES. Concerning this sonnet, Mr. Ingram, after referring to its " virility of thought " and " picturesque originality," subsequently to printing it adds :—" There is something truly grandiose and weird in the idea enunciated by the first eight lines of this sonnet. The likening of a surviving member of the past world's inhabitants to an old reveller who has outlived all his joys, his comrades, and his sympathies, is not only very striking, but is very unlike what would have been looked for in the work of a boy." For myself, I must say that the sonnet seems to me eminently unsatisfactory in so far that there is a confusion of metaphor and simile in the octave, each demanding full realisation on the part of the reader, and each essentially distinct, irrelative. The first three lines pre- sent us with a striking and imaginative metaphor, but immediately we have to change our mental focus, and see in this " chameleon" an old debauchee, brooding over past orgies with boon companions as evil as himself. Then, again, in the striking last lines of the sestet there is a return to the chameleon metaphor. Otherwise the poem is certainly an imaginative one, and doubly impressive as being the work of one so young. I may here take occasion to print a sonnet by another youthful poet, Mr. Robert Lawrence Binyon: entitled " The Past, Asleep." It was written in the author's sixteenth year, and if it has not the imaginative intensity of Oliver Madox I3rown's " Past World," it has greater consistency, and exhibits more marked maturity of conception : — The Past, Asleep. When I look back upon my naked past, In its hushed slumber like a sleeping snake, I shudder — lest the weary coil should wake. And wound me with its subtle pain, and cast Its barbed stings in my face. It hath me fast ; I cannot from this secret chain outbreak ; Nor would I ; for its burden doth not ache. Save when I gaze too near, then shrink, aghast. Nay, it hath beauty, when it" lies in peace, But bitter is the poison of its fangs. And the barbed arrows wound, as wounds a knife. Yet sweeter far to bear the pricks and pangs. Than with a deaf heart let those coils increase, Till at the last they crush me, and my life. In connection with Oliver Madox Brown I may quote a couple of fine sonnets by two among the many who expressed in verse their grief or regret ; with several others they are to be found in Mr. Ingram's memoir. The first is by Oliver's father, Mr. Ford Madox Brown — one who is not only a great artist but a cultivated student of English literature, and who has on several occasions proved his ability to use the pen as well as the brush. NOTES, 279 O. M. B. {Died November, 1874.) As one who strives from some fast steamer's side To note amid the baclcward spinning foam And keep in view some separate wreath therefrom, That cheats him even the while he views it glide (Merging in other foam-tracks stretching wide), So strive we to keep clear that day our home First saw you riven — a memory thence to roam, A shattered blossom on the eternal tide ! O broken promises that showed so fair ! O morning sun of wit set in despair ! O brows made smooth as with the Muse's chrism ! O Oliver ! ourselves Death's cataclysm Must soon o'ertake — but not in vain — not where Some vestige of your thought outspans the abysm ! {April, Z883.) "F. M. B." The other sonnet is by Mr. Theodore Watts. Mr. Watts and Rossetti had spent the night previous to Oliver Brown's funeral in Roasetti's studio in talk upon the sad mystery of the young novelist's early death, and on the drive back from "the place of sleep " the following sonnet was composed by Mr. Watts, while Rossetti thought out the one on Brown, which is to be found in his Ballads and Sonnets : — In a Graveyard. {i2lh November, 1874. ) Farewell to thee and to our dreams farewell — Dreams of high deeds and golden days of thine, Where once again should Arts' twin powers combine — The painter's wirard-wand, the poet's spell ! Though Death strikes free, careless of heaven and hell — Careless of Man — of Love's most lovely shrine — Yet must Man speak — must ask of heaven a sign — That this wild world is God's and all is well. Last night we mourned thee, cursing eyeless Death, Who, sparing sons of Baal and Ashtoreth, Must needs slay thee, with all the world to slay ; — But round this grave the w inds of winter say " On earth what hath the poet ? An alien breath. Night holds the keys that ope the doors of Day.'" Nos. xxvi.-xxx. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1809-1861). The poetry of Mrs. Browning is too widely familiar for any com- ment to be called for. Only those who have made a study of contemporary poetry, especially that written by women, realise how 2 8o NOTES. strong her influence has been. These beautiful "Portuguese Sonnets" are among the finest of their kind in the language, re- vealing as they do the loving heart of a true woman as well as the plastic power of n poet. The sonnets of Shakespeare, those of Mrs. Browning, and those of Rosselti, must have an especial interest because of their intense personality. Nos. xxxi.-xxxii. Robert Browning. Mr. Browning has written few poems in this form ; probably he could count on the fingers of one hand all he would ever care tosee in any anthology. No. xxxi. is to be found in the Browning Society's Papers, Part v. ; also in the Fall Mall Gazelle, where, I think, it first appeared. No. xxxii. is among a collection of statements in prose and verse, setting forth the separate writers' reasons for the faith that is in them, collected by Mr. Andrew Reid under the title. Why I am a Liberal, and published by Messrs. Cassell & Co. It is well known that not only did Landor never write a sonnet, but that he ex- pressed his determination never to do so. But he came very near to inconsistency when he addressed to Robert Browning this beautiful fourteen line poem in blank verse : — To Robert Browning. There is delight in singing, tho' none hear Beside the singer ; and there is delight In praising, tho' the praiserjit alone And see the prais'd far off him, far above. Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's. Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee, Browning 1 Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walkt along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse. But warmer climes Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where The Siren waits thee, singing song for song. W. S. Landor in Works (1876), vol. viii. p. 152. Nos. xxxiii.-xxxiw. Robert Buchanan. These sonnets are from the section of The Book of Orm entitled " Coruisken Sonnets." Of all Mr. Buchanan's poetic productions The Book of Orm is certainly the most individual, and is in some ways the most re- markable. It has unmistakable faults, but its beauties are equally unmistakable — and it certainly never has been done justice to. There is no living poet who has a keener eye for nature than has Mr. Buchanan — in this he is a true northerner. In dealing with natural aspects he is never or seldom the mere literary man, but the poet working from knowledge|and familiarity as well as with insight. He' has, however, written very few good sonnets as sonnets. NOTES. 281 No. ^xxv. Sir S. Egerton Brydges (1762-1837). This sonnet, like those of Bowles, owes much of its reputation to the warm praise it received from certain eminent contemporaries of its author, in- cluding Wordsworth and Coleridge. It has, of course, genuine merit, though this is not one of those instances where we are likely to be induced to consider the Alexandrine at the close an unexpected charm (an Alexandrine also ends the octavo). The somewhat pompous author never, however, wrote anything better, though that he had some faculty for his art will be evident to any one who glances through his Poems (1807). No. xxxvi. Lord Byron (1788-1824). The genius of Byron was not one from which we might have expected good sonnet-work. He is greater in mass than in detail, in outlines than in delicate side- touehes— in a word, he is like a sculptor who hews a Titan out ot a huge block, one whom we would never expect to be able, or to care, to delicately carve a cameo. That Byron could write sonnets, and that he could even write an exceptionally fine one, is evident from that which I have quoted. No. xxxvi. is an essentially noble sonnet in the Miltonic mould, recalling indeed Milton's famous sonnet on the Piedmontese massacre, and having some affinity to Wordsworth's equally noble sonnet on Toussaint (No. cdx.). It is hardly necessary to call to the reader's remembrance that Bonnivard, Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," was, on account of his daring patriotism, interned in the first half of the 17th century in the dungeons of the Castle of Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, by the tyrannical orders of the Duke of Savoy. He was ultimately released — not through the mercy of his enemy — but not until after long years of wretchedness, wherein his feet are said to have left traces on the worn stones of his prison- floor, Nos. xxxvii-xxxviii. Hall Caine. It is with pleasure I print these fine sonnets. There is no writer of the younger generation who has come more rapidly to the fore than Mr. Hall Caine, though as a poet he has not yet sought the opinion of the public. These sonnets appeared in The Athenceum, and are interesting not only from their intrinsic merit, but as evidence that Mr. Caine can himself compose a sonnet as well as write about sonnets and sonneteering. I have already, in the introductory note, referred to his valuable Sonnets of Three Centuries (Stock, 1882). Since then Mr. Caine has further confirmed his reputation by his Recol- lections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and by his powerful romances. The Shadow of a Crime, A Son of Hagar, and The Deemster. No. xxxix. William M. W. Call. This impressive, if structurally unsatisfactory sonnet, is from Mr. Call's Golden Histories (Smith, Elder & Co., 1871). Mr. Call has written much, but has not succeeded in attracting wide notice. He has certainly, however, 282 NOTES. written no other sonnet so fine as this. Glancing at it again, 1 find that the lines — " I watch'd the great red sun, in clouds, go down, An Orient King, that 'mid his bronzed slaves Dies, leaning on his sceptre, with his crown " — suggests an equally fine image, which I must quote from memory, not having Charles Wells' Joseph and his Brethren at hand. Wells, in his fine dramatic poem, is picturing the sun setting seaward, viewed firom a cliff-bound coast : — "And like A God gigantic, habited in gold. Stepping from off a mount' into the sea." No. xl. John Clare (1793-1864). Clare's sonnets are irregular in structure, and in a sense they are only fourteenline poems. They might as well as not be better, or worse, for being two or three lines shorter or longer. There is no ineviiableness about them : one feels that the choice of vehicle has been purely arbitrary, — in a word, that they have not that essential characteristic — adequacy of sonnet-motive. Like all his work, however, they are char- acterised by the same winsome affection for and knowledge of the nature amidst which he spent his life. Clare's poetry is often like a sunny and windy day bursting through the gloom of late winter. No. xl. The last word is printed by Clare "drest," but as Mr. Main 'has pointed out, and corrected in his Treasury, this is an obvious misprint for "deckt." Nos. xli.-xlii. Herbert E, Clarke. " The Assignation " is from Mr. Clarke's latest volume. Storm Drift ; and " King of Kings" from its predecessor. Songs in Exile (Marcus Ward, 1879). Mr. Clarke has written several excellent sonnets. Nos. xliii.-xlvii. Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849). Hartley Cole- ridge now ranks among the foremost sonneteers in our language : as in the case of Charles Tennyson-Turner, his reputation rests solely on his sonnet-work. Notwithstanding the reverent admira- tion he had for his more famous father. Hartley's work betrays much more the influence of Wordsworth than of S- T. Coleridge. In this a wise instinct indubitably guided him. His father was not a sonneteer. There is a firmness of handling, a quiet autumnal tenderness and loveliness about Hartley's sonnets that endows them with an endless charm for all who care for poetic beauty. Students should consult the notes in Mr. Main's Treasury and the interesting ana in Mr. Caine's Sonnets of Three Centuries. Of the sonnets I have quoted, the first is specially noteworthy. A friend has recorded the interesting fact that Hartley Coleridge's NOTES. 283 sonnets \vere all written impulsively, and never occupied more than ten minutes in composition. Probably, however, they were carefully revised at the author's leisure. A sonnet is not like a lyric proper— best in its very spontaneity and unguardedness. The impulse should be as keen, but the shaping power of the artist should come more into play. A sonnet is also -the least likely of any poetic vehicle to be spoilt by discriminative revision ; in nine cases out of ten it is greatly improved thereby. . xlviii, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). There is no one of Coleridge's sonnets which can be pronounced distinctly satisfactory. The one 1 have given seems to me on the whole the best. The famous one on Schiller's Roihers has been much overrated— though Coleridge himself had a high opinion of it. Wordsworth showed his critical faculty when, on receipt of Dyce's Sonnet- Anthology, he referred to the insertion of " The Robbers" as a mistake, on the ground of "rant." I print it here : — To THE Author of " The Robbers." Schiller ! that hour I would have wished to die, If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, That fearful voice, a famished father's cry ; Lest in some after moment aught more mean Might stamp me mortal. A triumphant shout Black Horror screamed, and all "her goblin rout Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene. Ah ! bard tremendous in sublimity ! Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood. Wandering at eve with finely frenzied eye Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood. Awhile with mute awe gazing I would brood. Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy. There are probably few readers of mature taste who would not consider Wordsworth's epithet "rant" as literally applicable. One learns with a sense of uncomfortable wonder that Coleridge himself— this supreme master of metrical music — considered the last six lines "strong and fiery ! " What a difference between this Schiller sonnet and the beautiful poem in fourteen lines entitled "Work without Hope." If these lines had only been adequately set in sonnet-mould, the result would have been a place for this poetic gem among the finest sonnets in the language :— Work without Hope. All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing— 284 NOTES. And Winter slumbering in the open air, Weais on his smiling face a dream of Spring ! • And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow. Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths ! bloom for whom ye may. For me ye bloom not ! Glide, rich streams, away ! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll : And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul ? Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live. No. xlix. Sara Coleridge (1803-1852). This sonnet is from the author's fairyromance, Phantasmion, published in 1837. As, so far as I recollect, it has found a place in no previous anthology, nor even been referred to in appendices, I presume it has alto- gether escaped my brother-editors' notice. Sara Coleridge had not less genius than her brother Hartley, but she had nothing like the same gift of expression. She resembled her famous father in her tendency to lyric music, while Hartley's genius was distinctly inclined to express itself in more monumental forms. This sonnet of hers loses much by separa- tion from the context, but not so much as to render its appearance here inappropriate. No. 1. Bessie Ceaigmyle. From Poems and Translations {1886), a volume of verse written in early youth, and full of unusual promise. No. li. Dinah Maria Craik. The author of John Halifax, Gentleman, has written much true poetry, and especially many charming lyrics — e.g., "Philip my King," "Rothesay Bay," etc. — though but few sonnets. ( Thirty Years : Poems Old and New. Macmillan & Co., 1881.) Nos. lii.-liv. De Verb, Sir Aubrey (1788-1846). From Sonnets: By the late Sir Aubrey de Vere, Bart. (Pickering,, 1875.) The sonnets of Sir Aubrey de Vere are not nearly so widely known as they deserve to be. The high estimation in which Wordsworth (who was not given to over-estimate the poetic powers of his contemporaries) held them has been fully endorsed of late by the few who have made a special study of this fascinating section of poetic literature. The same author's Mary Tudor is a noticeable dramatic production, but it is by his sonnets that his name will grow in reputation. The following passage is from the interesting memoirs, prefacing the sonnets, by his distin- guished son : — " The sonnet was with him to the last a favourite form of composition. This taste was fostered by the magnificent NOTES. ■ 28s sonnets of Wordsworth, whose genius he had early hailed, and whose friendship he regarded as one of the chief honours of his later life. For his earlier sonnets he had found a model chiefly in the Italian poets, especially Petrarch and Filicaja, Like Filicaja also, who so well deserved the inscription graven on his tomb, ' Qui gloriam literarum honestavit,' he valued the sonnet the more because its austere brevity, its severity, and its majestic complete- ness fit it especially for the loftier themes of song. . , . The great modern master of the sonnet, Wordsworth, pronounced those of Sir Aubrey de Vere to be among the most perfect of our age. Whether they illustrated nature, embodied thought, or expressed imaginative emotion, his severe judgment noted in them the artist's hand faithful to the best ancient models, and the truthful soul of a poet." He was as true ii man as he was poet. What finer tribute could be paid to any one than the words uttered by a friend who bent above him as he lay upon his death-bed — " In that brow I see three things — ^Imagination, Reverence, and Honour. " Sir Aubrey de Vere's sonnets are divisible into sections, and I have endeavoured to select examples which are thoroughly repre- sentative. No. liv. The Children's Band. The subject chosen by its author for this pathetic sonnet is one that has been httle handled by writers. In all, some 30,000 children (varying in age from twelve to sixteen) frotu France^crying aloud on their march, " Rendez-vous, Seigneur Jesus, votre Croix sainte ! " — and about 20,000 from Germany, followed the lead of the fanatic apostate monk Jacob, or, as he was more widely known. Job, Misery and fatigue, hunger and exposure, robbers and brutalities, caused the deaths of many hundreds of the poor children who had been the first to respond to the appeal for a new crusade made by Pope Innocent III. early in the 13th century. A great number reached Marseilles, and were there inveigled on board seven large ships by two scoundrels, Hugues Lefer and Guillaume Leporc ; two of these vessels were wrecked, but the remaining five reached Egypt, where the unfortunate children were sold into Saracenic slavery. The youthful martyrs were avenged by the new general crusade that shortly followed, inaugurated at the Council of Latran, con- voked by Innocent III. {Vide Collin de Plancy's Legendss des Croisades.) Nos. Iv.-lix. Aubrey De Vere (the Younger). Mr. Aubrey de Vere is the third son of the last-named writer, and is a worthy inheritor of his father's genius. Mr. De Vere undoubtedly ranks among the foremost sonneteers of our time, and if he were to collect and print his sonnets in a volume by themselves they would most certainly gain wide appreciation. At present they are to be found in the volumes entitled The Search after the Proserpine : and other Poems, Classical and Meditative, and in Alexander the Great: and other 286 NOTES. Poems (re-issue of the Poetical Works, vols. i. and iii. Keean Paul & Co., 1884). ^ Iv. The Sun God. If this magniiicent sonnet had more rhythmic strength, it would be worthy to rank among the very finest in the language. Ivii. A lovely sonnet, with several alterations from its original appearance (1. I, tranquil beauty ; 1. 2, lovely, etc. ; 11. 3, 4, And the most penetrating eye can trace No sad distraction in her harm- less air ; 1. 6, an unknown grace; 1. 7, surrounds her like a crystal atmosphere ; 1. 8, and love ; I. 12, in the upper ether wove; 1. 13, transcendent power). No. Ix. Richard Watson Dixon. Mr. flail Caine, a generous and discriminating critic, says : " Canon Dixon affords probably by fat the most striking instance of a living poet deserving the highest recognition yet completely unrecognised. " Nos. Ixi.-lxiif. Sydney Dobell (1824-1874). These powerful sonnets cannot be read without admiration. "The Army Sur- geon " is terrible in its literality ; especially thrilUng are the lines commencing with " And as a raw brood " (1. 7). " The Common Grave " is deservedly a favourite with all who appreciate imagina- tive and powerful poetry ; but as a sonnet it is badly constructed — the rhyme arrangement is extremely irregular, nor to a sensitive ear is there pleasure in cried — side, or in down — on. " Home : in War Time"— this sonnet has all the power of unexpectedness— but the transition from the peaceful home-scene, and the wife's loving hope and yearning, to the frightful battlefield where lie the decaying dead, though startlingly effective, is a cruelty to the reader having a powerful imagination : the word "carrion" in the last line is too horribly suggestive. Dobell can best be studied in the Poetical Works, with Introductory Notice and Memoir by John Nichol, M.A., Oxon, LL.D. 2 vols., 1875. No. Ixiv. Austin Dobson. Mr. Austin Dobson has written few sonnets, but "Don Quixote" well deserves a place in any anthology. Nos. Ixv., Ixvi. Thomas DoubLeday (1790-1870). Mr. Doubleday's poetic work was mainly in the drama. His sonnets are to be found in a rather rare little volume, published anonymously, en- titled Sixty-five Sonnets: with Prefatory remarks on the Sonnet (l8i8). Nos. Ixvii.-lxxi. Edward Dowdkn. Professor Doiyden, widely known as an able critic and Shakespearian student, has not per- haps a very wide audience for his poetry. It is at any rate select ; and it is with pleasure that I print tliese fine sonnets from his charming volume of Poems. Professor Dowden's recently pub- lished "Life of Shelley" has become the standard biography of that poet. NOTES. 287 No. Ixxii. John Charles Earle. The Mas/er's Field— itom which the sonnet is taken — is the only volume by Mr. Earle with which I am acquainted. It is not, I understand, his best book; but rather One Hundred Sonnets, or else From Light to Light. No. Ixxiii. Ebenezer Elliot (1781-1849). The "Corn-Law Rhymer" does not rank high among sonneteets, He was one of the most convinced opponents of the legitimate or Petrarcan sonnet, and a strong advocate for the Spenserian. No. Ixxiv. Joseph Ellis. From Casar in Egypt : and other Poems. By Joseph Ellis. 2nd Edition (Stewart & Co., Farringdon Street. 1882). Nos. Ixxv.-lxxvii. Hekry Ellison. In" 1833 there were published at Malta two eccentrically worded and still ' more eccentrically printed volumes of verse, entitled Madmoments, or First Verse- attempts by a Bornnatural. To this strange heading was appended the following: "Addressed respectfully to the lightheaded of society at large ; but intended more particularly for the use of that world's madhouse, London. By Henry Ellison, of Christchurch, Oxford." But the poems in these two volumes are very far from being incoherent or inartistically outrh. The printing and general arrangement are so out of the common that a certain artificial air of strangeness does certainly seem to characterise the poems ; but the strangeness is only superficial. I have seen but one copy of this now scarce book— that in the British Museum Library, to which my attention was called by Dr. Garnett. Some years later the same author published his Touches on the Harp of Nature, and in 1884, Poems of Real Life — the last-named containing many of the sonnets which appeared in Madmoments, Perhaps no writer of genuine capacity has ever written so much or lived so long and attracted so little attention., I am glad to be able to give these three very fairly representative sonnets. Other fine examples will be found in Mr, Main's CCC. English Sonnets, Nos. Ixxviii.-ix. Frederick William Fabbr (1814-1863). These two sonnets from The Cherwell Water Lily ; and other -Poems, 1840, adequately represent Father Faber's position as a sonnet- writer. Personally, I cannot but consider that his poetry has been over-praised, though undoubtedly some of his sonnets have both strength and beauty. No. Ixxviii. is the third of the series styled On the Four Religious Heathens, the other three being Herodotus, Nicias, and Seneca. It was Father Faber whom Wordsworth accredited with the possession of as true an eye to nature as he himself owned : " I have hardly ever known any one but myself who had a true eye for nature" [how eminently Wordsworthian 1 ] ; "one that thoroughly understood her meanings and her teaching — except," 2 A 288 NOTES. here he interrupted himself, says the narrator — (Aubrey de Vere, in his Recollections) — " one person. There was a young clergyman called Frederick Faber, who resided at Ambleside. He had not only as good an eye for nature as I have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on the mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never detected." No. Ixxx. Hon. Julian Fane (1827-1870). The story of this brilliantly gifted writer has been adequately and most sympatheti- cally narrated by his biographer. Lord Lytton. > His keen delight in Shakespeare's sonnets induced his acceptance of them as his standard in composition. To his mother, for whom he had a reverent love very beautiful in its tenderness and pride, he was wont to address a sonnet on each successive birthday ; and it is one of those birthday-greetings which I have selected. For a pathetic account of the composition of his latest sonnets see yulian Fane : A Memoir. By Lord Lytton. 1871. No. Ixxxi. William Freeland. Mr. Freeland has found time in the midst of a long and active journalistic career to devote himself ever and again to the production of poetry. I am glad to have this opportunity of drawing attention to his Birth Seng; and other Poems, 1882, and also to his contributions to the recently-issued volume of The Glasgow Ballad Club, Both books are published by Messrs. Maclehose, of Glasgow. The following is irregular in structure, but otherwise excellent ; it is the second of two entitled " The New-Comers : " — What spirit is this that cometh from afar. Making the household tender with a cry That blends the mystery of earth and sky — The blind mute motions of a new-lit star, The unlanguaged visions of a folded rose ? A marvel is the rose from bud to bloom. The star a wonder and a splendour grows ; But this sweet babe, that neither sees nor knows. Hath wrapt in it a genius and a doom More visionful of beauty than all flowers, More glowing wondrous than all singing spheres. And though oft baffled by repelling powers, Growing and towering through the stormy hours. To perfect glory in God's year of years. Nos. Ixxxii.-lxxxiii. Richard Garnett, LL.D. Mr. Gamett, a true poet and accomplished critic, and the leading English biblio- graphical authority living, has written few sonnets — but these few are good. The two I quote are sonnets of which Wordsworth or Rossetti might well have been proud to claim the authorship. The second is to be found in his pleasant volume, lo in Egypt ; and other Poems, I append another excellent example : — NOTES. 289 Garibaldi's Retirement. Not that three armies thou didst overthrow ; Not that three cities oped their gates to thee, I praise thee, chief ; not for ikis royalty Decked with new crowns, that utterly laid low ; For nothing of all thou didst forsake, to go And tend thy vines amid the Etrurian Sea; Not even that thou didst this — though History Retreat two thousand selfish years to show Another Cincinnatus ! Rather for this, The having lived such life, that even this deed Of stress heroic natural seems as is Calm night, when glorious day-it doth succeed ; And we, forewarned by surest auguries, The amazing act with no amazement read. No. Ixxxiv. Mary C. Gillington. Miss Gillington has written and published some poetry of very considerable promise, for the most part as yet marked by a certain immaturity. A passion for the sea is manifest throughout her verse. Nos. Ixxxv.-vii. Edmund W. Gosse. Mr. Gosse's volumes of verse are entitled On Viol and Flute and New Foems, and he has re- cently published a new collection called Firdausi in Exile: and other Poems. Mr. Gosse has written several excellent sonnets, all characterised by refined grace. No. Ixxxvi. Mr. Waddington, referring to "Alcyone," speaks of it as the first sonnet in dialogue written in English ; but this is not quite the case, for William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, wrote one in this form about the beginning of the 17th century^-and among others written in recent years I may refer to an interesting example by Mr. J. A. Symonds. I fancy also there is another early example, but cannot recollect the particulars. I print " Alcyone " more as an interesting exotic, and for its own indubi- table beauty, than as a sonnet proper — for of course it is no more the latter than are those octosyllabic 14-line poems of which Mr. Waddington and Mr. Lefroy have given us some interesting ex- amples, or than those 7-8 syllabled "sonnets" of which several good specimens are to be found in the French compilation, Le ■Livre aes Sonnets. (Paris, 1875.) No. Ixxxvii. Compare with this the sonnet on ^schylus by Mr. Aubrey De Vere {Search after Proserpine, etc., p. 67) : — .iESCHYLUS. A sea- clifif carved into a bas-relief ! Dark thoughts and sad, conceiv'd by brooding Nature ; Brought forth in storm : — dread shapes of Titan stature 29° ■ NOTES. Emblems of Fate, and Change, Revenge, and Grief, And Death, and. Life ; — a caverned Hieroglyph Confronting still with thunder-blasted frieze All stress of years, and winds, and wasting seas : — The stranger nears it in his fragile skiff And hides his eyes. Few, few shall pass, great Bard, Thy dim sea-portals I Entering, fewer yet Shall pierce thy mystic meanings, deep and hard ; But these shall owe to thee an endless debt ; The Eleusinlan caverns they shall tread That wind beneath man's heart ; and wisdom learn with dread. Nos. Ixxxviii.-ix. David Gray (1838-1861). The sad story of this young Scotch poet is now familiar. ( Vide, especially, the Cam- bridge edition of his poems, 1862, with the memoir by James Hedderwick and Prefatory Notice by the late Lord Houghton — and Mr. Robert Buchanan's David Gray : and olher Essays.) The sonnets in The Luggie ; and other Poems, entitled "In the Shadows," are full of delicate fancy and a somewhat morbid sensibility, with a keen note of pain from a bitterly disappointed heart. The sonnets, as sonnets, are generally unsatisfactory. Ixxxix, This sonnet, Mr. Buchanan tells us, was addressed by Gray to him. It has distinct poetic quality, but is at the same time a good example of its author's weakness. Tennyson is echoed in the first two lines, and Keats in the fifth. No. xc. Thomas Gordon Hake. I am glad to be able to give this ' sonnet by one \vho has written so much and such original poetry as Dr. Hake has done. Dr. Hake has written few sonnets. No. xc. is not from any of his volumes of verse, but is taken from The Academy, where it appeared in April, 1884. No, xci. Arthttr Henry Hallam (1811-1883). Mr. Hallam de- serves to be remembered for his own poetic utterances as well as because of his friendship with the present Laureate, and as having been the direct cause of In Memoriam, that most widely read of all English elegiac poems. Nos. xcii.-xcv. Eugene Lee-Hamilton. Among the younger poets of our generation there is none who in the sonnet has surpassed Mr. Lee-Hamilton. This gentleman has published four volumes of verse, marked by curious inequalities along with striking dramatic force and high meditative faculty. His genius is measurely, not essentially lyrical : — in writing sonnets, his ear does not often fail him : in blank verse, or heroic couplets, only rarely ; but in purely lyrical and especially in ballad-writing, he is apt constantly to indulge in strangely dissonant lines. The four sonnets I have quoted are all fine; "Sea-shell Murmurs" is especially noteworthy for its priginal treatment of a motif worn almost threadbare, it being an application not unworthy, indeed, NOTES. 291 to rank along with the familiar corresponding passages in Landor and Wordsworth. The following, with its noble ethical lesson, in company with Nos. xciii., xciv., and xcv., is from Apollo and Marsyas ; and other Poems (Elliot Stock, 1884), while " Sea- shell Murmurs " is from The New Medusa ; and other Poems (Stock, 1882). Ths Phantom Ship. We touch Life's shore as swimmers from a wreck Who shudder at the cheerless land they reach, And find their comrades gathered on the beach Watching a fading sail, a small white speck — The Phantom ship, upon whose ample deck There seemed awhile a homeward place for each ; The crowd still wring their hands and still beseech, But see, it fades, in spite of prayer and beck. Let those who hope for brighter shores no more Not mourn, but turning inland, bravely seek What hidden wealth redeems the shapeless shore. The strong must build stout cabins for the weak ; Must plan and stint ; must sow and reap and store ; For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak. Nos. xcvi.-xcvii. Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865). As man, philosopher, and poet. Sir W. E. Hamilton was distinctively deserving of sincerest admiration. I know no pleasanter biographical volumes than those in which the Rev. R. Percival Graves has so efficiently acted the parts of writer and editor. These two noble sonnets can be matched by others almost equally fine, though the late Astronomer-Royal of Ireland was far from being a voluminous writer, especially in verse. He was essentially a keenly-intellectual spiritually-minded man. In a letter from Mr. Aubrey de Vere to myself that gentleman writes : "Sir R. Hamilton's sonnets are indeed, as you remark, excellent, and I rejoice that you are making them better known than they have been hitherto. Wordsworth once remarked to me that he had known many men of high talents and several of real genius : but that Coleridge and Sir W. R. Hamilton were the only men he had met to whom he would apply the term wonderful," Sir W. R. Hamilton, it may be new to many readers to learn, is among the finest prose writers of this century : I may quote the following passage from his introductory address on Astronomy, shortly after his election to the chair, at Dublin University (1831) : — "But not more surely" (do I believe), "than that to the dwellers in the moon — if such there be — the sun habitually appears and habitually withdraws during such alternate intervals as we call fortnightly here : not sending to announce his approach those herald clouds of rosy hues which on earth appear before him, nor rising red himself after the gradual light of dawn, but springing 292 NOTES. forth at once from the bosom of night with more keen clear golden lustre than that which at mid-noon he sheds on the summit of some awful Alp; nor throned, as with us at evening, in 'many- coloured pavilion of cloud, nor followed by twilight's solemn hour : but keeping his meridian lustre to the last, and vanishing into sudden darkness." For all particulars concerning the Life and Labours of Sir W, R. Hamilton, the reader should consult the two volumes (a mine of literary interest) by the Rev. R. Percival Graves (Dublin University Press Series, and Longman & Co., 1882). Nos. xcvii.-xcix. Lord Hanmer. Forty-five years ago Lord Hanmer, then Sir John Hanmer, Bart., published a thin quarto volume of sonnets. Few in number, there was not a poor one in the selec- tion : all were excellent, and several exceptionally fine. Sonnets like " The Fiumara," or " The Old Fisher," remain with one, as sometimes do circumstances of little import, touched for the moment into some unforgettable beauty. There is a suggestion of that sad northern painter, Josef Israels, in " The Old Fisher " — a pathos distinct from the more sombre, but humanly indifferent solemnity of most north Italian transcripts. Thou art a fisher of Mazorbo ; lone, Drifting a usual shadow o'er the sea With thine old boat, that like a barldess tree Creaks in the wind, a pitchless dreary moan ; And there thy life and all thy thoughts have flown. Pouncing on crabs in shallows, till thy knee Crooked as theirs, now halts unsteadily. Going about to move the anchor stone ; And when the waves roll inward from the east, Takest thy net, and for some few sardines Toil'st, in the morning's wild and chilly ray : Then dost thou go to where yon bell-tower leans. And in the sunshine sit, the poor man's feasl. Else abstinent in thy poverty, all the day. No. c. Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker (1804-1875). No truer and probably no more eminent poet has been produced by Corn- wall than the late Vicar of Morwenstow. His strength, however, does not lie in sonnets, though he wrote one or two excellent examples. His poetry, generally, is as fresh and bright as a sunny day on his own Cornish coasts. No. ci. John Hogben. Mr. Hogben has published little verse, and that only in magazines or weekly journals (The Spectator, etc.). No. cii. Edmond G. A. Holmes. Mr. Holmes is the author of Poems, Series I. (H. S. King & Co., 1876), and Poems, Series II. (Kegan Paul, 1879). In both Series there are some strikingly JVOTES. ^93 descriptive sonnets, especially tliose grouped under the titles, " Atlantic Sonnets " and " The Coast of Clare ; " from the latter Series I may quote one : — Coast of Clare. Two walls of precipices black and steep, The storm-lashed ramparts of a naked land. Are parted here by leagues of lonely sand That make a bay ; and up it ever creep Billowy ocean ripples half asleep, That cast a belt of foam along the strand. Seething and white, and wake in cadence grand The everlasting thunder of the deep. And there is never silence on that shore — Alike in storm and calm foam-fringes gird Its desolation, and the Atlantic's roar Makes mighty music. Though the sea be stirred By scarce a breath of breeze, yet evermore The sands are whitened, and the thunder heard. Nos. ciii.-iv. Thomas Hood (1798-1845). These beautiful sonnets prove what an essentially true poet Hood was. His great fame as a humorist has overshadowed his claims to a high place among imaginative writers. How few of his contemporaries could have written that weird and impressive poem, " The Haunted House ; " certainly none could have surpassed it. The sonnet on " Silence " here given is exceedingly beautiful, and should be compared with the following well-known sonnet by Edgar Poe : — Silence. There are some qualities, some incorporate things, That have a double life, which thus is made A type of that twin entity which springs From matter and light evinced in solid and shade. There is a two-fold Silence — sea and shore — Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places. Newly with grass o'ergrown ; some solemn graces. Some human memories and tearful lore Render him terrorless,; his name's " No More," He is the corporate Silence ; dread him not ! No power hath he of evil in himself ; But should some urgent fate (untimely lot) Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf. That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod No foot of man), commend thyself to God ! Richard Hengist Horne (1803-1884). The late R. Hengist Home passed away in a very faint adumbration of that high reputation he once enjoyed. From the early days of " the farthing Epic "— 294 NOTES. Orion — to the publication of the Bible Tragedies, is changes ! No poet of this generation more lived his life than did " Orion : " he seems to have dwelt in, or at any rate visited all the habitable (and several of the uninhabitable) parts of the globe. Among his friends he numbered most of the leading poets and writers of this century, and among his constant correspondents was the late Mrs. Browning. He had an eminently fine presence, though when I last saw him he was manifestly yielding under the assaults of age and prolonged activity. Of all his works, personally I consider the best to be Cosmo de Medici: and other Poems. Among the short poems is one called, if I remember aright, "The Slave," which, for glowing richness of colouring, seems to me to hold a very high place in modern verse. Home was not a sonnet-writer : the following, with all its faults, is, so far as I know, the only sonnet by him deserving the name. It was written on December 26, 1879, and was inscribed to the same Mr. Ellis whose sonnet "Silence" I have quoted on page 74. The Friend of Friends. (Inscribed to Joseph Ellis, author of " Ccesar in Egypt.") Who is the Friend of Friends ? — not one who smiles While you are prosperous, — purse-full, in fair fame. Flattering, " Come, be ray household's altar-flame," When knowing you can bask on sunny isles : Not one who sayeth, " That brain's a mighty mould," With base-coin'd hints about alloys in gold : Nor he who frankly tells you all your faults. But drops all merit into vampire vaults : — No : the true friend stands close 'midst circling storms, When you are poor, — lost, — wrestling thro' a cloud ; With whom your ship rides high in freezing calms, Its banner, ghostly pale, to him still proud ; Whose heart's Blest- Arab-spice dead hope embalms. The same, tho' you sate throned, — or waiting for your shroud. No. cv. Charles A. Houfe. A young writer, who, if he will eschew the crudities manifest in the little volume he recently pub- lished anonymously, will probably do good work. The sonnet quoted has the stamp of genuine poetry. No. cvi. Lord Houghton (18—1885), The late Lord Houghton had from his early youth close connection with literature, few names having been more familiar in the literary circles of the last generation or two than that of " Monckton Milnes." His poetry is more graceful, refined, and scholarly, than imaginative ot strongly emotional. Nos. cvii.-viii. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). We owe Leigh Hunt's splendid Nile' sonnet to a friendly competition between himself NOTES. 295 and two still greater poets, Keats and Shelley. It is strange that a motif so eminently suited to the highest poetic genius should have been treated in inverse ratio to the intellectual and poetic powers of the competitors, for undoubtedly Hunt's ranks first, Keats's second, and Shelley's last. I append, for compari- son, the rival sonnets. Month after month the gathering rains descend, Drenching yon secret Ethiopian dells. And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles Where frost and heat in- strange embraces blend On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells By Nile's aerial urn ; with rapid spells Urging those waters to their mighty end. O'er Egypt's land of memory floods are level And they are thine, O Nile^=and well thou knowest That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest. Beware, O Man — for knowledge must to thee Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be. —Percy Bysshe Shelley. Son of the old- moon-mountains African 1 Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile ! We call thee fruitful, and that very while A desert fills our seeing's inward span : Nurse of swart nations since the world began, Art thou so fruitful ? or dost thou beguile Those men to honour thee, who, worn with toil. Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan ? O may dark fancies err ? They surely do : 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily doth haste. —John Keats. Strangely, it is also to a friendly competition that is due the composition of "The Grasshopper and Cricket." Mr. Cowden Clarke has told us in his Recollections, how, on December 30, 1816, he accompanied Keats on -a visit to Leigh Hunt at the latter's cottage in the Vale of Health, Hampstead Heath, and how Hunt challenged Keats to write "then, there, and to time," a sonnet " On the Grasshopper and the Cricket." Keats gained the vic- tory over his rival in point of time. Both are eminently char- acteristic, the one unmistakably by the author of Endymion, the 296 NOTES. other suffused with the genial sunshine pervading the temperament and the poetry of its writer. Here is Keats's : — The poetry of earth is never dead : When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 1 From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : That is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead In summer luxury, — he has never done With his delights ; for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never : On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever. And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, • The grasshopper's among some grassy hills. No. cix. J. W. INCHBOLD. Mr. Inchbold has made the "sonnet" a special study, and has himself written many pleasant examples in a little volume entitled Annus Amoris, published in 1876 (H. S. King & Co,). No. ex. Jean Ingelow. This sonnet is from Miss Ingelow's Collected Poems, so widely popular. No. cxi. Ebenezer Jones (1820- 1 860). This author wrote no more than two or three sonnets. Nos. cxii.-cxvii. John Keats (1795-1821). Keats wrote fifty sonnets (or .rather fifty-one, including that recently brought to the notice of Mr. Sydney Colvin), but only a little over a third of these rank as really fine. Every one who knows Keats's poems is thoroughly familiar with the famous sonnet, " On first looking into Chapman's Homer." A special interest attaches to No. cxvii. It was Keats's last sonnet — indeed, his latest poem. On that last journey of his, when the vessel that was conveying him to Italy was beating about in the British Channel, he and his loyal friend Joseph Severn managed to land for a few hours on the coast of Devon. From the depth of weariness, bodily and spiritual, Keats rallied marvel- lously under the effiects of the welcome change, and on his return to the ship he took up a volume of Shakespeare's Poems, and wrote in it this sonnet beginning " Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art," returning the volume to Severn, to whom he had presented it a few days previously. It is among the most pathetic " last words " of poets. There is an alternative reading of the last line — " And so live ever, or else swoon to death," but this lection is indubitably inferior. NOTES. 297 No. cxviii. Frances Anne Kemble. Mrs. Butler, more widely known by her familiar maiden name, is a genuine poet. Some of her sonnets — several of them very beautiful — are more satisfactory in structure than this one, but none surpasses it in dignity and solemn pathos. Chakles Lamb (1775-1834). An undue place has frequently of late been claimed for Lamb as a poet. That he had a keenly poetic nature is certain, but this premiss is not enough for the deduction referred to. Mr. Main gives four of his sonnets in his Treasury, of which "Work" and "Leisure" are simply eminently charac- teristic of the man, and the other two pleasant poems. Mr. Caine gives "Work" and another ("A Timid Grace," etc.), whose chief interest lies in its evident relation to that well-loved sister who is one of the most pathetic figures in the history of literature. The following sonnet on "Innocence" is one that Lamb himself considered his best : — We were two pretty babes ; the youngest she, The youngest and the loveliest far (I ween) And Innocence her name ; the time has been We two did love each other's company ; Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. But when, by show of seeming good beguil'd, I left the garb and manners of a child. And my first love, for man's society. Defiling with the world my virgin heart — My lov'd companion dropt a tear and fled, And hid in deepest shades her awful head. Beloved ! who shall tell me where thou art, In what delicious Eden to be found ? That I may seek thee the wide world around. Nos. cxx.-cxxi. Andrew Lang. Mr. Andrew Lang has unmistak- ably "made his mark" in contemporary English poetry, though not by his sonnets, for these could be numbered on the fingers. What he has done in this direction has been exceptionally good. • I can at the moment call to remembrance no two lines more rich in vowel-music than those in the octave of cxx. — " The bones of Agamemnon are a show. And ruined is his royal monument." The striking sonnet on the death of Colonel Burnaby has not appeared heretofore in any volume ; it was published some time ago in the columns of Punch. Another of Mr. Lang's best sonnets I have not included in the body of this collection, simply because it has so often been reprinted that all sonnet-lovers know it well already; but for those who may not have met with it heretofore I now print it : — 298 NOTES. The Odyssey. As one that for a weary space has lain Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, Where that ^Egean isle forgets the main, And only the low lutes of love complain, And only shadows of wan lovers pine, As such an one were glad to know the brine Salt on his lips, and the large air again. So gladly, from the songs of modern speech Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers. And through the music of the languid hours, They hear like ocean on a western beach The surge and thunder of the Odyssey. Nos. cxxii, -cxxv. Edward Cracroft Lefroy. It is with pleasure that I draw attention to these four sonnets, very fairly representa- tive of the sonnet-work of the Rev. E. C. Lefroy. To Mr. Andrew Lang I am indebted for having brought Mr. Lefroy's work to my notice. This gentleman; whom delicate health has pre- vented pursuing further the clerical profession, may be considered the living poetical brother of Hartley Coleridge and Mr. Charles Tennyson-Turner : to the work of the latter his sonnets bear an especial affinity. They are simple in language, genuine in feeling, and poetic in expression, but they do not invariably fulfil the technical requirements of the legitimate sonnet. Of one thing it seems to me Mr. Lefroy has need to beware — that he does not lapse into the fatal Wordsworthian habit of rhyming upon every- thing he sees or thinks of: as yet his bark is sailing safely enough in that disastrous neighbourhood, but once caught in the current — and there is an end of "pure gems of white-heat thought carved delicately ! " Mr, Lefroy in the first instance published his sonnets in four little pamphlets, variously priced at 3d. and is. each: they are separately entitled Echoes from TTieocriius, Cytisiis and Galingale, Windows of the Church, and Sketches and Studies, In 1885 he published, through Mr. Elliot Stock, a hundred sonnets under the title Echoes from Theocritus ; and other Sonnets, being those of the foregoing pamphlets with some pruning and re- arrangement. It is a volume that no lover of sonnet literature should be without. The four which I have printed are all from the larger section of this volume {^Miscellaneous Sonnets'), so I may quote two from the series of Echoes from Theocritus : — CLEONIC0S. {Epigram IX.) Let sailors watch the waning Pleiades, And keep the shore. This man, made over-bold By Godless pride, and too much greed of gold, NOTES. 299 Setting his gains before his health and ease, Ran up his sails to catch the whistling breeze : Whose corpse, ere now, the restless waves have rolled From deep to deep, while all his freight, unsold. Is tossed upon the tumult of the seas. Such fate had one whose avaricious eyes Lured him to peril in a mad emprise. Yea, from the Syrian coast to Thesos bound. He slipped his anchor with rich merchandise. While the wet stars were slipping from the skies. And with the drowning stars untimely drowned. A Sicilian Night. Come, stand we here within this cactus-brake. And let the leafy tangle cloak us round. It is the spot whereof the Seer spake — To nymph and faun a nightly trysting-ground. How still the scene! No zephyr stirs to shake The listening air. The trees are slumber-bound In soft repose. There's not a bird awake To witch the silence with a silver sound. Now haply shall the vision trance our eyes. By heedless mortals all too rarely scanned. Of mystic maidens in immortal guise. Who mingle shadowy hand with shadowy hand, And moving o'er the lilies circle-wise. Beat out with uaked feet a saraband. No, cxxvi. Frederick Locker. Mr. Locker's London Lyrics has be'en one of the most successful volumes of verse by any contem- porary poet. No. cxxvii. Earl of Lytton. Lord Lytton has written very few sonnets. This and the one on " Public Opinion " are probably the two best. David M. Main. Mr. Main, whose name is so familiar to every student of sonnet literature, is not only able to judge, but to write a sonnet himself. The tw^o following have heretofore appeared, though not in any anthology : — To Chaucer. Chaucer ! when in my breast, as autumn wanes. Sweet Hope begins to droop — fair flower that grew With the glad prime, and bloomed the summer through — Thou art my chiefest solace. It sustains My faltering faith, which coming fogs and rains Might else to their dull element subdue, That the rude season's spite can ne'er undo 300 ,N-OTES. The spring perennial that in thee remains. Nor need I stir beyond the cricket's chime Here in this ingle-nook — the cuckoo's cry Hushed on the hill-side — meadows all forlorn — To breathe the freshness of an April morn Mated with thee, thy cheerful minstrelsy Feeding the vernal heart through winter's clime. To A Favourite Evening Retreat, near Glasgow. O loved wild hill-side, that hast been a power Not less than books, greater than preacher's art, To heal my wounded spirit, and my heart Retune to gentle thoughts, that hour on hour Must languish in the city, like a flower In wayside dust, while on the vulgar mart We squander for scant gold our better part From morn till eve, in frost, and sun, and shower ! My soul breaks into singing as I haste, Day's labour ended, towards thy sylvan shrine Of rustling beech, hawthorn, and eglantine ; And, wandering in thy shade, I dream of thee As of green pastures 'mid the desert waste. Wells of sweet water in the bitter sea. Nos. cxxviii.-cxxxiii. Philip Bourke Marston. It is now some nine years ago since one winter evening, sitting with him before his studio fire, Rossetti asked me if I knew Philip Marston's poems. It so happened that I did, at which Rossetti seemed greatly pleased, adding, " I consider him beyond all question the strongest among our minor bards : and as for his sonnets, they are nearly always excellent, and very often in the highest degree admirable. I have the most genuine admiration for him, both as man and poet." Subsequently more thorough familiarity with Mr. Marston's poetry has left upon me an abiding impression of a true poetic genius exercising itself within circumscribed limits. Mr. Marston's chief drawback — from the point of view of the general reader — is monotony of theme, though in his latest volume he has done much to obviate this objection. This, and his un- doubted overshadowing by the genius of the greatest sonnet-writer of our day, are probably the reasons for his comparatively restricted reputation. Curiously enough, Mr. Marston is much better known and more widely read in America than here ; indeed, he is un- doubtedly the most popular of all our younger men over-sea. Throughout all his poetry — for the most part very beautiful — there is exquisite sensitiveness to the delicate hues and gradations of colour in sky and on earth, all the more noteworthy from the fact of the author's misfortune of blindness. Had it not been for this "indifferent cruelty of cruel fate," he would almost certainly have gained a far wider reputation than has been his lot to obtain. NOTES. 301 Mr. Marston died in February last (1887). No student of contem- porary poetry should omit perusal of his three volumes, Song- Tide, All in All, and Wind- Voices, a comprehensive selection from which will appear in one of the Canterbury Poets series early in 1888. Nos. cxxxiv.-cxxxv. Westland Marston, LL.D. Many years have elapsed since The Patrician's Daughter, Strathmore, and other fine plays from the same hand were widely popular. ]3ut if the dramatic work of Dr. Marston is now seldom seen represented on the stage, that pure and wholesome writer has still a consider- able chamber audience. His plays are the work not only of a man of the world, but of a poet and a philosopher, the latter in its true sense. He can best be read, now, in the Selected Dramatic ' Work and Poems, published a year or two ago in two vols., by Messrs. Chatto & Windus. Frank T. Marzials. I regret that I became acquainted with Mr. Marzials' sonnets too late to include an example in the body of this book. I am pleased, however, to be able to quote one here : — The Last Metamorphosis of Mephistopheles. Candid he is, and courteous therewithal, — Nor, as he once was wont, in the far prime. Flashes his scorn to heaven; — nor as the mime Of after-days, with antic bestial Convenes the ape in man to carnival ; — Nor as the cynic of a later time Jeers, that his laughter, like a jangled chime, - Rings through the abyss of our eternal fall. But now, in courtliest tones of cultured grace. He glories in the growth of good, his glance Beaming benignant as he bids us trace Good everywhere — till, as mere motes.that dance Athwart the sunbeams, all things evil and, base Glint golden in his genial tolerance. No. cxxxvi. George Meredith. Mr. Meredith's fame— a steadily and rapidly increasing fame — as the most brilliant living master of fiction, has overshadowed his claims as a poet. Out of the hun- dreds who have read and delighted in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, in Evan Harrington, in Rhoda Fleming, etc., there are probably only two or three here and there who before the recent issue of Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth knew that Mr. Meredith had written verse at all. Yet two very noteworthy little volumes had previously— the first a long time before— se6n the light. In the second, entitled Modern Love : and other Poems, there is a very remarkable sequence of sixteen-line poems com- prised under the heading Modem Love. A sad enough story 302 NOTES. is told therein, with great skill, and much poetic beauty, 1 had always imagined them to have been sonnets on the model of the Italian " sonnet with a tail," but Mr. Meredith tells me that they were not designed for that form. As, however, for all their structural drawbacks they are in other things essentially " caudated sonnets," I may quote the following fine examples : — Modern Love. XVI. In our old shipwreck'd days there was an hour When in the firelight steadily aglow, Join'd slackly, we beheld the chasm grow Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower That eve was left to us : and hush'd we sat As lovers to whom Time- is whispering. From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing : The nodding elders mix'd good wine with chat. Well knew we that Life's greatest pleasure lay With us, and of it was our talk, " Ah, yes ! Love dies ! " I said : I never thought it less. She yearn'd to me that sentence to unsay : Then when the fire domed blackening, I found Her cheek was soft against my kiss, and swift Up the sharp scale of sobs her heart did lift : Now am I haunted by that taste ! that sound ! XXIX, Am I failing ? for no longer, can I cast A glory round about this head of gold. Glory she wears, but springing from the mould — Not like the consecration of the Past ! Is my soul beggar'd ? Something more than earth I cry for still : I cannot be at peace In having Love upon a mortal lease. I cannot take the woman at her worth ! Where /s the ancient wreath wherewith I clothed Our human nakedness, and could endow With spiritual splendour a white brow That else had grinned at me the fact I loath'd ? A kiss is but a kiss now ! and no wave Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will ! we'll sit contentedly. And eat our pot of honey on the grave, XLIII, Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like Its skeleton shadow on the broad-back'd wave ! Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave ; Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike. NOTES. 303 And dart their hissing tongues far' up the sand ; In hearing of the ocean, and in sight Of those ribb'd wind-strealcs running into white. If I the death of love had deeply plann'd, I never could have made it half so sure, As by the unbless'd kisses which upbraid The full-waked sense ; or, failing that, degrade 1 'Tis morning : but no morning can restore What we have forfeited. I see no sin : The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be ! Passions spin the plot ; We are betray'd by what is false within. XLIX. He found her by the ocean's moaning verge. Nor any wicked change in her discern'd ; And she believed his old love had return'd ; Which was her exultation and her scourge. She took his hand, and walked with him, and seem'd The wife he sought, tho' shadowlike and dry. She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh. And tell her loudly she no longer dream'd. She dared not say, " This is my breast, look in." But there's a strength to help the desperate weak. That night he learned how silence best can speak The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin. About the middle of the night her call Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed. " Now kiss me, dear ! it may be now ! " she said. .Lethe had pass'd those lips, and he knew all. Thus piteously Love closed what he begat : The union of this ever diverse pair ! These two were rapid falcons in a snare. Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, They wandered once ; clear as the dew on flowers ; But they fed not on the advancing hours ; Their hearts held craving for the buried day. Then each applied to each the fatal knife, Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life ! In tragic hints here see what evermore Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, To throw that faint thin line upon the shore ! 3 B 304 NOTES. As to the single sonnet proper by Mr. Meredith which I have given in my selection, it is quite unnecessary to poirit to its imaginative power — ^its sense of vastness. It is from his Poemi and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. Nos. cxxxvii.-ix. Alice Meynell. Mrs. Meynell, notwithstanding that she has only published one slight volume of verse, is generally acknowledged to be one of the sweetest singers among living poets. With the exception of "Renouncement" her sonnets are to be found in her volume, Preludes, illustrated by her sister, Mrs, Butler (Elizabeth Thompson) : several of them show a very marked affinity to the love sonnets of Mrs. Browning. In this class I know no nobler or more beautiful sonnet than " Renounce- ment," and I have so considered it ever since the day I first heard it, when Rossetti (who knew it by heart), repeating it to me, added that it was one of the three finest sonnets ever written by woman. I add here another sonnet from Preludes : — A Bay to Come. Your own fair youth, you care so little for it, Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances Of time and change upon your happiest fancies. I keep your golden hour and will restore it. If ever, in time to come, you would explore it — Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies, Look unto me : no mirror keeps its glances ; In my unfailing praises now I store it. To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging, I shall be then a treasury where your gay Happy and pensive past for ever is. I shall be then a garden charmed from changing, In which your June has never passed away. Walk there awhile among my memories. No. cxl. Cosmo Monkhouse. Mr. Monkhouse is the author of a volume of verse entitled A Dream of Idleness : and other Poems. Mr. Monkhouse has made a reputation for careful critical know- ledge and sympathetic insight, both in art and poetic literature. Nos. cxli.-cxlii. Ernest Myees. Mr. Myers has published Poems; The Defence of Pome and other Poems, and recently a volume, which I have not seen, entitled The Judgment of Promotheus : and other Poems. There is, in the sonnets I have selected, a breadth which is specially noteworthy. No. cxliii, was prefixed by Mr. Mark Pattison to his " Parchment " edition of Milton's sonnets. Other fine sonnets by Mr. Myers are those on Pindar and Darwin, and that on Achilles, prefixed to the joint translation of the Iliad. NOTES. 30s Nos. cxliv.-cxlvi. Frederick W. H. Myers. Mr. Frederick Myers is known as one of the most accomplished and fervid of living critics : his Essays are pleasant reading, combining polished elegance of style with wide knowledge and sympathetic insight. In 1882 he published a volume of tender and high-toned verse, entitled The Renewal of Youth : and other Poems ; and it is from this volume Nos. cxlv. and cxlvi. are excerpted. No. cxlvii. E. Nesbit. From Lays and Legends, 1886, a volume of verse by a new writer of exceptional promise. No. cxlviii. Cardinal Newman. All students of contemporary literature know what a master of prose is the celebrated author of the Apologia pro Vita Sua. That he is a poet as well is realised by all who have read his earnest and polished verse. Nos. cxlix., cl. John Nichol, LL.D., etc. Professor Nichol, the distinguished son of a distinguished father, holds a high place in contemporary letters. Fortunate in obtaining at an early age the Regius Professorship of English Literature in Glasgow University, he was unfortunate in so far that his new labours entailed with- drawal from the highly cultivated sphere in which he was so well fitted to move, and also prevented his devoting himself as ardently to creative work as he would otherwise have done. His critical works, however, including his recent admirable American Literature, have won for him a deservedly high place. But here we are concerned with him as a poet. His classic drama, Hannibal, had an immediate and, as is now proved, no ephemeral success ; and his reputation has further gained by The Death oj Themistocles : and other Poems. In these volumes Professor Nichol owes nothing to any contemporary. He belongs to no school of poetry, save to that Catholic school which would have each man do his work in the way most natural to him, and do it well. As a sonnet-writer, however, he is not at his best. Nos. cli.-clii. J. AsHCROFT Noble. Mr. Ashcroft Noble is the author of The Pelican Papers : Reminiscences and Remains of a Dweller in the Wilderness (1873). An accomplished literary critic, he has also written some fine verse. He, moreover, some two or three years ago wrote the article in the Contemporary Review on the sonnet to which I have already referred in the Introductory Essay. No. cliii. Edward H. Noel (18— - 1884). The late Mr. Edward Noel was one of those men who impress one more by their personality than by anything written. He was a man of true and liberal culture, with a temperament at once romantic and reserved, and with a nature so essentially noble and beautiful that no one could know him without gaining greatly thereby. His memory is a treasured possession with the fortunate few who had his friendship. Until after his death, few, if any, of his friends knew that he had 3o6 NOTES. written anything, though a year or two previous he did let fall some hint to me of his poetic work. After his death, Miss Noel published (Elliot Stock, 1884) his collected Poems. They are characterised by deep meditative beauty — not underivative as regards expression, it is true — and a sad yet not despairing melancholy, the result of the great loss Mr Noel sustained in the death of his dearly loved wife, which occurred during his long residence in Greece. No. cliv. Hon. Roden Noel. The Hon. Roden Noel has made a wide reputation as a poet. He has, however, written few sonnets. No. civ. Francis Turner Palgrave. Mr. Palgrave owes his reputation to his high critical faculty. His chief characteristic as a writer is refinement of taste, whether manifested in literature or in ait. His Golden Treasury of English Songs and his Children's Treasury of Lyrical Poetry are charming compilations, as are his Herrick and Shakespeare's Songs and Sonnets. Quite recently he was elected to the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, vacant by the death of the late Principal Shairp. Some thirty years ago Mr. Palgrave published his Idylls- and Songs, and in 1871 his Lyrical Poems. No. civ., however, is a hitherto unpublished sonnet: it was, as some will at once infer, written on the occasion of the tragic death of the author's late friend, Lord Frederick Cavendish. No. clvi. Sir Noel Paton, R.S. A., etc. It is many years since this celebrated artist published his second little volume of verse. Several of his sonnets are characterised by distinct grace of expres- sion and poetic feeling, but the exceedingly fine one which I give seems to me the strongest. It was first printed in Mr. Hall Caine's Anthology, and is of much later date than any included in Sir Noel's two published volumes. Nos. clvii.-clix. John Payne. Mr. Payne has published Intaglios, Lautrec, New Poems, etc., and ranks high among the younger men. His sonnets have been much admired by many good judges. Nos. clx.-clxiii. Emily Pfeiffer. Mrs. Pfeiffer is among the most prolific of living poetesses. The fine sonnets I quote speak for themselves. Nos. clxiv.-clxv. Bryan Waller Procter (1790-1874). Barry Cornwall is known chiefly as a song-writer, but he wrote, some good sonnets. Nos. clxvi.-clxvii. Mark Andre Raffalovich. Mr. Raffalovich's sonnets are amongst the best of those by our younger writers that markedly derive from Shakespeare's. He has allowed himself to be even more strongly influenced by the latter than did Julian Fane: he has not, however, the intellectual strength or reserve NOTES. 307 power of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. He has published three highly inter- esting but unequal volumes of verse, the sonnets I have selected coining from the first, Cyril and Lionel ; and other Poems. Hardwicke D, Rawnsley. My attention vpas drawn to the fine descriptive sonnets of Mr. Rawnsley, too late for the selection of one for appearance in the body of this book. I print one example here, excerpted from Sonnets of the English Lakes (Longmans). The Lake Mirrok : In Autumn. We sailed from cape to cape, whose headlands grey Had blossomed branchy gold, and half in fear. Through liquid mirrors of the Autumn mere. We ventured in among the leafy sway Of watery woodland, and the russet spray Of fern and rosy briar, reflected clear. Still dancing by the prow as we drew near, To grow to stillness as we passed away. That day the glory of two worlds was ours, A depth and height of faint autumnal sky, A double pageant of the painted wood ; Still, as we stole upon a summer-flood. Marbled by snow the mountain-tops close by Spoke from warm depths of Winter's nearing hours. No. clxviii. Ernest Rhys. Mr. Rhys is one of the latest recruits to the great army of literature. He has shown distinct literary judgment and capacity in his edition in the Canterbury Poets of Herbert, in his Introduction to a popular edition of the Mart V Arthur, and in various magazine articles. Mr. Rhys is editor of the series of prose works, The Camelot Classics, No. clxix, Charles Roberts, the author of Orion: and other Poems, and In Divers Tones, is Professor of English Literature in the University Of King's College at Windsor, N.S., Canada. I am unaware if he be of Canadian birth, but he is indisputably fore- most among the poets of Canada. The sonnet by which I have represented him is remarkable as an example of the capacity of the sonnet to convey within its narrow compass, harmoniously, a multiplicity of details. The following is fine as a poem (probably inspired by Millet's well-known drawing), and is interesting to sonnet-students on account of the heterodox rhyme-system of its octave. Both sonnets are from In Divers Tones, The Sower. A brown, sad-coloured hill- side, where the soil. Fresh from the frequent harrow, deep and fine, Lies bare ; no break in the remote sky-line. Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft, 3o8 NOTES. Startled from feed in some low-lying croft, Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine ; And here the Sower, unwittingly divine, Exerts the silent forethought of his toil. Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride Dumb in the yielding soil ; and tho' small joy Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside, This plodding churl grows great in his employ ; — God-like, he makes provision for mankind. No. clxx. Eric Sutherland Robertson. Mr. Eric Robertson is another of those who have not published their poems in book- form. Several of his sonnets have appeared in magazines, and a fine one called " A Vision of Pain," in Mr. Caine's Sonnets of Three Centuries. His sonnets, such as I have seen, are charac- terised by originality of conception, and generally they answer to that searching test, adequacy of motive. Mr. Robertson's practical interest in educational questions, in addition to arduous though miscellaneous literary labours, have hitherto stood in the way of his taking the place among the younger writers to which his high capabilities entitle him. A few years ago he published an interesting and useful little volume entitled English Poetesses. In the autumn of 1886 he was appointed to the Chair of Literature and Philosophy at the University of the Pun- jaub, Lahore. Professor Robertson is responsible for the scheme and General Editorship of the Series of Biographies entitled Great Writers. Nos. clxxi.-clxxiii. A. Mary F. Robinson. There have been few instances of any young writer so rapidly coming into wide and strongly interested notice as that of Miss Mary Robinson. Her first little volume, A Handful of Honeysuckle, was plainly to a large extent derivative, but at the same tinle it showed so much native sweetness, so much delicacy of touch and occasional strength, that great things began to be prophesied of the young poetess. In due time appeared The Crowned Hipfolytus-; and other Poems, and Miss Robinson's position was confirmed, the volume exhibiting very marked increase of strength, though it was not without some markedly tentative efforts. Personally, I do not think this volume of verse has yet been done full justice to. In 1884 was published The New Arcadia, a book that deservedly attracted very considerable attention ; though some of Miss Robinson's most discriminating friends doubted the advisability of her attempting the reform of the condition of the agricultural classes by means of poetic special pleading. There are, unfor- tunately, too many examples of the ruin of poetic and artistic genius through the tendency (so rapidly growing into unconscious NOTES. 309 or uncontrolled habit) to "preach." Since this anthology was first published, another volume of verse by Miss Robinson has appeared, under the title An Italian Garden, This writer has a keen eye for nature, has earnest sympathies and insight, and a very sweet and true lyric voice : if she will be but loyal to herself, she may yet take a very high place indeed. She has also written Arden ; A Romance, and," among various biographical and histori- cal studies, an admirable Life of Emily Bronte (Eminent Women Series). The sonnets I have selected are from her second volume of poems. In , the New Arcadia there are two fine sonnets entitled "Apprehension," which I have pleasure in quoting : — I. foolish dream, to hope that such as I Who answer only to thine easiest moods, Should fill my heart, as o'er .my heart there broods The perfect fulness of thy memory ! 1 flit across thy soul as white birds fly Across the untrodden desert solitudes : A moment's flash of wings ; fair interludes That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky. Even such to thee am I ; but thou to me As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea, Even as the sea itself to the storm-tossed rill. But who, but who shall give such rest to thee ? The deep mid-ocean waters perpetually Call to the land, and call unanswered still. II. As dreams the fasting nun of Paradise, And finds her gnawing hunger pass away In thinking of the happy bridal day That soon shall dawn upon her watching eyes, So, dreaming of your love, do I despise Harshness or death of friends, doubt, slow decay, Madness, — all dreads that fill me with dismay, And creep about me oft with fell surmise. For you are true : and all I hoped you are : O perfect answer to my calling heart ! And very sweet my life is, having thee. Yet must I dread the dim end shrouded far ; Yet must I dream : should once the good planks start. How bottomless yawns beneath the boiling sea ! Nos. clxxiv.-clxxvi. W. Caldwell Roscoe (1823-1859). If Mr. W, Caldwell Roscoe had lived a few years longer he would almost certainly have ensured for himself an abiding reputation as master 310 NOTES. ai the sonnet. The few examples he left behind him, published and unpublished, are mostly very beautiful, one or two quite ex- ceptionally so. (Vide Poems and Essays by the late William Caldwell Roscoe, Edited, with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Brother- in- Law, Richard Holt Hutton, i860.) No. clxxvi. This truly exquisite sonnet, so fine in conception, so lovely in expression, and so pathetic in its significancej has one serious flaw. That a man so scholarly and with so sensitive an ear could be guilty of the barbarism of Apollian is extraordinary. As regards the sixth word of the fifth line, it may be noted that both in the versions of 1851 and l86o it was printed " white. ' Thatit was "while " in the original is known from the fact that in the proof- sheet there is a marginal correction of it to " white." Mr. Main saw this proof-sheet, but concluded that the poet had made an unintentional slip. Both Mr. Main and Mr. Caine print "while," and this reading I have adopted also. "White" undoubtedly narrows the idea. No, clxxv. This sonnet forms the epilogue to the fine tragedy Violenzia (1851), which is too little known. No. clxxvii. W. Stanley Roscob (1782-1843). From the Poems (1834). W. S. Roscoe, the son of the historian, was father of William Caldwell Roscoe. Nos. clxxviii.-clxxxii. Christina G. Rossetti. As I have already had occasion to remark. Miss Rossetti ranks foremost among living poetesses. She and she alone could write such magic lyrics as •' Dream-Land." Her sonnets bear but a small proportion to her purely lyrical poems. Some were written at a very early age : they are all or mostly very sombre, but are as impressive as they are beautiful. I know of no other woman who has written sonnets like "The World," or "Vanity of Vanities." There is a very marked affinity between much of Miss Rossetti's work and that of her brother Gabriel. Nos. clxxxiii.-cxciv, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). Ithas taken time for the growth of widespread admiration of the sonnet- work of this most imaginative of all the Victorian poets. There are already not a few among the best judges who consider him the greatest sonneteer of our language, his sonnets having "the fundamental brain-work" of Shakespeare's, the beauty of Mrs. Browning's, the dignity and, occasionally, the sunlit transparency of Wordsworth's, with a more starling and impressive vehemence, a greater voluminousness of urgent music. But I need not repeat what I have already in substance said in the Introduction. Even in a limited selection his sonnets speak for themselves. No. clxxxiii. This sonnet appears in the completed House of Life as "Soul's Beauty." It is specially suited to preface any selection of Rossetti's sonnets, from the eminently characteristic NOTES. 311 lines of its sestet. The picture for which "Sybilla Palmifera" was written is a very noble design. No. clxxxiv. This is not only the most beautiful of all its author's sonnets, but one of the most beautiful in the language. It was written when Rossetti was only twenty-one, and first appeared in that now very scarce publication, The Germ, in 1850. There is no doubt that the generally known version is the finer, but the original is also so beautiful (notwithstanding such rhymes as " widening " and " in ") that I may give it here : — Water, for anguish of the solstice, — yea Over the vessel's mouth still widening Listlessly dipt to let the water in With slow vague gurgle. Blue, and deep away The heat lies silent at the brink of day. Now the hand trails upon the viol-string. That sobs ; and the brown faces cease to sing, Mournful with complete pleasure. Her eyes stray In distance ; through her lips the pipe doth creep And leaves them pouting ; the green shadowed grass . Is cool against her naked flesh. Let be : Say nothing now unto her lest she weep. Nor name this ever. Be it as it was, — Life touching lips with Immortality. There is no more noteworthy instance of Rossetti's delicate judg- ment in revision than the substitution in the eleventh line of side iox flesh, the artistic gain in the later reading being unmistakable ; he felt that the exquisiteness of the picture was disturbed by a word not beautiful in itself and vulgarised by usage in a special sense. No. cxci. This sonnet is one of three grouped under the same title. What a magnificent suggestion of space — what a boundless horizon is opened up — in the six closing lines ! , No cxcii. The most terrible of sonnets in its spiritual signi- ficance. I may quote the last sonnet of this series, certainly one of the most noble sonnet-sequences in existence. The One Hope. When vain desire at last and vain regret Go hand and hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget? Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet-^ Or may the soul at once in a green plain Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain And cull the dew- drenched flowering amulet ? 312 NOTES. Ah I when the wan soul in that golden air Between the scriptured petals softly blown Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown — • Ah ! let none other alien spell soe'er But only the one Hope's one name be there, — Not less nor more, but even that word alone. Nos. cxcv.-cxcvi. William Michael _ Rossetti. Mr. W. M. Rossetti, widely known as an accomplished critic, has published no volume of verse, although he has written a considerable quantity, especially in sonnet-form. "Democracy Downtrodden" is well known to all students of contemporary verse, and is generally acknowledged to be one of the finest Miltonic sonnets of our time. No. cxcvii. Thomas Russell (1762-1788.) Thesonnet by this un- fortunate young clergyman which was so greatly praised by Landor, Wordsworth, Bowles, and other authorities agreed in ranking it high, and this we may well do without endorsing Landor's state- ment — "A poem on Philoctetes by a Mr. Russell which would authorise him to join the shades of Sophocles and Euripides," Nos. cxcviii. -cciii. William Bell Scott. This accomplished poet, artist, and critic is not so widely known in his first-named capacity as he ought to be. Among men of letters themselves he holds a high and honoured place. He presents a curious contrast to his brother, the late David Scott, that most imaginative of all the artists whom Scotland has produced, often, and not without some reason, called the Scottish Blake. Mr. W. Bell Scott's work is keenly intellectual, but it is also characterised by great simplicity of expression. His Poems by a Painter, his Poems and Ballads and Studies from Nature, and his Harvest Home, are treasured possessions with those who know how to own good books. He has written many very striking sonnets, and in making a fairly representative selection I have been forced to omit several which I would gladly have inserted. The intellectual vision of such a sonnet as "The Universe Void," the meditative beauty of " The Old House," and the pathetic human note in " Parted Love " must appeal to every one. No. cciv. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Shelley wrote even fewer sonnets than did Byron; but the few which Byron wrote he wrote well, and this cannot be said of Shelley. This imaginative and beautiful (though far from flawless) poem in fourteen lines is so divergent .from all accepted rules that it can hardly be styled a sonnet. No writer now-a-days could venture to print a sonnet with such rhymes as stone— frown, appear — despair. As an imaginative poem it is, as is felt at once by every reader, very impressive. It is strange that Shelley, the most poetic of poets, should have been unable to write a good sonnet as a sonnet ; JVOTES. 313 but probably the restrictions of the form pressed upon him with a special heaviness. Chopin, the Shelley of musical composers, wrote his beautiful mazurkas : looked at strictly as mazurkas they are unsatisfactory. In both instances, however, uncontrollable genius overbalanced propriety of form. Mr. Main prints the famous West Wind lyric as five sonnets. That these stanzas are not sonnets, however, need' hardly be explained to any one who knows them, and what a lyric is, and what a sonnet. It is true that they are divisible into five fourteen- Hne parts ; but the result of disintegration is only to presfent several hopelessly irregular sonnets, and to tend to dissipate the lyric emotion aroused by the very first words of Shelley's exquisite poem. Moreover, that Shelley himself had no such idea is evident from the fact that the line which would be the fourteenth of the fourth " sonnet " ends with a comma, which occcurs in the middle of a sentence — " Tameless, and swift, and proud," V. " Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is." Mr. J. A. Symonds has adequately defined the metrical structure of this famous lyric as " interrupted ierza rima." No. ccv. Georgk Augustus Simcox. Mr. Simcox is the author of Poems and Romances. No. ccvi. Alexander Smith (1830-1867). Alexander Smith is probably read by five where a quarter of a century ago he was read by a hundred. His Life-Drama is now eminently an upper- shelf book. He wrote few sonnets ; none very striking. No. ccvi. is his best, though too markedly derivative. No. ccvii. Robert Southey (1794-1843). Southey wrote very few sonnets. He had not, in general, the gift of expressing himself concisely. No. ccviii. Robert Louis Stevenson. This sonnet has not hitherto been printed, nor that which is quoted below ; and I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Stevenson for permission to publish them in this anthology, though they were not sent to me for that purpose. The Arabesque (Complaint of an Artist). I made a fresco on the coronal. Amid the sounding silence and the void Of life's wind-spent and unfrequented hall. I drew the nothings that my soul enjoyed ; The petty image of the enormous fact I fled ; and when the sun soared over all 314 NOTES. And threw a brightness on the painted tract, Lo, the vain lines were reading on the wall ! In vain we think ; our life about us lies O'erscrawled with crooked writ ; we toil in vain To hear the hymn of ancient harmonies That quire upon the mountain or the plain ; And from the august silence of the skies .Babble of speech returns to us again. Nos. ccix.-ccx. Charles Strong (1785-1864). From Sonnets, by the Rev. Charles Strong, 1835. An accomplished man and accomplished writer. Nos, ccxi.-ccxv. Algernon Charles Swinburne. It might naturally have been expected that, like Shelley, Mr. Swinburne would liot have proved himself a good sonnet-writer. His high and eminently lyrical genius, however, has not prevented his achieving success in this form. No. ccxi. is the fine dedicatory sonnet to Mr. Theodore Watts, prefixed to Tristram in Lyqnesse : and other Poems ; those on Ford and Webster are from a striking series on the Elizabethan dramatists in the same volume, and are inscriptions in presentation copies of the old dramatists to Mr, Watts. From the same series are Nos. ccxiii. and ccxiv. — the latter, in my opinion, one of the poet's finest sonnet-utterances. Those who have not read Mr. Swinburne's later volumes, may be said to be absolutely ignorant of the real nature of his genius and his work. About half-a-dozen erotic poems, literary exercises of an imitative kind, gave him the reputation of a poet " without a conscience or an aim." This reputation clings to him still — if not in England, in America and the colonies, where English criticism of English writers permeates with a slowness that is altogether unaccountable. Posterity, however, having only the poet's work to judge from, finding there a few score lines of questionable erotics scattered through a vast mass of poetry, displaying (if one may speak from the purely artistic standpoint) only too much "conscience and aim," will be strangely puzzled on reading such contemporary criticisms' of his poetry as may survive. To go no farther back than the last seven years of the poet's life — years spent much out of London, partly ' ' beneath the trees of leafy Surrey," partly in Wiltshire, and partly in Guernsey and Sark — he has, during that time, written nothing but poetry dealing with the noblest aspirationsr the most exalted enthusiasms, and the- purest passions of men Upon his views of the Irish question, as set forth in a much discussed political lyric of recent publication, I have nothing to say, save that they are not " new," as so many have supposed. He formulated them in the Rappel three years ' ago. They are views he has always shared with Mazzini, Karl Blind, and others among his friends. NOTES. 315 Nos. ccxvi.-ccxxi. John Addington Symonds. Mr. J. A. Symonds' wide reputation as a broad and sympathetic critic— indeed, as one of the two or three really eminent critics among us— and as a writer of beautiful and powerful prose, has overshadowed his claims to the place among the poets of the day which is his due. He has written a large number of sonnets, and one of his latest books— Vagab-unduli Lidellus— consists of poems in this form only. His sonnets are unequal, partly owing to his fondness for writing sonnet-sequences— a great mistake in nine cases out of ten. That Mr. Symonds is a true poet, a poet of generally high standing, no one will be prepared to deny after perusal of his verse. The author of that eminently critical, fascinating, pic- turesquely, yet learnedly and carefully written magnum opuf. The History of the Renaissance in Italy, has so great a power over words that his natural tendency, even in verse, is to let himself be carried away by them. Some of his later sonnets are very markedly of Shakespearian inspiration. Those I have quoted seem to me to form the best representative selection that could be made, exhibit- ing as they do Mr. Symonds' range. The contrast between the sombre ccxviii. and the glowing ccxx. is very striking. The following (which, like each of the foregoing, with the exception of No. ccxv., is from Vagabunduli Libellus) is interesting on account of its being constructed upon only three rhymes, ire, eeze, ark : — In Black and White : Winter Etchings. I. — The Chorister. Snow on the high-pitched minister roof and spire : Snow on the boughs of leafless linden trees : Snow on the silent streets and squares that freeze. Under night's wing down-drooping nigh and nigher. Inside the church, within the shadowy choir, Dim burn the lamps like lights on vaporous seas ; Drowsed are the voices of droned litanies ; Blurred as in dreams the face of priest and friar. Cold hath numbed sense to slumber here ! But hark, One swift soprano, soaring like a lark, Startles the stillness ; throbs that soul of fire, Beats around arch and. aisle, floods echoing dark With exquisite aspiration ; higher, higher. Yearns in sharp anguish of untold desire. Note. — (Referred to on pagexlii. of Introductory Essay.) Reference was made in the Introduction to a sonnet where the first three lines rhyme, and therewith also the fifth, sixth, and seventh : there are, as already stated, one or two sonnets in French so constructed, but the following is, so far as I know, the only example of the kind in English ;^ 3i6 NOTES. The Mansions of the Blest. One, who through waiting years of patient pain Had lived in heavenly hope — of Death full fain — Yea, who unto Death had prayed, had prayed in vain, At last was lowered into the dark deep grave : But could the cold moist earth the soul restrain ? Could death perpetuate his usurping reign ? Nay, with a joyous, an adoring strain The glad soul mounted from that narrow cave. How awful was the silence of the sky 1 How terrible the emptiness of space ! O for a voice, a touch, a shadowy face ! Only the cold stars glittered icily. And of the promised pathway was no trace :— A sun-suck'd dewdrop, Immortality ! Nos. ccxxii.-ccxxiii. Lord Tennyson. The Poet-Laureate has written few sonnets of recent years, but whether old or new, he has done nothing of this kind superior to his powerful Montenegro. The other fine sonnet which I quote is one of his earliest. If it were structurally more satisfactory, and if it had not the fatal flaw of a repetition of "thee" as a terminal, the following sonnet, though irregular, would probably take rank even above But were I loved, as I desire to be. What is there in the great sphere of the earth, And range of evil between death and birth, That I should fear, — if I were loved by thee ! All the inner, all the outer world of pain Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine. As I have heard that, somewhere in the main. Fresh-water Springs corfie up through bitter brine. Twerejoy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee. To wait for death — mute — careless of all ills, Apart upon a mountain, though the surge Of some new deluge from a thousand hills Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge Below us, as far on as eye could see. No. ccxxiv. Jambs Thomson (1834-1882). There is no sadder story in the annals of literature — where sad stories are only too easily to be found — than that of poor James Thomson. Mr. Philip Marston and myself were the last of his acquaintances who saw him alive, and neither of us is likely ever to forget the pathetically tragic circumstances of his end. As time goes on The City of Dreadful Night will more and more be considered a truly remarkable poem. It has the distinction of being the most hopelessly sad poem in NOTES. 317 literature. Much of Thomson's other work is characterised by equally high qualities — one or two of the shorter poems by even greater technical skill, if not exceeding it in power of sombre imagination. He stands quite by himself — following no leader, belonging to no school : to De Quincey, however, he has strong affinities. In Mr. Philip Marston's words (Athenceum)—" In time to come the critic of these years will look back wonderingly upon the figure of the somewhat solitary poet who belonged to no special community or brotherhood in art." The following In Memoriam sonnet by Mr. Marston will be admired and under- stood even by those who have not read The City of Dreadful No tears of mine shall fall upon thy face; Whatever city thou hast reached at last, Better it is than that where thy feet passed So many times, such weary nights and days. Thy journeying feet knew all its inmost ways, Where shapes and shadows of dread things were cast : There moved thy soul profoundly dark and vast, There did thy voice its song of anguish raise. Thou would'st have left that city of great night, Yet traveired its dark mazes all in vain : But one way leads from it, which found" aright, Who quitteth it shall not come back again. There didst thou grope thy way through thy long pain : Hast thou outside found any world of light ? No. ccxxv. Rev. R. A. Thorpe. Of this writer I have no par- ticulars : nor do I even know if he be still alive. His sonnet I found in Housman's now scarce collection (1835). Nos. ccxxvi.ccxxvii. Lord Thorlow (1781-1829). Lord Thurlow never made any impression on the public at large. A few, eminent judges. Lamb, Dyce, and others, genuinely admired some of his work. Concerning No. ccxxv.. Archbishop Trench has written that it is "a sonnet of stately and thoughtful beauty — one which no anthology of English sonnets ought henceforward ever to omit." Nos, ccxxviii.-ccxxx. John Todhunter, M.D. Dr. Todhunter has written some excellent sonnets. They are mostly to be found in his Laurella : and other Poems, and Forest Songs, No. ccxxxi. Richard Chenevix Trench. Since these Notes were first printed, English literature has sustained a loss in the death of Archbishop Trench. His poetry is deservedly popular with a wide section of English readers. Some of his sonnets are very fine. 3i8 NOTES. No. ccxxxii. F. Herbert Trench. Mr. F. H. Trench is a nephew of the late Archbishop of Dublin. What verse of his I have seen has considerable promise. TUPPER, Martin. It is, I fancy, generally supposed that Mr. Tapper has written no verse except his famous and once widely read Proverbial Philosophy; this, however, is a mistake. In i860 he published a volume containing 3cx> sonnets. From a series that appeared in The Dublin University Magazine, vol. lii., 1858, I may quote : — The Brecknock Beacons. O glorious sea of mountains in a storm. Joyously surging, and careering high With angry crests flung up against the sky And billowy troughs between, that roll enorm — For miles of desolate grandeur scoop'd out deep — Yet all congeal'd and magically asleep As on a sudden stopt to this fixt form By " Peace, be still ! " — well may the filmed eye Of Ignorance here behold in cloudy robe The mythologic Arthur on his throne A Spiritual King, sublime, alone, Marshalling tempests over half the globe. Or, kindlier now by summer zephyrs fann'd Blessing invisibly his ancient land, Nos. ccxxxiii.-ccxxxvii. Charles Tennyson-Turner (1808-1879). The late Vicar of Grasby was the second of the three eldest Tennyson brothers, Frederick, Charles, and Alfred. While still in his twenties, he assumed his grandmother's name. Turner, and henceforth became known by that nam.e, round which he has cast "an abiding light." In 1827 he and his brother Alfred jointly published the now very scarce Poems by Two Brothers. In 1830 he published on his own account the slim little volume entitled Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces. Although thirty- four years elapsed before another volume was issued, Mr. Tenny- son-Turner's reputation — at best confined to a very select circle — suffered no diminution, a remarkable proof of the poetic value of what his thin little book contained. Recently his collected sonnets, with a memoir and other interesting matter, have been issued by Messrs. Macmillan & Co., to whose courtesy I am indebted for permission to print the sonnets 1 have selected. These beautiful poems speak more eloquently than any words of mine for their author's claim to one of the highest places among nineteenth century sonnet-writers. No. ccxxxvi. Coleridge, who was much pleased with this sonnet as a whole, proposed instead of 11. lo-lj — NOTES. 319 " To that lone Sound mute listene'r and alone— And yet a Sound of Commune, strongly thrown, That meets the Pine-Grove on the cliffs above." He also proposed to delete "fond " in the fourteenth line, probably regarding it not only as a useless extra syllable, but as doubly unnecessary through being implied in "love." Nos. ccxxxviii-ix. Samuel Waddington. I have already had occasion to refer to Mr. Waddington and his two pleasant little sonnet anthologies. A year or so ago he published a daintily got up collection of his own sonnets and miscellaneous poems, whence I extracted the two I have quoted, These effectually prove that Mr. Waddington can compose in as well as write about his favourite poetic form. Nos. ccxl.-ccxli. William Watson.' Mr. William Watson is a young poet who a few years ago published a volume of verse entitled The Prince's Quest, which, though strongly derivative, is full of fine things. My attention was first drawn to it by the late D. G. Rossetti, whose copy, with several markings and marginalia, I afterwards came to possess. The following striking lines were marked by him as specially excellent ; — "About him was a ruinous fair place. Which Time, who still delighteth to abase The highest, and throw down what men do build. With splendid prideful barrenness had filled. And dust of immemorial dreams, and breath Of silence, which is next of kin to death. A weedy wilderness it seemed, that was In days forepast a garden," but the grass Grew now where once the flowers, and hard by A many-throated fountain had run dry Which erst all day a web of rainbows wove Out of the body of the sun its love. And but a furlong's space beyond, there towered In midmost of that silent realm deflowered A palace builded of black marble, whence The shadow of a swart magnificence Falling, upon the outer space begot A dream of darkness where the night was not." ■ Since The Princes Quest Mr. Watson has published a little volume of Epigrams, many of which are very pleasing. His strongest work as yet, however, ia to be found in the series of political sonnets which in 1885 appeared in the National Review, under the title Ver Tenebrosum. These are meant to be read in sequence, but I may quote two of them : — 2 C 320 NOTES. REroRTED Concessions. So we must palter, falter, cringe and shrink, And when the bully threatens, crouch or fly. — There are who tell me with a shuddering eye That war's red cup is Satan's chosen drink. Who shall gainsay them ? Verily I do think War is as hateful almost, and well-nigh As ghastly, as the terrible Peace whereby We halt for ever on the crater's brink And feed the wind with phrases, while we know There gapes at hand the infernal precipice O'er which a gossamer bridge of words we throw, Yet cannot chose but hear from the abyss The sulphurous gloom's unfathomable hiss And simmering lava's subterranean flow. Nightmare. ( Written during apparent imminence of War. ) In a false dream I saw the Foe prevail. The war was ended ; the last smoke had rolled Away ; and we, erewhile the strong and bold. Stood broken, humbled, withered, weak and pale. And mourned, " Our greatness is become a tale To tell our children's babes when we are old. They shall put by their playthings to be told How England once, before the years of bale. Throned above trembling, puissant, grandiose, calm. Held Asia's richest jewel in her palm ; , And with unnumbered isles barbaric she The broad hem of her glistening hem impearl'd ; Then when she wound her arms about the world. And had for vassal the obsequious sea. " Nos. ccxlii.-vii. Theodore Watts. Mr. Theodore Watts occupies an unique place in the present world of letters. Few men have ever gained so wide and genuine a reputation without having been much more before the public. As the " friend of friends " of the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and as standing in equally close rela- tionship to one of the most eminent of living poets, it is all the more remarkable how absolutely he' has retained his own individu- ality. He has published several noteworthy signed articles upon poetry, among them a most able paper called ' ' Physiognomic Poetry," which appeared in the New Quarterly, and articles upon Rossetti in The Nineteenth Century and in the Encydopadia Bri- tannica; but it is chiefly upon his admirable critical views in The Athenaum that his wide and growing reputation is based. Lately he contributed to the Encydopadia Britannica a brilliant treatise upon " Poetry," characterised by that searching critical faculty, NOTES. 321 insight, and illustrative power which render his anonymous papers so attractive. To all lovers of sonnet-literature, and especially to admirers of Mr. Watts' sonnets, it is pleasant to learn that prob- ably he will soon issue his numerous already-published sonnets with many others in volume form. Many of Mr. Watts' sonnets have appeared in The Athmceum. Three of them— ^afera Benigna, Xiatura Maligna, and " The Dream " — are taken from the powerful romance oi Aylwin, whence also is excerpted the following sonnet, " The Rosy Scar." It alludes, the author tells us, to a legend among the Fratres Roris Cocti (embodied in an old Latin poem published at Leipzig), to the effect that on Christmas Eve, Father Rosenkreutz returns to earth in the form of a " rosy phantom," and may be seen, " some- times on a mountain peak, sometimes on a tower of a cathedral, sometimes walking along the waves of the sea, watching the rosy cross break through the sky on a Christmas morning ; " and the sonnet describes some Christians labouring on board a Moslem slave-ship, unhappy slaves to whom " on a certain Christmas Eve the ' beneficent phantom ' appeared, and reminded them of the Father's great teaching, that to ' suffer on earth is but to borrow the Rosy Scar of Christ.' " The Rosy Scar. While Night's dark horses waited for the wind, He stood — he shone — where Sunset's fiery glaives Flickered behind the clouds ; then, o'er the waves, He came to us, Faith's remnant sorrow-thinned. The Paynim sailors clustering, tawny-skinned. Cried " Who is he that comes to Christian slaves ? Nor water-sprite nor jinni of sunset-caves. The rosy phantom stands, nor winged nor finned ! " All night he stood till shone the Christmas-star ; Slowly the Rosy Cross, streak after streak. Flushed the grey sky — flushed sea and sail and spar, Flushed — ^blessing — every slave's woe-wasted cheek, Then did great Rosenkreutz, the Dew-King, speak : " Sufferers, take heart, Christ lends the Rosy Scar." Several of them (notably " Foreshadowings '' and the two " Nature " sonnets) have attracted wide notice and much comment. It was natural that the work of one who is generally regarded as our most thorough critic of contemporary poetic literature should be subjected to exceptional scrutiny and comparison, and while some of Mr. Watts' sonnets do not seem to be wholly satisfactory (for my own part, I refer to those which are piices cCoccasion, such as that addressed to Mrs. Garfield, and others of like description), the majority are really noteworthy productions. Elision, which can be such a " lift " to a fine line, is much favoured by Mr. Watts ; 322 NOTES. indeed, it threatens to become a mannerism with this writer : there are very few of his published sonnets without its occurrence some- where. Those which I have selected seem to me to represent their author at his liest ; they are certainly powerful and imaginative sonnets, flawless in form, and altogether the productions of a poet of high order. Possibly there are others of Mr. Watts' which may be finer, but those which I have chosen are those which most appeal to me. " The First Kiss " and " The Heaven that Was " are.by the courtesy of the author, printed here for the first time. I must find space for the following : — A Talk on Waterloo Bridge. (A Reminiicmce, ) We talked of " Children of the Open Air," Who once in Orient valleys lived aloof, Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair, Till, on a day, across the mystic bar Of moonriae, came the " Children of the Roof," Who find no balm 'neath evening's rosiest woof Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star. We looked o'er London where men wither and choke. Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies. And lore of woods and wild wind- prophecies — Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke : And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke Leave never a meadow outside Paradise. This sonnet is printed at the close of the second of two papers which appeared in The Athenaam in the autumn of 1881, under the signature of Mr. Watts, entitled Reminiscences of George Borrow. They form as brilliant and fascinating a chapter of biography as has been given us by any writer of our time. Mr. Watts was, during the later years of " Lavengro's " life, an intimate friend of his ; though the acquaintanceship began during the former's boyhood — curiously enough, while the two were swimming (as yet all unknown to each other) in the rough seas oft the Yarmouth coast. As the concluding sentences of these reminiscefices are in close connection with the sonnet here given, I append them. "The last time I ever saw him (Borrow) was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West- end. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people NOTES. 323 born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it ; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air— a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge ; and from its association with ' the last of Borrow,' I shall never forget it." No. ccxlviii. Augusta Webster. Mrs. Augusta Webster comes second to Robert Browning as a dramatic poet, among living writers. From her earliest book down to her latest, the very beautiful In a Day, she has shown a mental vigour — a poetic power and insight — to which it may be doubted if justice has baen ever fully done, notwithstanding the high reputation in which Mrs. Webster is undoubtedly held. She has written very few sonnets, and the form does not seem natural to her. " The Brook Rhine " is distinctly her best. No. ccxHx. Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841). Blanco While owes an enduring fame to a single sonnet— but this sonnet is one of the noblest in any language. There is quite a " Blanco White " literature concerning the famous fourteen lines headed Night and Death. It is strange that the man who wrote this should do nothing else of any importance, and its composition must either have been a magnificent accident or the outcome of a not very powerful poetic impulse coming unexpectedly and in a moment to white heat, and therein exhausting itself for ever. Coleridge spoke of it as " the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language;" and, later, Leigh Hunt wrote that, in point of thought, it " stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language : nor can we ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence." I may refer those who wish for further particulars to the interest- ing notes compiled by Mr. Main ( Treasury of English Sonnets). From these notes I excerpt an earlier reading of this famous sonnet, which Mr. Main obtained from the Rev. Dean R. Per- ceval Graves, of Dublin, who, some fifty years ago, copied it either from an autograph or from an early printed copy. Mysterious Night ! when the first man but knew Thee by report, unseen, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame. This glorious canopy of Light and Blue ? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew. Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the Host of Heaven came, And lo I creation widened on his view ' 324 NOTES. Who could have thought what darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such endless Orbs thou mad'st us blind ? Weak man ! why to shun death this anxious strife ? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? I have ventured on an important alteration of the accepted text, an alteration which every commentator has yearned to make — or ought to have so yearned. This is the substitution of " flow'r " for "fly" in the nth line. Even if White did not write " flow'r," we may at least credit him with the intention of doing so. The earliest known appearance of Night and Death is in the Bijou (Pickering) 1828 ; the next, in 2he Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1835. No. ccl. Henry Kirke White (1785-1806). The star of Kirke White's reputation has waned considerably of recent years. His poetry is certainly not calculated to withstand the stress of time. No. ccli. Charles Whitehead (1804-1862). Whitehead was and is best known through his novel Richard Savage. The fine sonnet which I have quoted is as Whitehead really wrote it : the finer version in Mr. Caine's anthology was taken down to Rossetti's dictation. It had long been a favourite with Rossetti, and it gained greatly by passing through the poetic atmosphere of his mind. All interested in Whitehead as a man and a writer, and in the tragic story of his life, should read Mr. Mackenzie Bell's rnonograph — A Forgotten Genius (Fisher Unwin, 1885), No. cclii. William Henry Whitworth, Mr. Whitworth was a head-master in a large public school. Mr Housman had a great admiration for his sonnets, and printed several of them in his anthology. No. ccliii. Oscar Wilde. Mr. Oscar Wilde has written some excellent sonnets. No. ccliii. appears in his Poems, No. ccliv. John Wilson (" Christopher North"). I am glad to be now able to print Christopher North's fine sonnet, " The Evening Cloud," with which I became acquainted too late for its insertion in the previous editions of this book. No. cclv. The Rev. Richard Wilton is the author of three volumes of finely contemplative and religious verse — Wood-Notes and Church-Bells (Bell & Daldy, 1873), Lyrics, Sylvan and Sacred (George Bell & Sons, 1878), and Sungleams ; Rondeaux and Sonnets. " Frosted Trees " is excerpted from Sungleams, From Wood-Notes I have pleasure in quoting a sonnet founded on a passage in one of Archbishop Trench's poems. NOTES. 32 s The Voice at Eventide. Hush'd was the music of the Sabbath-bell ; Thetwilight anthem of the birds was still, Which late they warbled at their own sweet will ; When on naine ear a soothing murmur fell. Borne on the evening breeze it seemed to swell And wander fitfully from hill to hill, And with its gracious harmony to fill The grassy hollow of the listening dell. That murmur was " the sound of many waters," Fall below fall — more sweet than note of bird, Or Sabbath chime, or song of loving daughters, Or any melody by mortals heard : For it was Nature's symbol of the Voice, Which when it speaks makes highest heaven rejoice I Nos. cclvi.-cclvii. James Chapman Woods. These imaginative sonnets are printed in Mr. Wood's A Child of the People : and other Poems, a volume of poetry which attracted much less attention than it indubitably deserved. Nos. cclviii.-cclxx. William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Some of the noblest work of one of the greatest of English poets is enshrined in Wordsworth's sonnets. In these it was comparatively rare that he "walked on all fours," to use Sir Walter Scott's phrase, for in them he was wont to express with a conciseness and dignity, a lucidity and poetic fervour, many of his finest conceptions and most clearly defined thoughts. Every good sonnet of Wordsworth's is like a mirror wherein we see his poetic nature reflected ; and is there another man who would so well stand the test of such a multitude of mirrors ? His fatal habit of rhyming upon everything resulted, in his sonnet-work, in the many more or less indifferent productions to be found in the " Duddon," and more especially in the Ecclesiastical Series : but speaking generally, his sonnets are freer from his besetting sins than one would naturally expect. He is, and must always be, considered one of the greatest of English sonneteers. At his very best he is the greatest. _ His sonnets are mostly as beautiful and limpid as an amber-tinted stream, and the thoughts which are their motives as clear as the large pebbly stones in the shallows thereof. In a word, he, at his best, knew what he wanted to say, and could say it in his own manner supremely well. In selecting thirteen of what seem to me Wordsworth's very finest sonnets (not altogether an easy matter), I have allowed personal preference to bias me whenever critical estimates were closely balanced. 0. L. WEiaUT, PBIHTEB QLASSOW t ■ma-i-i^A*!^}