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Cornell University Library 
 
 PR 4007.A45W5 
 
 The white book of the muses, 
 
 3 1924 013 205 947 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013205947 
 
THE WHITE BOOK 
 OF THE MUSES 
 
Printed February 1895 
 Impression 666 Copies 
 
THE # WHITE * BGDK 
 OF # THE # MUSES 
 BY # G. F. REYNOLDS 
 ANDERSON # # # # 
 
 <" 
 
 GEORGE P. JOHNSTON 
 EDINBURGH: MDCCCXCV 
 
IV^i<h4 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
OXFORD 
 
 TO WALTER PATER 
 
 Pale visions of the taper spires, 
 Like warning fingers pointed, rise 
 Around me, lo, and there it lies, 
 
 Oxford, a pool of fading fires ! 
 
 A dim metropolis of dreams, 
 Repopulate with beams and gleams ! 
 
 City of Sunset — thou that bidst 
 My spirit kneel as bent in prayer — 
 To me thou art the more famed fair 
 
 For one who murmurs in thy midst, 
 
 A poet whom the Muses chose 
 As minister, as Mage of Prose. 
 
vi THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 And now I come so close to him, 
 Thou temple of the Golden Tomes, 
 That towers, blest roofs, and gourded domes 
 
 In pageantries of purple swim — 
 
 Then tired I wake, to read again 
 Of Marius and the minds of men. 
 
 1th July 1894. 
 
OF THE MUSES vii 
 
 WALTER PATER 
 
 Death, sprinkle ashes on thy face, 
 Hide, hide thyself away from men, 
 For he is dead whose voice again 
 
 Shall never charm the ear of space — 
 
 Pater is dead whose genial breath 
 Gave loveliness to life— to death. 
 
 Who can forget when Flavian died ? 
 Not I, for life at that was tinged 
 With quiet colour, earth was fringed 
 
 With sadder seasons glorified. 
 
 Is he too dead who let me live ? 
 Hope flees, and Faith is fugitive. 
 
viii THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 His soul was like an oriel, 
 
 And through it came the sunset glow 
 
 Colouring all the cool air so, 
 While twilight deepened like a spell ; 
 
 And stained in glories warm and faint, 
 Knelt Beauty like a blazoned saint. 
 
 T,istjuly 1894. 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Homer 
 
 I 
 
 Sappho . ■ 
 
 5 
 
 ./Eschylus 
 
 7 
 
 Aristophanes . 
 
 9 
 
 Theocritus . ■ 
 
 IO 
 
 Catullus . ■ • • 
 
 II 
 
 Dante . • 
 
 13 
 
 Petrarch . • ■ 
 
 17 
 
 Chaucer . . ■ - • 
 
 18 
 
 Villon ... ■ • 
 
 19 
 
 Spenser . 
 
 21 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney . . . ■ 
 
 23 
 
 Marlowe . 
 
 25 
 
 Shakespeare . - ■ 
 
 27 
 
 Campion . • • 
 
 . - 30 
 
 Donne • ■ • 
 
 31 
 
 Ben Jonson • • 
 
 33 
 
THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Richard Barnfield 
 Cyril Tourneur 
 Beaumont and Fletcher 
 Thomas Carew 
 Robert Herrick 
 Milton 
 
 Sir John Suckling 
 Richard Crashaw 
 Richard Lovelace 
 John Dryden . 
 Aphra Behn 
 Alexander Pope 
 Thomas Gray . 
 William Collins 
 Goethe 
 Chatterton 
 William Blake 
 Robert Burns . 
 Wordsworth . 
 Sir Walter Scott 
 Coleridge 
 Walter Savage Landor 
 Charles Lamb 
 Byron . 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 XI 
 
 Shelley 
 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 Keats . 
 
 
 
 
 81 
 
 Leopardi 
 
 
 
 
 85 
 
 Charles Wells . 
 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 Victor Hugo . 
 
 
 
 
 89 
 
 Thomas Lovell Beddoes 
 
 
 
 
 9i 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald 
 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 Thomas Gordon Hake 
 
 
 
 
 95 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning . 
 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
 
 
 
 
 IOI 
 
 Theophile Gautier 
 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 Robert Browning 
 
 
 
 
 105 
 
 Philip James Bailey . 
 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 Emily Bronte . 
 
 
 
 
 109 
 
 Leconte de Lisle 
 
 
 
 
 in 
 
 Coventry Patmore 
 
 
 
 
 114 
 
 Ebenezer Jones 
 
 
 
 
 "5 
 
 Charles Baudelaire . 
 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 Matthew Arnold 
 
 
 
 
 120 
 
 Mortimer Collins 
 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 George Meredith 
 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 Christina Rossetti 
 
 
 
 
 131 
 
 Alexander Smith 
 
 
 
 
 135 
 
Xll 
 
 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Robert, Earl of Lytton 
 
 PAGE 
 136 
 
 James Thomson (B. V.) 
 
 137 
 
 William Morris 
 
 141 
 
 John, Lord de Tabley 
 
 145 
 
 Theodore Watts ' . 
 
 147 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 
 151 
 
 Augusta Webster 
 
 155 
 
 Austin Dobson 
 
 157 
 
 Adah Isaacs Menken . 
 
 159 
 
 Sidney Lanier 
 
 l6l 
 
 John Payne .... 
 
 I6 S 
 
 Joaquin Miller 
 
 168 
 
 Andrew Lang 
 
 I69 
 
 Robert Bridges 
 
 171 
 
 Arthur O'Shaughnessy 
 
 173 
 
 Paul Verlaine . 
 
 175 
 
 Arthur Rimbaud 
 
 177 
 
 William Ernest Henley 
 
 . 178 
 
 Edmund Gosse 
 
 179 
 
 Stephane Mallarme" . 
 
 180 
 
 Philip Bourke Marston 
 
 I8l 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 • 183 
 
 Josd-Maria de Heredia 
 
 . 187 
 
 Oliver Madox-Brown 
 
 189 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 Xlll 
 
 Oscar Wilde . 
 William Sharp 
 John Davidson 
 Lionel Johnson 
 William Watson 
 Francis Thompson 
 Graham R. Tomson 
 Norman Gale . 
 Richard Le Gallienne 
 Arthur Symons 
 John Gray 
 
 192 
 
 193 
 195 
 199 
 201 
 203 
 205 
 207 
 209 
 213 
 215 
 
THE WHITE BOOK 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 HOMER 
 
 DARKNESS ! the darkness of the infant earth 
 Whose new-born lips with primary life suspire — 
 Darkness, the frame to string with light, the lyre 
 
 Unstrung as yet in one great Poet's dearth ! 
 
 When, lo, eternal Homer burst to birth, 
 
 And strung the darkness with resounding fire, ' 
 And sprung to light with all the dawn's desire, 
 
 And wrung the heavens as with the morning's 
 mirth ! 
 
 Homer, the sun who brought the earth-child joy, 
 The morning-star who from Heaven's quivering 
 height 
 
 Shed lustre o'er the walls and halls of Troy — 
 
 Morn's self who, moving with Achilles' might, 
 
 Astounded darkness with the gift of light, 
 
 And stood god-father to the earth, a boy. 
 A 
 
THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE ILIAD 
 
 Inevitably as Fate the large lines move, 
 The full-mouthed verses that implore, reprove : 
 Grecian Achilles, Hector, and, afar, 
 Helen, a flame, a flake, a flower, a star. 
 
 THE ODYSSEY 
 Old Ocean marshalls these great measures so, 
 These great Neptunian cadences that flow : 
 Ulysses, brutish Cyclops, and, above, 
 Penelope, a shell, a bird, a dove. 
 
 THE WHOLE 
 MORNING, noon, and night, that fill the sky, 
 Birth, and life, and death, that make us die ; 
 Time, eternity, and, o'er the whole, 
 Homer, the heart, the head, the brain, the soul. 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 MAEONIDES 
 Immortal old Maeonides, 
 
 Through years that have thy name for sign 
 I see thee by the Chian seas. 
 
 The thymy civil-spoken breeze 
 
 For thee makes music sibylline, 
 Immortal old Maeonides. 
 
 Spring like a palmer treads the leas, 
 
 And, while the tawny sun doth shine, 
 I see thee by the Chian seas. 
 
 The Muses hail thee on their knees — 
 
 The golden sisterhood, the nine — 
 Immortal old Maeonides. 
 
4 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 And as they bend, between the trees 
 
 Catching a glimpse of glimmering brine, 
 I see thee by the Chian seas. 
 
 Let Summer burn, or Winter freeze, 
 
 Wrapt up in olden dreams of thine, 
 Immortal old Mseonides, 
 I see thee by the Chian seas. 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 SAPPHO 
 
 What cometh through the silver haze, 
 Whirled by the gusty wheels of time ? 
 Only a leaf of Sappho's bays. 
 
 The year hath lipped its leafy lays, 
 
 And 'mid the main's memorial rhyme 
 What cometh through the silver haze ? — 
 
 A memory of immortal days, 
 
 A relic of the years that climb : 
 Only a leaf of Sappho's bays. 
 
 The music of far-fading Mays 
 
 Laughs in each star's antiphonal chime ; 
 What cometh through the silver haze ? 
 
6 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 'Tis not the stars themselves that praise 
 
 Earth's pre-eternal pantomime : — 
 Only a leaf of Sappho's bays. 
 
 From faded roses Love can raise 
 
 Sweet memories of their crimson prime : 
 What cometh through the silver haze ? — 
 Only a leaf of Sappho's bays. 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 While now thou sittest 'mid that silver choir 
 Whose minds empearl the ivory of speech, 
 
 We find the shattered pieces of thy lyre 
 Cast up by Time like wreckage on the 
 beach. 
 
OF THE MUSES 7 
 
 ^SCHYLUS 
 
 He stands alone ; all Nature gives him hail : 
 The golden-handed lightning swift unlocks 
 Heaven's sulphurous heart if ^Eschylus but 
 knocks 
 
 In deafening tones that bid the stars turn pale. 
 
 He stands alone, exulting in the gale ; 
 Hell shivers at his feet ; creation rocks 
 Beneath his hand, while thunderously he mocks 
 
 The thunder's self who dare not countervail. 
 
 He stands alone ; the sea upholds his name, 
 The sea whose iron lips alone can frame 
 
 Due praise to him towhom the winds gave breath, 
 And, upward gazing as we sunward climb, 
 We go to give the King a part of Time, 
 
 Of Life and Love, and Heaven and Hell and 
 Death. 
 
THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THREE POETS 
 
 God made a man the image of himself, 
 
 A man in whom the nights and days were one, 
 Who, rising, clomb the mountain's craggiest shelf, 
 
 And laid his hand upon the sacred sun ; 
 Who took the moon from the close cave of night, 
 
 And brushed the stars away from him like chaff; 
 Whose sorrow shook the highest heavenly height, 
 
 While earth grew giddy at his lightest laugh. 
 The sea obeyed him, fawning like a hound, 
 
 Licking his feet with multitudinous lips, 
 And, when he struck his staff into the ground, 
 
 The firmament was shaken with eclipse: 
 God framed and fashioned three men even thus : 
 Their names were Shakespeare, Dante, ^Esckylus. 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 ARISTOPHANES 
 
 As mighty as the mountains 
 The personality which holds us here ; 
 
 As limpid as the fountains 
 The flow of fancies crystalline and clear, 
 
 Divinely from the earth derivative, 
 
 And destined e'er to live. 
 
 The mountains shall not crumble, 
 Nor yet shall he who holds us as of yore ; 
 
 The fountains make and mumble 
 
 The rhymes they mumbled and they made 
 
 before ; 
 And earth-like, he shall circle, as he sings, 
 
 About the sun of things. 
 
io THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THEOCRITUS 
 
 A PASTORAL landscape amber-lit and sunny : 
 There once you dwelt. Its lovely peace 
 
 equipped 
 Your quiet muse with sweetness never sipped 
 
 By merchant bees who barter not for money, 
 
 But whose green mart is earth — whose gold ishoney. 
 Afar the soft-haired ocean, azure-lipped, 
 Spake in the shore's great ear, and bright 
 prows dipped 
 
 Cruising with far white sails for spotted tunny. 
 
 Yea, there you dwelt, and there to-day dwell I, 
 There where the moon, with eyes that shun the 
 light, 
 
 Beneath the blue-stained awning of the sky 
 Waits for the cool companionship of night, 
 
 And, while I weep to see pale Daphnis die, 
 Your tears make all Time's gloomy dial bright. 
 
OF THE MUSES n 
 
 CATULLUS 
 
 Not the gods themselves could lull us 
 Into slumber half so sweet, 
 
 Half so dreamful, as Catullus 
 Sheds in music round our feet — 
 
 Sheds, until our ears are brimming 
 Over with the sound of love — 
 
 Sheds, until our eyes are swimming, 
 Dimming at the sight above 
 Rimming all the night with love, 
 Limning passion's dove with light. 
 
 Not the gods themselves could cull us 
 Blooms as cool and blest as these 
 
 Beauty's woodman, best Catullus, 
 Gathers 'neath the passionate trees — 
 
12 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Gathers where the spring's romances 
 
 Set the woods aglow with love, 
 Where the heart which love entrances 
 Dances to the gods above, 
 Trances all the night with love, 
 Glances like a dove towards light. 
 
 OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 You gazed on life, and did not find her fair 
 Who sprinkled ashes on her face and hair ; 
 
 Thine were the veins whose blood ran ruby wine; 
 We drink : it is the vintage of despair. 
 
OF THE MUSES 13 
 
 DANTE 
 
 DANTE, thy veiled form amid the night 
 Is as the bulk of that Olympian Jove 
 Whose bolts struck bold Briareus when he strove, 
 
 Binding him helpless on the iEtnean height. 
 
 How oft the moon had lapsed and sunk from sight, 
 In watery robes of western silver wove, 
 Ere thou, with lightnings clinging as they clove, 
 
 Startledst the dawn's dark ancestry with light. 
 
 How oft when sunrise flowered to flame again, 
 Thy verse rang clear across the hollowing wold 
 
 Far-travelled not of mortals, not of men, 
 But by such gods as thee whose fingers hold 
 
 Puissance to wield and bid the imperial pen 
 Write Dante's name in charactery of gold. 
 
14 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE THREE CROWNS 
 I. THE IRON CROWN 
 {Dante on Earth) 
 Florence, is this my due, is this my meed, 
 This iron crown of exile and of wrong ? 
 Is this the superscription of my song, 
 This pain 'neath which my spirit seems to bleed ? 
 Mayhap the hour will come when thou shalt heed 
 Each bloody tear mine eyes have shed so long ; 
 Mayhap my love will win thine own, twice strong, 
 When these bright years that break to-day recede. 
 
 Though, Florence, thou hast been the house wherein 
 My soul hath wasted sadly through the years, 
 Yet, Florence, yet I would forget my fears — 
 Ev'n now my name is spoken 'mid the din 
 Of downcry and of death— might I but win 
 Thy smile — my mother's — to transform my tears. 
 
OF THE MUSES 15 
 
 II. THE CROWN OF FIRE 
 (Dante in Hell) 
 
 My heart is hard and frozen in the gloom — 
 Frozen and pulseless in the night enorme 
 Made dire with harrowing portents of the storm ; 
 
 My face is dark with glyphic signs of doom ; 
 
 Grim shadow-shapes project themselves and loom 
 About me, while around my veiled form 
 The darkness tightens ; though the air was warm, 
 
 Keen ice-blasts freeze. Hell, do thou yield me 
 room. 
 
 My breast falls open, and the hand of Death 
 Lies heavy on my heart but not my soul ; 
 The clouds close round in fiery ranks that roll, 
 
 While over all a loud voice trumpeteth 
 
 'Mid foul upheaval of contagious breath, 
 ' Dying, thou livest to attain thy goal.' 
 
1 6 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 III. THE CROWN OF GOLD 
 {Dante in Heaven) 
 
 White cavalcades of stars are round me wheeled, 
 Each sphere pavilioned in beatitude, 
 And one high hope that held me up and stood 
 
 Beside me ever is achieved and sealed. 
 
 The future's horoscope I see revealed 
 In vivid star-signs, while each darkling mood, 
 Whose bitter secret was my spirit's food, 
 
 Turns golden to the touch : my wound is healed. 
 
 The iron crown upon my haughty head 
 Is now of gold ; upon my brow the deep, 
 The sad lines sorrow sowed for time to reap 
 
 Are now no more ; and lo, the tears I shed 
 Upon my Mother's brow give glory now 
 
 To her whose lips were withered else and dead. 
 
OF THE MUSES 17 
 
 PETRARCH 
 
 Singer of love, grown lovely in its light — 
 Petrarca — let me greet thee as I would 
 Some grave arch-priest of sorrow and solitude 
 
 With God's sweet congregation in his sight. ; 
 
 Yea, and because thy spirit was so white — 
 A lily christened by the dew — my mood 
 Puts on the garb of reverent brotherhood ; 
 
 I weep with thee, for sorrow's self seems bright. 
 
 One woman by her ivory beauty built 
 
 Thy life to absolute music, like the spring, 
 And sweet it was though set to rhythm sad ; 
 And other lives are filled with sound, are gilt 
 With tonal colour of thy sorrowing, 
 While thou art gone, in robes of singing clad. 
 
1 8 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 Chaucer, who read'st the changeless runes of life, 
 Thine is no flowery largess of the May, 
 
 Dancing and shining in a rosy strife, 
 But one of all the year, where each fair day 
 
 Shines, dances, as a jewel set in clay — 
 One that imprints a pure perpetual glory 
 Upon the might-enamelled front of story. 
 
 Yet one hard season lends the wintry ray 
 
 Of hapless love, and oft and oft I pay 
 The silver toll of tears to that sweet wife 
 
 Of Fame, divine Emilia, and would lay, 
 'Mid fever of violin and vaunt of fife, 
 
 All life before thee as a scroll unfolden 
 
 For thee to trace with letters honey-golden. 
 
OF THE MUSES 19 
 
 VILLON 
 
 Nay, Frangois Villon, nay, our burglar-bard, 
 We shun thee not for all thy life's mischances ; 
 We still gaze on thy face with gladsome glances 
 
 Though all the music of thy life be marred. 
 
 What if thy shame's abasement do retard 
 
 The pureness of thy song ! As Time advances, 
 Thy name moves all men's lips, whose love 
 enhances 
 
 Thy high renown with rare unique regard. 
 
 Our England hath its Villon-soul of song, 
 Whose words were wild and passionately strong — 
 
 Marlowe, that shoe for stately Shakespeare's feet. 
 And, Villon, where sitt'st thou ? Supreme, alone, 
 None to dispute thy strange and dizzy throne 
 
 O'er which love's sunlight sheds its dayspell 
 sweet. 
 
20 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 Thy hands are red as lips are red with wine ; 
 
 Dark shadows of thine age are o'er thee cast ; 
 And like an angel — fallen, yet divine — 
 
 Thou loomest in the chasm of the past. 
 
 THE TESTAMENT 
 
 Villon, I seem to see thee strange and sad 
 
 With wild companions round — an evil throng 
 Having as much true virtuousness as had 
 Villon. 
 
 The noise dies down, and clear and sweet and 
 strong 
 Some hope of Heaven comes nigh as if it bade 
 Leave this vain rout and triumph over wrong. 
 
 Alas ! Hell welcomed thee, and thou wert glad 
 
 To see it open to thyself and song : 
 Thy song is sweet, 'twas thou alone wert bad, 
 Villon. 
 
OF THE MUSES 21 
 
 SPENSER 
 
 The Faerie Queene sits on a throne immenser 
 
 Than Time or Fate her subjects' whole demesne 
 Who hail, 'mid crowds of vassals growing denser, 
 The Faerie Queene. 
 
 Love loved her once with love than death in- 
 tenser ; 
 Death challenged Love with hate than love more 
 keen; 
 But Death was conquered by the fierier fencer. 
 
 So that shamed duellist, Death, avoids calm 
 Spenser 
 Who, down the transept of the past serene, 
 Goes gravely, swinging as a golden censer 
 ' The Faerie Queene.' 
 
22 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 ETERNAL FAME 
 
 The elves and fairies of eternal iame 
 
 With brown leaves furnished by autumnal fingers 
 Cover and case your name from blush or blame 
 
 Or blemish cast by Time, who lurks and lingers, 
 Loiters and lurks, around your virgin fame. 
 
 The elves and fairies have a fairy chief- 
 Chaste Love, who leads them through your 
 bowers of pleasure, 
 
 Your pleasant bowers — relief from suns of grief 
 At noon of misery's most burning measure — 
 
 Your bowers whereof the bower of joy is chief. 
 
 The elves and fairies love you long and well, 
 Have loved you and shall love you as eternal — 
 
 Love and have loved the spell you speak, and tell — 
 Nay, bid, command — cold Time with favours 
 vernal 
 
 To deck your tomb and love you long and well. 
 
OF THE MUSES 33 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 
 Small need to praise the linnet, laud the lark ! 
 
 'Twould seem that May came only for their 
 sake: 
 
 Their praise is in the pride the green months take 
 In painting every wood and meadow and park. 
 The nightingale that dazzles all the dark 
 
 Finds her best praise in hedge or briery brake. 
 
 Why to the rose a single compliment make — 
 The rose which half the seasons fondly mark ! 
 
 Then why praise thee — song's rainbow fugitive ? 
 Thou, like the linnet, like the lark, the rose 
 Or any other flower which buds and blows, 
 Find'st thy praise in the world where all men live : 
 Not man but every season comes to give 
 
 Greeting to thee whence song by nature flows. 
 
24 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 TO THE REV. DR. A. B. GROSART 
 
 Thou, like a diver in the seas of Time, 
 Bring 'st, from the deeps where piled up centuries lie 
 Like wrecks unseen of any earthly eye, 
 
 So many gems as fair as in their prime, 
 
 Such light-appareled pearls of lustrous rhyme, 
 Speech fails to speak the thanks our hearts imply, 
 Our voices falter and our feelings die : 
 
 We can but watch thee at thy toil sublime. 
 
 Yet what need'st thou of any mundane praise 
 From us inferiors of those souls of old f 
 
 Time takes thy jewels in his hand and weighs 
 Their worth that widens in his worthy hold, 
 
 Then laying love's arm upon thy shoulder, pays 
 Their price in glory, far outglittering gold. 
 
OF THE MUSES 25 
 
 MARLOWE 
 
 Harp singing in the lawless hands of birth, 
 
 Thy sounds with those of heavenlier pitch were 
 mixed ; 
 Thy strings proclaimed deep keys of sorrow or 
 mirth ; 
 
 On wild mad themes thy melodies were fixt ; 
 But towards the end, when thy great music grew 
 
 More largely beautiful and grandly calm, 
 The tenor strains of angel harpists drew 
 
 The various sounds to one seraphic psalm. 
 God would have smiled in spite of globed tears : 
 
 The heaven-won music mounted up victorious ; 
 Timewould have laughed in spite of clogging years: 
 
 The full-scored future lay divinely glorious ; 
 Swift flash and clash of knives, a stab, a cry, 
 And then the voice of Death that thunders, ' Die.' 
 
26 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 THE steel that wounded wayward Marlowe's brain 
 Can ne'er be cleansed of its crimson stain. 
 It now becomes a type of Time defined, 
 Bright with the overflow of Marlowe's mind. 
 
 TAMBURLAINE 
 
 TERROR and thunder of a thousand drums ; 
 
 The clank of bucklers and the clash of spears ; 
 'Tis Tamburlaine, 'tis Tamburlaine who comes, 
 
 Washing kingdoms from the face of War as 
 tears. 
 
 Wonder and thunder of iambic drums ; 
 
 Sound of Olympian armies taking breath ; 
 'Tis Marlowe — mighty as with God — who comes, 
 
 To conquer kingdoms and dismantle Death. 
 
OF THE MUSES 27 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The years fall back, unheeded, unbeholden ; 
 
 Life's eyes toward the Future tend and turn ; 
 
 Old faiths grow chill ; new passions pulse and 
 burn ; 
 Jeers take the place of joy, and tears wax olden. 
 Yet are the sun's broad leaves of light unfolden, 
 
 To sunward still the yellow sunflowers yearn, 
 
 And still, though pain be glad, or joy be stern, 
 The world is Shakespeare's, and her smiles grow 
 golden. 
 
 To what shall we compare him ? to the sun 
 With web o' the ruddy skeins of morning spun ; 
 
 To ocean, or the mountains, or the thunder ; 
 
 To aught of earth, filling man's fate with wonder; 
 Or only to the flowers, which, blowing as one, 
 
 Have all the nerves of Nature quivering under. 
 
28 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 'ALL STARS ARE ANGELS; BUT THE SUN IS GOD' 
 
 God said, Let there be light : and there was light. 
 
 And Shakespeare, coming with' the leaves and 
 flowers, 
 
 Bids gloom and mist and every cloud that lowers 
 Shine through with hues sun-golden, starry-bright. 
 His word is law : the sabled bulk of Night 
 
 Falls ; Time, far pinnacled on days and hours, 
 
 Topples, and, communing with sphery Powers, 
 Earth hails the planets as they wheel their flight. 
 
 Man may not see the face of God, but He 
 Beholds the face of all men. It is so ; 
 And more than that God is not man may know, 
 
 Yet God takes in all lives ; all things that be 
 'Neath shadow of His o'erarching gaze must go : 
 
 And as with God — thou Shakespeare — 'tis with 
 thee! 
 
OF THE MUSES 29 
 
 THE SONNETS 
 
 The breath of old-time roses breathes afresh 
 
 In the divine deep odorousness of summer, 
 When fields of clover, dew-inlaid and nesh, 
 
 Make glad each thievish furry-belted comer ; 
 So here the honied things of love are writ 
 
 Again, yet sweeter than the old-time story, 
 And like those robbers of the rose I sit 
 
 And dip myself in Shakespeare's antique glory. 
 These sonnet-petals are not carven of dream, 
 
 But hewn of his own adamantine heart ; 
 For like a fadeless perfect flower they seem, 
 
 Vermilioned with the vital blood of art, 
 With lustre from the soul itself new taken — 
 The leaves of love by man's own magic shaken. 
 
30 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THOMAS CAMPION 
 
 CHAINLESS Love alone may champion 
 Rights as clear, as dear, as thine — 
 Love who in the cause of Beauty, 
 Ev'n as in the cause of Campion, 
 
 Fights and findeth War's grim duty 
 Gracious and divine. 
 
 Yet, if Love forsook thee, Campion 
 (Never, never ! Love now saith), 
 Yet, if Love forgot his duty, 
 Thou wouldst never want a champion 
 
 While the world remembered Beauty, 
 Life forgot not Death. 
 
OF THE MUSES 31 
 
 JOHN DONNE 
 
 For songs of thine our fields of song are sweeter ; 
 
 Men recognise, 
 Through tangling brushwoods of umbrageous 
 
 metre, 
 Lines not the highest could have limned com- 
 pleter 
 However wise. 
 
 There was about thy bulk what would belittle 
 
 The burliest name ; 
 'Fore thee the brazen years were thin and 
 
 brittle ; 
 Life broke, and Death received thy dust for 
 quittal, 
 And thou hadst fame. 
 
32 THE, WHITE BOOK 
 
 Thou wert an old-time Browning in embryon, 
 
 More rugged than he, 
 Yet like him and before him sprung the scion 
 Of Nature — she who like the mother-lion 
 
 Whelped him and thee. 
 
 JOHN WEBSTER 
 
 A voice thus shook the unfathomable gloom : 
 ' Webster am I, whose ear, against the earth, 
 
 Caught deaf ening secrets from the lips of Doom, 
 Nor knew if they were mixed with tears ot 
 mirth! 
 
OF THE MUSES 33 
 
 BEN JONSON 
 
 Beloved even in the face of blame, 
 Chief Rabbi chosen of the tribe of Ben ! 
 With hand too large to guide a human pen ! 
 
 Changing for ever and yet ere the same ! 
 
 O rare Ben Jonson, but to say thy name 
 
 Brings up dear dreams of those divine days when, 
 Through the strong large voices of promoted 
 men, 
 
 The spacious utterance of the gods oft came ! 
 
 It was not thine to work such rounded wonder 
 
 As now betrays his tools who was the Prince. 
 
 Thou gavest us but thyself to so convince 
 
 Man of thine honesty unriven asunder — 
 
 Thou 'fore whose glance majestic, quailing under, 
 
 The myriad eyes of monster passions wince, 
 c 
 
34 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 RICHARD BARNFIELD 
 
 Chance linked thy name with Shakespeare's — 
 happy chance : 
 We might have missed the sweetest, freshest 
 breath 
 That leads the spring and lets the daisies dance, 
 Starring with smiles the wintry front of Death. 
 
 MADRIGAL 
 
 APRIL cannot come our way, 
 
 Neither May be merry, 
 But thou laughest too with May, 
 
 And dost with April ferry. 
 
 Art thou stale as Time now is ? 
 
 Cowslips they are yellow : 
 Spring for all the centuries 
 
 But grows more fair and mellow. 
 
OF THE MUSES 35 
 
 CYRIL TOURNEUR 
 Amid the tempest's momentary lull 
 
 He stands with bloody feet; blind lightnings 
 
 climb 
 And clasp and girdle him from time to timel 
 His voice makes ev'n the storm's dire mandate null. 
 Instinctively he seems to stoop and cull 
 The crimsonest blossom in the bowers of crime ; 
 His murderous hands, which murder's own 
 begrime, 
 Hold high the gaping image of a skull. 
 Tis brimmed with blood : we shrink, yet as we 
 
 shrink 
 Our lips are not all loth to drain and drink 
 
 Right to the dregs this dreadful dreaded cup ; 
 And Tourneur smiles tempestuous where he stands, 
 While Vindici with dark abhorrent hands 
 Holds the bright cresset of his memory up. 
 
36 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 
 
 Twin roses on a single' stem, 
 
 Their fragrance sweet befriends the air 
 As if dim Venus breathed on them 
 
 From roselips not more dark and rare : 
 Fletcher, a radiant flower, a bloom 
 Stamened with smiles, bright Fletcher whom 
 The muses marry with the dusk-haired gloom. 
 
 Twin roses on a single stem, 
 Their colour stains the air with light 
 
 As if slim Venus wept o'er them, 
 
 And left them ever brave and bright : 
 
 Beaumont, a fadeless bloom, a flower 
 
 Bedewed with passion, pathos, power, 
 The lovelier, fresher for the falling shower. 
 
OF THE MUSES 37 
 
 THOMAS CAREW 
 
 God taught the gallant sea to sing, 
 And careless Love taught thee to lisp. 
 Green billow-bunch and foamy wisp 
 Their wind-inspired cantata bring, 
 For God taught the bass sea to sing. 
 
 Love taught thee how to lisp, not sing, 
 
 We mark thee by Love's astrolabe — 
 Thee, lisping like a rosy babe 
 
 Whose lips are musical with spring 
 
 Though never learned by Love to sing. 
 
38 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 The poet teaches hearts to sing, 
 
 Love singing in his happy heart ; 
 
 And earth — the pearl-shaped earth — takes part 
 In loveliest fancies carolling, 
 For Love taught poets' hearts to sing. 
 
OF THE MUSES 39 
 
 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 While Herrick sang serenely like the thrush, 
 Ev"n as a wood-lark, whose impetuous gush 
 Makes the full throat of every ring-dove fail, 
 The silver tones of Herbert made the dale 
 Still as the press Death's feet, wine-purpled, crush. 
 
 The kine were wont to pass at eve and brush 
 Young dews from meadows daisy-bright and lush : 
 Here Wither warbled as a nightingale, 
 While Herrick sang. 
 
 Proud Nature wore her wede of greeny plush, 
 The leas were clad in velvet, and a hush 
 Hung o'er the ocean as a holy veil 
 
40 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Till piny murmurs seemed to know and hail 
 The tide of Milton in its billowy rush 
 While Herrick sang. 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 He loved good wine and midnight romp and revel ; 
 
 His lyric like shall never breathe again ; 
 Repentance, coming, saved him from the devil, 
 
 And won his voice for angels and for men. 
 
OF THE MUSES 41 
 
 MILTON 
 
 \ 
 
 Majestic Milton, Britain's Paradise 
 
 Of Song, which walls of Heaven itself engird, 
 But once, before thy coming, had been stirred 
 
 By such as thee, who laugh at Death's device. 
 
 Fair Shakespeare first, whom all fair things 
 entice — 
 All lives, all tragedies — had passed, and heard 
 Strange sounds untold by any tell-tale bird, 
 
 Smelt odours never blown from groves of spice. 
 
 Ay, Shakespeare's coming was Creation — Morn ; 
 
 Then— ample eve dim-mellowing into night— 
 Camest thou, whose eyes the darkness doth adorn, 
 
 Who orb'st all Paradise with eyes of light — 
 In Heaven the heavenliest angel ever born, 
 
 The mightiest seraph in the ranks of might. 
 
42 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 AN EPITAPH 
 
 Another Homer by the shore 
 Whose lasting rocks are writ with lore 
 Beyond the mind's imagining — 
 Beyond the ken of things that be : 
 John Milton with hierarchic pen 
 Proved well his province 'mong all men 
 When mad Rebellion's billowy wing 
 Had smote the ridgy English sea. 
 
 Through pitchy nights of civil strife, 
 A beckoning loadstar unto life, 
 Persistently his genius shone, 
 
 Undimmed by any pendent cloud. 
 And Cromwell — statuesque and grim — 
 Threw baleful shadows over him — 
 Cromwell, the trumpeter of dawn — 
 Cromwell, the dark and beetle-browed. 
 
OF THE MUSES 43 
 
 Though Milton's agate eyes were veiled, 
 His soul adventurously scaled 
 The heavenly ladder star-let down, 
 Thence looking on the world below. 
 His agate eyes were veiled indeed, 
 But God was with him in his need, 
 And gilt the creased and cruel frown, 
 And led him past the paths of snow. 
 
 To-day the name of Milton shines 
 While many a transient star declines 
 Once all-conspicuous and fair ; 
 And yet the years ascendant climb 
 The steps to high Eternity — 
 The end of earth and all — while he 
 
 Commands the night unmoved and bare — 
 A fitting epitaph to time. 
 
44 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 SIR JOHN SUCKLING 
 
 With amorous and fantastic speech 
 
 The lesson of thy master, 
 Love, thou hast come at last to teach, 
 
 Whereat our hearts beat faster, 
 As waves, foam-bosomed, on the beach 
 
 Obey the wind their master. 
 
 Who 'd not attend thy motley class 
 Though scholar born or dunce — 
 
 Lo, lord and lady, clown and lass, 
 If but to hear thee once 
 
 Who in the schools of Love didst pass, 
 While Death remained a dunce ! 
 
OF THE MUSES 45 
 
 RICHARD CRASHAW 
 
 YOUR words are like dew 
 In the cup of the flower 
 When the spring is a bower 
 
 For Beauty and you. 
 
 Your words are like fire 
 In the flower of the dawn 
 When the yellow hills yawn 
 
 With light and desire. 
 
 Your words are like spring 
 In the dawn of the year ; 
 You illumine our fear 
 
 With faith, and we sing. 
 
46 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 RICHARD LOVELACE 
 
 My cavalier, my cavalier, 
 To me thou art a bloomy sphere, 
 A cometary rose, cast down 
 From heaven by some dead dame, once dear 
 To dead men like thee in the silent town. 
 
 My cavalier, my cavalier, 
 In woe I weep thee like a tear, 
 I smile thee like a smile in gladness, 
 And through the reeds of time I hear 
 Lovelace, a laugh of joy, a sob of sadness. 
 
OF THE MUSES 47 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN 
 
 JOHN Dryden ! How from that high name re- 
 bounds 
 A light that flashes and a foam that sounds. 
 Hey, what an English odour in the words ! 
 What bulked glories each glad letter girds 
 Euphoniously and well ! The mouth takes in, 
 'Mid couplet-clank of minors made to din, 
 A sense of honesty and flesh and blood ; 
 And what associative memories flood 
 The listening strand of all the living mind 
 With conquered heroes and with conquests kind. 
 A burly Briton to the core, that 's he ! 
 Deep-chested, lunged with loud Eternity, 
 Broad-backed as old Olympus, he resists 
 The years with clenched unfavourable fists 
 
48 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 In tfiese great fisticuffs of changing Time — 
 John Dryden, backed by royalties of rhyme ! 
 And sweeter moves his mention on the tongue 
 For his terse satires, for the songs he sung, 
 As Dryden sturdily to success fights on, 
 In giving hail and honouring him as John. 
 
QF THE MUSES 49 
 
 APHRA BEHN 
 
 Betwixt Elizabeth and Charles, 
 
 The fields where woman sows were fen ; 
 
 The dog Rebellion's angry snarls 
 Had grated on the ears of men, 
 
 High dames had called their cavaliers, 
 Ere glory beckoned Aphra Behn. 
 
 Though virtue nodded in her novels, 
 Her heart was e'er awake ; the den 
 
 Where the blind beast of sin still grovels 
 She passed with haughty fears and, when 
 
 Vain women called their cavaliers, 
 Calm glory cautioned Aphra Behn. 
 
 D 
 
5o THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Unmoved amid the clash and clamour, 
 
 Love, with new triumphs in his ken, 
 Gilds the old time with sleepy glamour — 
 
 With dusk of smiles and tears again — 
 And women rot with cavaliers, 
 
 But glory raises Aphra Behn. 
 
OF THE MUSES 51 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 Puny in figure but in fame a giant, 
 
 He graduates death, defaming and defiant. 
 
 His doctorate he hath received from Time, 
 Who capped him master of the arts of rhyme. 
 
 Through Asian realms which boasted no com- 
 mander, 
 Armied with words, he walked as Alexander. 
 
 No bigger than a pearl his pigmy heart, 
 
 Yet vast and sphered as was the globe his art. 
 
 No bigger than a flower, his soul was pregnant 
 With seeds which sow the spring and fancies 
 regnant. 
 
52 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 By his own height he measured men, to find 
 How he o'ertopped them from his towering mind. 
 
 Then, then, he laughed, and his satiric laughter 
 Rung to Heaven's roof and startled every rafter. 
 
 He gowned his naked century with fire ; 
 He left the lashed vibrating like a wire. 
 
 The littlest of lives for life to jostle, 
 
 Death can but clasp his knees of fame — colossal. 
 
OF THE MUSES 53 
 
 THOMAS GRAY 
 
 If labour's love 
 Abide above 
 
 The glory unpremeditate, 
 There is no bard 
 The Muses guard 
 
 Than thee more grandly elevate. 
 
 If style refined 
 May safely bind 
 
 Heart's harvest into splendent sheaves, 
 Thy work will hold 
 When autumn old 
 
 With many another harvest heaves. 
 
54 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 If men recall 
 The good, though small, 
 
 Gift of true song 'tis man's to give, 
 Thou shalt not find 
 Their call unkind, 
 
 Who hast but Fame's alternative. 
 
 And grave and sweet 
 Thine ears will greet 
 
 The gracious welcome murmured down, 
 Whose numbers nurse 
 In vales of verse 
 
 The babe-eyed spring we name Renown. 
 
OF THE MUSES 55 
 
 WILLIAM COLLINS 
 
 Like a lyric from the throat 
 Of the skylark is thy song, 
 
 And by Fancy's faery boat 
 Is thy spirit borne along 
 
 Through the. lake where lilies float — 
 Lilies of immortal song. 
 
 As the fold of evening falls 
 Over thee, thou Bird of Song, 
 
 Rays from light's auroral halls 
 
 Dance about thee swift and strong, 
 
 And the voice of Rapture calls 
 From the sunlit cliffs of song. 
 
56 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Earth shall not to-day forget 
 How she glows within thy song ; 
 
 Still she pays her starry debt, 
 While the silent shadows throng 
 
 Theewards, whose bright numbers fret 
 All the vaulted roofs of song. 
 
OF THE MUSES 57 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 A SONNET-SYMPHONY IN FOUR MOVEMENTS 
 
 I. Allegro. 
 
 Hear how the notes nowrun, nowburst, now bubble, 
 
 Now break in spray and take the hues of youth, 
 While at the flowing of the seas of trouble 
 
 Life's shore shows lovely with the pearl of truth — 
 While at the ebb of pleasure, slow and tidal, 
 
 Life's shore is lightened of the weeds of sin — 
 While sea and land rejoice in shadowy bridal — 
 
 While land and sea have no more love to win. 
 Now light, now lighter, come the flying notes, 
 
 Now swift and sweet, now sweetly, swiftly wild ; 
 Yet through their dizziest melody there floats 
 
 Sound as of song of bird or word of child ; 
 And ever when the notes are wildest seething 
 Deep, deeper, from beneath comes Nature's 
 breathing. 
 
58 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 II. Legato 
 
 MANHOOD hath come, with loving, lovely fingers 
 
 Touching the keys whence youth's wild prelude 
 sprang, 
 And, while its charm of liquid sweetness lingers, 
 
 Gone is the ruder noise that first outrang — 
 Gone is the din that galled and palled the senses, 
 
 Stilled are the jars of every minor chord : 
 The grand crescendo of the soul commences, 
 
 Slow swelling through the temple of the Lord. 
 The music grows and grows, slowly ascending 
 
 An oceanic scale until the sound, 
 With heavenly antiphons of Nature blending, 
 
 And deep as bayings of a noble hound, 
 Startles the future with its solemn presage. — 
 (Fate strains her ear to catch the heavy message.) 
 
OF THE MUSES 59 
 
 III. Andante 
 
 Slow come the notes, but still the golden measure 
 
 Swells loud and strong, to Nature grandly linkt, 
 And music tells the secret of her treasure, 
 
 Slow spoken yet immeasurably distinct. 
 Time's foot upon the pedal now is heavy ; 
 
 The notes give forth a thunder-throated bass, 
 Yet Life hath many a smile for Love to levy, 
 
 And Love hath many a joy for Life to face. 
 God listens, and the ear of Heaven is husht ; 
 
 Heaven hears, and space burns, yearns for light, 
 and glows 
 As if the lily of creation blusht, 
 
 Took fire and colour like a living rose ; 
 A tremor runs through all its starry petals, 
 Where like a bee the gold sun soars and settles. 
 
60 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 IV. Adagio 
 
 SLOW come the notes and slower: they are ceasing 
 
 (Fate hearkens when the final note shall fall). 
 The night above and under is increasing 
 
 (Fate dreams she hears the Phantom's pealing 
 call). 
 Slower the notes and slower : they are dying 
 
 (Fate bends above with eager eyes and ears). 
 What sounds are these as of the breezes sighing ? — 
 
 (Fate thinks it is the drip of starry tears). 
 The music takes a lower key, and lower 
 
 (Fate listens for the last vast organ breath) ; 
 And slower come the notes, and ever slower 
 
 (Fate hears the beating of the heart of Death). 
 The notes are still : a god is soundly sleeping 
 (Fate bows her head, nor knows why she is 
 weeping). 
 
OF THE MUSES 6\ 
 
 CHATTERTON 
 
 Sad boyish wonder unsurpassed 
 
 In all the wondrous world, 
 God reads and loves your lines at last, 
 
 And, like a bush impearled, 
 Benecklaced gemmily with dew, 
 His love grows lightening over you 
 From out whose dust of death there grew 
 
 Fires ringleted and flames that curled. 
 
 Mad man-like boy unparalleled 
 
 In all the mazy past, 
 The gourd of your large destiny held 
 
 The clearest waters cast 
 From fountains of Futurity — 
 The thoughts of such a soul-to-be, 
 Whose passions surged, an opal sea 
 
 By hurricanes of life harassed. 
 
62 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Bad incarnation of the good 
 
 Which God to earth impelled, 
 Man's memory mellows as a wood 
 
 Edged with autumnal eld : 
 The boreal words of winds arouse 
 The rustle of its brown old boughs ; 
 Leaves die, but branchy hearts espouse 
 
 The spring again unquelled. 
 
 Lad, man, or boy — incarnate mood 
 
 Of good with evil glassed — 
 You move in mighty brotherhood 
 
 With every temporal blast. 
 Commemorative leaves die crumbling, 
 'Mid toss and turn of foliage tumbling, 
 But you, the tree, live always, humbling 
 
 The years that halt aghast. 
 
OF THE MUSES 63 
 
 THE HEAVENLY BOY 
 
 The heavenly boy to Hell's own hideous town, 
 Where Fortune's filmy ribbons dance and dangle, 
 Came — heard the bells that should have hailed 
 him jangle, 
 
 Beheld the face that should have cheered him frown. 
 
 The heavenly boy, who strove to net renown 
 In golden meshes of his mind, and tangle 
 Life in the webs of song, saw Hunger strangle 
 
 Hope after struggling hope — dash each one down. 
 
 Then died the dauntless heart. Too grim the trial 
 That left the seas for wine, the winds for bread, 
 And gave at last, when gaunt-limbed faith had 
 fled, 
 And all save Death had given his songs denial, 
 The flattering poison in the accursed phial, 
 To filch a Shakespeare from the world instead. 
 
64 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 A NIGHTINGALE whose solitary song 
 
 Rose through the night when not a star had 
 stirred, 
 
 An elfin thing, a faery-feathered bird 
 With wood-notes strange, yet strung to hope and 
 
 strong : — 
 As such wert thou, ringed round with many a wrong, 
 
 By shadows blotted from our sight and blurred, 
 
 Thy cloying voice unheeded and unheard, 
 Though God, enrapt, was listening all along. 
 
 God-chosen seer who sang of Heaven on earth, 
 
 Chanter of childhood's all-enchanting days,' 
 Dragged down by sorrow, dogged through life by 
 dearth, 
 The names of most who knew thee are Decay's 
 While thine is Fame's : night bore the dawn, 
 whose birth 
 Halos thy head in Love's transfiguring blaze. 
 
OF THE MUSES 6$ 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 When England's moon of Poesy waxed faint, 
 
 One man rode by whose steed's tempestuous 
 hooves 
 
 Cast up the loam from long-forgotten grooves, 
 Careering onward knowing no restraint. 
 A new dawn stretched her fingers forth to paint 
 
 New pictures on the sky where Shakespeare 
 moves 
 
 Sunlike, and Milton's mighty voice reproves 
 The thunders muttering forth their deep complaint. 
 
 The woods grow bright, the breath of spring returns 
 Giving its fragrance to the blue free air, 
 And still it shines for ever fresh and fair, 
 The homely name of Scotland's homely Burns — 
 A star the fragrance of the night inurns, 
 
 With shining guerdon of the dawn to share. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 SONG 
 
 Light and shade together ! 
 
 Day and night as one ! 
 Winter wooing summer weather ! 
 
 Snowflakes making love unto the sun ! 
 Love whereon the globe of misery turns ! — 
 That 's the life of Robert Burns. 
 
 Tears and smiling kisses ! 
 
 Hopes and fears and doubts ! 
 Petty pains and giant blisses ! 
 
 Death who whispers 'gainst a world tha» v 
 shouts ! 
 Life no spirit in the live world spurns ! — 
 That 's the heart of Robert Burns, 
 
OF THE MUSES 67 
 
 WORDSWORTH 
 
 His voice was low and curiously clear — 
 The blackbird's song at chime of vesper bell ; 
 His woodland genius breathed a gentle spell 
 
 On every flower— o'er every vale and mere. 
 
 An anchorite, he gazed with eyes austere 
 On worldly things, yet, when his glances fell 
 On Nature whom he learned and lived so well, 
 
 Love loosed his lips for her he deemed so dear. 
 
 His song was fresh and free and full of rest 
 As when pure April touches lips with May ; 
 
 Life ebbed away and, ebbing, made him blest : 
 Death closed the long-drawn avenues for aye 
 As Vesper seals the after-doors of day, 
 
 And Evening takes him trembling to her breast. 
 
 7.qth December 1852, 
 
68 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 THOU shouldst have lived in peerless Shake- 
 speare's age : 
 
 A towering lineage in those days began, 
 
 All men gigantic like thyself, one man — 
 The best tragedian on a splendid stage. 
 Ben Jonson would have loved thee — grand old 
 sage; 
 
 All varying souls have set thee in their van ; 
 
 And Shakespeare, chieftain of that glorious clan, 
 Have owned thee purest of his parentage. 
 
 Big stalwart son of Shakespeare, pure and proud, 
 
 Purer for pride of such paternity, 
 
 Thy poems, large and rugged though they be, 
 Live — hold within their limbs a blood endowed 
 With life whose tenets are proclaimed aloud 
 
 In deathless vigour by the voiceful sea. 
 
OF THE MUSES 69 
 
 COLERIDGE 
 
 With spacious gaze he looked o'er earth and saw 
 Life waiting like a spirit to be clad 
 In raiment of his own fair soul, which had 
 
 Been woven in the looms o' the sun, while awe 
 
 O'er Nature as a veil began to draw. 
 
 He looked again, and a calm sorrow bade 
 Tears speak the anguish of his soul grown sad 
 
 In fruitless strife with some occulted law. 
 
 And, then, ah ! then, the vast, the far clear gaze 
 Grew dim, and bodeful portents of to-morrow 
 Weighed heavily on the lids that sought to 
 borrow 
 Some slumber from so many restless days, 
 While on he sat amid the soft pale haze, 
 
 Sucking sweet honey from the lips of sorrow. 
 
70 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 WITH MR. SWINBURNE'S ESSAY 
 
 In Asia (so the lips of legend say) 
 Are footless birds which wing in endless flight 
 The lucent vastitude and length of light ; 
 
 Not pausing at the rosy close of day, 
 
 But ever wheeling on their aerial way 
 
 Through dark immeasurable deeps qf night, 
 Fed upon dews descending silver-bright, 
 
 With heaven for nest and all the stars for prey. 
 
 And thou — sweet unity of light and tone, 
 
 Coleridge — wert one of air's own sun-fledged tribe, 
 
 With all the girdling round of air for zone, 
 
 Till earth held up her great green bosom's bribe 
 For thee whose dews of song the flowers imbibe, 
 
 Whose cage was earth, whose element heaven 
 alone. 
 
OF THE MUSES 7\ 
 
 HIS LIFE 
 
 AMID the mystic glamour shed 
 From jasper skies arched overhead 
 
 He walked supremely lone — 
 An ancient god revived on earth, 
 Whose message of mysterious birth 
 
 Described alike our own. 
 
 His voice was tragically hushed, 
 And, while the waves of being rushed 
 
 Towards blank oblivion's shore, 
 He chose to sound the deeps unseen — 
 The hieroglyphic stars would screen 
 
 Some long-forgotten lore. 
 
 Like to a bird with caged wings, 
 Against the brittle bars of things 
 He broke in awful speech ; 
 
72 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 And, moving with the drowsy breeze, 
 Saw phantom shapes of phantom trees 
 Which oft he strove to reach. 
 
 Upon the plains of life he cast 
 His mighty figure as he passed 
 
 In shadowgraph sublime ; 
 And in the casket of his song 
 His memory lies embalmed from wrong — 
 
 Death's legacy to Time. 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 His spirit wandered like a golden bee 
 From bloom to bloom with honey-heavy thighs; 
 
 Wing-wet with dews of strange Philosophy, 
 It staggers on, now drones, and, droning, dies. 
 
OF THE MUSES 73 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 
 Landor, the earl of Love's own golden shire, 
 Of Love's bright county, of the land of Love — 
 Who of all nineteenth century spirits above 
 
 Sits back to back with Beauty, lyre to lyre 
 
 With Light — our Landor who than hope soars 
 higher, 
 As eagle or hawk that soars beyond the dove — 
 Our Landor, whom the luminous centuries glove 
 
 With glowing jewelries of starry fire — 
 
 Our Landor takes the years upon his name 
 As some old Paladin on his brassy shield 
 The hurtling darts and javelins of the field : 
 
 They glance off null from such a round of fame 
 As guards the heart which stands to-day re- 
 vealed 
 
 In one pure passion of effulgent flame. 
 
74 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE SEA-SHELL 
 
 What, peerless Landor, shall I call thee, 
 What — Englishman or Greek ? 
 
 Hellenic lands and hands enthral thee ; 
 Or is it Latin thou dost speak, 
 
 While Englishman I call thee 
 'Twixt Englishman and Greek ? 
 
 Greek, Latin, aught, I love thee, Landor ; 
 
 So sea-shells love the sea, 
 That loves them for their loving candou r ; 
 
 And, so beloved of thee, 
 My heart, a shell, here whispers, Landor ! 
 
 Here murmurs of the sea. 
 
OF THE MUSES 75 
 
 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 Sweet star, that through the impervious London 
 fog 
 
 With many another glowing planet swam, 
 
 Yet none so lovable as thou, sweet Lamb, 
 Who knew'st not brake nor brier nor bush nor bog 
 Forming great Nature's verdurous synagogue, 
 
 Thou ev'n art with me everywhere I am, 
 
 Lit by thy light of genial epigram 
 At dawn — at dusk, which is day's epilogue. 
 
 Crowned with our ducal coronet of love, 
 Thou bidd'st Ulysses wander at vagary : 
 That constellation of Elizabeth — 
 That galaxy of names which know not death — 
 Crown thee with fire ; and at the name of Mary 
 Shakespearean preludes thunder from above. 
 
76 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 BYRON 
 
 Byron I see on Fame's most perilous peak, 
 Scorn-lipped, defiant, like a fallen god, 
 Whose spirit bows not to the ruler's rod, 
 
 Who laughs at all man holds in reverence meek. 
 
 Dire-darting, bold, his eyes in anger speak 
 Though he is silent. Where no foot hath trod 
 Is he unalterably apart, and shod 
 
 With fire of youth, for age is still to seek. 
 
 Gone, gone, he is no more. Death hath dispelled 
 The image from my sight, and now I see 
 But what remains of what he was to be. 
 Fate should have let him live, nor e'er withheld 
 Days whence he might have won, as once he 
 quelled, 
 The sombre Titaness, Eternity. 
 
OF THE MUSES 77 
 
 SHELLEY 
 
 SWALLOW with sad eyes set toward the sun ! 
 Sweet singing-bird with struggling wings, astray 
 From the fragrant palace of eternal May, 
 
 What while the roseate blood of youth doth run 
 
 In joyous pulses through the year begun, 
 Thy bird-notes, clearer than the clarion day, 
 Quicken the violets' colour as they pray 
 
 In spring's green convent which their leaves have 
 won. 
 
 Ah ! Shelley, whom the maiden month reveres, 
 Washing the glistening cheeks of earth with dew 
 Each year the violets live again — renew 
 
 Their dim noviciate of holy tears, 
 
 And Love, with eyes of memorable blue, 
 
 Intones thy requiem, and April hears. 
 
78 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE DEATH OF SHELLEY 
 
 FAR up the Gulf — far up the ' twinkling bay ' — 
 
 Spurred by the freshening breeze, the Don Juan 
 sped 
 
 With him o'er whom God's hallowing hand had 
 shed 
 No transient light or faint inconstant ray ; 
 For genius ever shines, nor knows to pay 
 
 Oblivion's toll extorted from the dead ; 
 
 But death was hovering darkly overhead 
 With glittering talons sharp and set for prey. 
 
 The darkness cleared . . . and, cradled on his 
 breast — 
 Alastor's breast so marred bysorrow and wrong — 
 The strong sweet fruit of him whose voice, once 
 strong, 
 Was hushed in golden tones to golden rest — 
 Hyperion — lay, like Shelley's name impressed 
 Upon the marble of immortal song. 
 
 6th January 1892, 
 
OF THE MUSES 79 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 Life was a lake wherein he saw reflected 
 The stars that lit the heaven of his wide mind ; 
 
 His dreams were palaces the clouds erected — 
 The bright brief masonry of air and wind. 
 
 THE CENCI 
 
 DARK gloom as of the tomb ; 
 
 Grim light as from the night 
 Half-perisht stars illume ; 
 Yet one star — Shelley — set imperishably bright. 
 
 Dim fire as of desire ; 
 
 Stark dread that overhead 
 Bids all beneath expire ; 
 But one star — Shelley — shut from death 'mong 
 all the dead, 
 
80 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE MEMORIAL OF KEATS, JULY 16TH, 1 894 
 To Poesy 
 
 Maiden and Mother, whom this Old World greets 
 With love the greater since his love was such 
 As scornedFate'sfelonhands,whichcomeand clutch 
 
 The Poets heart hiding its honied sweets ! 
 
 Mother and Maiden, whom the New World meets 
 With ministries twice tender insomuch 
 As Lowell's memory tingles in the touch, 
 
 Renews the glory of thy god-son, Keats ! — 
 
 Poesy, now that Keats wins his reward, 
 
 Now, when the viols and horns of Love are loud, 
 
 Standing between the Nations, woman-lord, 
 Is not thy bowed heart all alert and proud, 
 
 Moves not a music through each nerve and chord, 
 Seeing at last the Laureate, Keats, endowed? 
 
OF THE MUSES 81 
 
 KEATS 
 
 To-day he lives again who died so young, 
 And Love, who listened to the songs he sung, 
 Brings Keats's crown across the vale of years, 
 Wet with the rain of great Alastor's tears : 
 The magic nightingale that trilled at dark 
 Drew forth the vocal tribute of the lark. 
 Others have plumbed the deeps of destiny more, 
 Or striven to heights where such as Dante soar ; 
 But who, like Keats, hath sung so richly sweet, 
 Or laid such largess at the Muses' feet ; 
 Who drawn from out that fount the chosen reach 
 Such full luxuriance of untiring speech ; 
 Or who 'mong those who lived to half life's prime 
 With such high promise swept the harps of time ? 
 
82 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 ROSE PARABLES : NO. I 
 
 Of old a monk, whose saintly head was blest, 
 But knew to sing the Blessed Virgin's fame, 
 And others filled his cup with wine of blame : 
 
 Poor fools who thought their thoughtless prayers 
 the best. 
 
 But, when Death showed the glitteringplains of rest, 
 Five roses crimson from his mouth there came — 
 Symbols of Holy Mary's hallowed name : 
 
 His love and zeal had stood the golden test. 
 
 So Keats to-day, whose soul, made sweet by song, 
 But ill could brook life's random shafts shot-strong, 
 
 Is marked by all, despite of Death's defeats — 
 So he is crowned, while widowed Autumn greets 
 Gray Winter, with a rose for every wrong — 
 
 A rose to wreathe around the name of Keats. 
 
OF THE MUSES 83 
 
 A NIGHTINGALE 
 
 He came to Song's alluring fount 
 With wondering eyes of fear and wist ; 
 
 He watched the Virgin Huntress mount 
 Empanoplied in mail of mist. 
 
 His soul a flagon was, brimmed o'er 
 With earth the vineyard's ruddiest wine ; 
 
 His heart was like a hive to store 
 The bees of pity all-divine. 
 
 He had a life-time to achieve — 
 A life-time with a life's applause : 
 
 Renown was all Death chose to leave, 
 
 Grim Lord who makes and breaks all laws. 
 
 Renown was all he left, but soon 
 It widened out and grew and grew 
 
84 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 To ample beauty like the moon 
 'Mong stars which beautify the blue. 
 
 Upon the firmament of Fame 
 When setting stars and sunrise meet, 
 
 What shineth brighter than his name, 
 His name who sang so briefly sweet ? 
 
 Like his own nightingale he sings 
 To all the stars which tarry by ; 
 
 And like a nightingale's his wings 
 Were clipped when he but knew to fly. 
 
OF THE MUSES 85 
 
 LEOPARDI 
 
 You are moving cumbered like the moon 
 
 In folds of cloud ; 
 
 Life clings to you, a clammy shroud, 
 Abhorrent, till you sing, when soon 
 The heavy folds fall down, 
 
 And pitilessly proud, 
 You chant of gloomy Death — the lonely town, 
 Whose glimmering squares are peopled by the 
 dead. 
 
 Death is a thing of sombre joy, 
 
 A wonderous weight 
 
 Of gladdening woes conglomerate, 
 And, when you hymn it, life's alloy 
 
86 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 All unremembered lies 
 
 I' the record of dark Fate — 
 And Death seems grander for your groans and 
 
 sighs, 
 Grander and dearer for your tears down-shed. 
 
 HEINE 
 
 Quaffing the poison-cup of tears and laughing I 
 Singing of laughter while to-day is bringing 
 Sorrow to saddle on the mad to-morrow ! — 
 Madness and mirth and mockery and sadness'. 
 Tiny as babe or god-gigantic, Heine 
 Lashes the world with whip which whirls and flashes. 
 
OF THE MUSES 87 
 
 CHARLES WELLS 
 
 One work alone is left — 
 
 One honey-coloured weft — : 
 One glorious weaving of the golden shuttle — 
 One golden issue of the glorious loom ! 
 
 The Muses might be justified of theft, 
 
 And filch the fabrics from the brain which cleft 
 
 The loom of song, the shuttle 
 
 So great, so sure, so subtle. 
 
 The gladiate fingers Doom 
 Points through the piteous gloom 
 
 Mark him as one who loved life's breath, love's 
 breathing 
 
 More than the incense from the church of Fame. 
 
88 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Robed, glorified with glory of one name — 
 Shakespeare's — he comes, where Shakespeare's 
 self once came, 
 
 At last to hear it seething — 
 
 God's oceanic breathing. 
 
OF THE MUSES 89 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 
 
 God of the Church of the immortal soul, 
 Lord of the might-built temple of the mind, 
 Healer who renderest sight unto the blind, 
 
 Who see and bless thee in their turn — the goal 
 
 Life sets apart for man is death — the toll 
 Death takes of man is life, to pay the Wind 
 Which sweeps Time onward, while the Past, 
 behind, 
 
 Lies like a pile of withered leaves that roll — 
 
 But life had more for thee than death, and death 
 Took more of thee than life for toll or tax, 
 For death took light from earth when life from 
 thee. 
 Thy goal was with calm iEschylus, whose breath 
 Came back like fire along the glittering tracks 
 O' the chariot wheels of Immortality. 
 
go THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 HIS NAME 
 
 Some names come golden from the hive of speech 
 Like bees, and suck the rose, Eternity, 
 
 Dry of its honey which the stars beseech : 
 So with thy name, great Hugo, and with thee. 
 
 Some souls come golden from the haze of things 
 Like suns, and gratify the air with light : 
 
 Hugo, so thine in daylight burns and sings ; 
 And sings and burns, although unseen, through 
 night. 
 
OF THE MUSES 91 
 
 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 One shadow haunted him amid all others, 
 
 One face among all faces 
 Leered from behind with that grim mirth which 
 smothers 
 Love's smiles and kindred traces, 
 Killing Love's tears with lethal mocking breath, 
 'Mid antics strange and ghastly odd grimaces — 
 Death. 
 
 A covert lover and an open hater, 
 
 Loving his dreams and dreaming, 
 Hating his Hell — to wake — a gladiator, 
 
 With gory glaive there streaming 
 He slew Life's lions in the crimsoned strife, 
 
 Then met one match, in the arena gleaming — 
 Life. 
 
92 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Death's ancient mockeries and dark jests were 
 better 
 Than that defeat's outliving, 
 So, freeing soul of every fleshly fetter, 
 
 He turned away, and, giving 
 His heart to Fame's eternal shibboleth, 
 
 Won the dread humorist who wins the living — 
 Death. 
 
OF THE MUSES 93 
 
 'DEATH'S jest-book' 
 
 Death's Jest-Book ! How the words are bowed 
 and weighted 
 
 With jocular endearments as of Death ! 
 
 What earthy fragrance as of graves ! What breath 
 As of dim crime, deeds darkly instigated ! 
 Grim ghastly mirth it is lurks here, created 
 
 By hands unheaverily ; Folly muttereth 
 
 Rude ribald hints of Hell to unfix the faith 
 Of wisdom smiling to the gods Hell hated. 
 Beddoes, the world and all things worldly are built 
 
 Of Life and Death. In life thy heart alone 
 
 Knew Death sun-towering o'er the world, his 
 throne, 
 And, dead at last, but died to rise up gilt 
 With gold from Heaven's bright nectar never spilt, 
 
 And life by all the living never known. 
 
94 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 (OMAR KHAYYAM) 
 
 Translating 'Omar,' it was thine to touch 
 His glory with fresh glories of thine own, 
 
 To tip his orient arrows silverly 
 With the bright metal of thy brain 'gainst time, 
 
 'Gainst time and the retributory years 
 Before whose face must reputations rust, 
 
 And favours rot against the world once won. 
 
 So Fame (whom thou didst love not overmuch, 
 Loving the throned shy seasons on their throne, 
 
 The darkness wombing dark Eternity — 
 
 Loving the sea, and winds that mock and mime) 
 
 So Fame, who found thee in the end, with tears 
 Touches thy tomb 'gainst time, and all thy dust 
 
 Thrills as the hills delivered of the sun. 
 
OF THE MUSES 95 
 
 THOMAS GORDON HAKE 
 
 Slowly earth guides thee o'er a shining track 
 " To those bright pastures of memorial youth 
 
 Where Love, lip-linked with life's auroral truth, 
 Laughed loud at Age, who waited to attack. 
 Now on the greyhound years — a princely pack 
 
 Crowding, with foam on tongue and mouth and 
 tooth, 
 
 To lick thy hand — Time lifts the lash of ruth, 
 And bids them — Time the Huntsman — bids them 
 back. 
 
 Dim memories risen of many an olden friend, 
 Far twilight-march of many a sunlit day 
 When smiles weremirrored in 'life's eyes of gray': 
 These, linked to fact of freshening friendships, tend 
 To gild Death's face with lights that ev'n transcend 
 The gold that once on hills of sunrise lay. 
 
96 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 A NATURE-FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Dr. T. Gordon Hake and Theodore Watts 
 
 I SAW the Mother throned alone and regal 
 
 On mountain-tops and hills of driven snow ; 
 From where she sate her gaze beheld the eagle — 
 
 A finite atom circling far below. 
 Close at the foot of her, ' fhe mighty mother,' 
 
 Were two whose eyes sought solace from her own, 
 Two — friend and friend — nay, brother linkt with 
 brother 
 In many a vigil by the Mother's throne. 
 I would have spoken, but, my tongue refusing, 
 
 The words fell back still palpitant on the soul ; 
 While myheart said, 'Theyare of Nature's choosing, 
 
 They guard her lovely lair — the Poet's goal. — 
 Armed of her right, they bid the stars defiance, 
 That laugh, yet lend their light's divine alliance.' 
 
OF THE MUSES 97 
 
 THE PARABLE-POET 
 
 nth January 1895 
 FOR him a new day dawns — the day of death— 
 
 The great new day that lives and grows not old : 
 The friend of Borrow breathes no mortal breath, 
 
 His eyes are covered and his heart is cold. 
 His fleshly heart! but while the world draws breath 
 
 Never the heart of his pure deeds of old, 
 His soul's performance disconcerting death — 
 
 The heart that burns although all hearts be cold. 
 Those names that Nature speaks with one deep 
 breath — 
 
 Science and Poesy — those consorts old, 
 King, Queen upon the thrones of life and death — 
 
 Mourn a sweet subject in whom faith seems cold — 
 
 Our Hake, the record of whose songful breath 
 
 Fuels life's fires upon the hearth of death. 
 G 
 
98 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 GEORGE BORROW 
 A true prose poet 
 He loved the open plains, the pleasant fields, 
 
 The high furze-furrowed hills, the heaving fells, 
 The breath of heather, sight of heather-bells, 
 Loved all the nameless pleasures Nature yields. 
 He roamed old England 's odorous woods and wealds, 
 Sought solitude in shade of daisy-dells, 
 And found the fane where fadeless Beauty dwells, 
 Whom vestal Truth with silver armour shields. 
 Gypsy in soul, with gypsy freedom he 
 Owned himself Natures votary, and was free ; 
 Love bound him to her with a better bond 
 Than light to earth when the bright dawn hath 
 dawned, 
 And drew the curtain back that he might see 
 Wonders of other worlds that were beyond. 
 2nd November 1892. 
 
OF THE MUSES 99 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 
 
 Sappho sang not of love alone to woman, 
 
 For man and all the marvellous world holds human 
 
 May hear what is ; and so, through life or death — 
 
 Great namesake of our eagle Elizabeth — 
 
 Proud Queen in spirit with the world for throne — 
 
 Your songs were not for woman sung alone, 
 
 But equally for man. That day you took, 
 
 As eyes take love like colour in their look, 
 
 One man for husband was your spirit's crowning, 
 
 When Barrett mellowed to the music Browning, 
 
 And Browning's kisses, melting on your mouth, 
 
 Seemed softer for its glamour of the south. 
 
 What were your lives : two mighty rivers, married 
 
 To a solemn mightier music, onward carried 
 
 To swell the ocean of Eternity ; 
 
ioo THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Two far miraculous moons for Death to see 
 Circling and setting with the planet Time ; 
 Two mountains none but clouds and stars might 
 
 climb — 
 Heights Himalayan toppling skies determine, 
 Robed in the glacier's everlasting ermine ; 
 Two minds, two hearts, made possible and packt 
 With the pure import of each act and fact 
 Love left upon your love ! If God's word willed 
 The world of womankind should instant build 
 A throne for one to dignify and queen 
 With soul's demeanour sacredly serene, 
 Yours were the regnant honours, yours the name 
 Announced by woman's and by man's acclaim — 
 Alone, Titanically superhuman, 
 Grave sphinx, half-lion, with the face of woman. 
 
OF THE MUSES 101 
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 
 THE MINSTER SPEAKS 
 ' Give me my dead' ! 
 ' Give me my dead. 'Tis I alone can claim 
 The bones of Time's illustrious compeer. 
 Give me my dead ; and crown the dying year 
 With blooms of love made deathless by his fame. 
 Man sings in vain : no mouth but mine shall frame 
 Speech dear enough for him the world holds dear — 
 No voicebut mine, whose iron tongue makes clear 
 The deep pronunciation of his name. 
 This solemn pile shall pillow his great head : 
 The immemorial cenotaph of time 
 May house the changeless splendours of his 
 rhyme ; 
 But, now the poem of his life is read 
 
 And Hallam hails him in that " golden clime," 
 His bones are mine : God, give me up my dead.' 
 
102 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 DEATH ? 
 
 WHO would twit the twilight 
 
 Because it loved the light ? — 
 Death with gentle shy light 
 
 Adored him — ever-bright — 
 Loved him in his glory, 
 
 His opulent sunset rolled 
 Round the years gone hoary, 
 
 Transforming them to gold. 
 
 Died he not as others ? — 
 
 He leant but on Death's arm 
 Gentle as a brother's, 
 
 And, robed with solemn charm, 
 Like a king primeval 
 
 Still crowned and with his rod, 
 'Mid our hearts' upheaval, 
 
 Went joyfully to God. 
 
OF THE MUSES 103 
 
 theophile gautier 
 
 Poet of the lyre of gold, 
 If I could a moment hold 
 
 It in my hands, 
 Then might I some justice do 
 To the songs thy fancy blew 
 
 From faery lands 
 Where the greeny billows drew 
 
 Towards the golden sands. 
 
 Poet of the heart of gold, 
 If my spirit might unfold 
 
 Its wings of love, 
 Singing it would soar to thee, 
 Soar to heaven's enazured sea — 
 
 A silver dove ; 
 
104 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Thou mightst give some heed to me 
 From thy height above. 
 
 Poet of the soul of gold, 
 Winged with ecstacies untold 
 
 I then would fly, 
 Seek the plains of earth below, 
 Glad to hear thee singing so 
 
 Up in the sky, 
 And, amid thy lyric flow, , 
 
 Sing of thee and die. 
 
OF THE MUSES 105 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Being a poet, he was still a man, 
 And loved all mankind with a love empowered 
 To pierce the gloomy clouds when destiny 
 lowered, 
 When doubt loomed up, or wars of soul began. 
 God built his bral^from that colossal plan 
 
 Which served for Shakespeare's; forest-like it 
 
 flowered ; 
 One foot on earth and one in Heaven, he towered, 
 Taking Time's girth 'tween thumb and finger's span. 
 Thus as he stood, gartered with galaxies, 
 
 Knee-deep among the stars, his eye took range 
 Of calm creation stretching solemn, strange — 
 An azure manuscript of worlds and skies — 
 
 And his ear heard, through the long nave of 
 change, 
 The Amen of Eternity arise. 
 
io6 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE DEATH OF BROWNING 
 
 The end was near ; and, pictured on the ceiling, 
 ' An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight ' : — 
 Relaxing speed in air's most dizzy height, 
 
 ' Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling.' — 
 
 What thoughts, what memories, vividly revealing 
 The land that lay behind the pale of night, 
 Flowed up, while Death's revivifying light 
 
 Grew stronger than the stars with eyes appealing ! 
 
 The watchers, weeping, saw the end was o'er 
 When the deep bell of dim San Marco spake 
 In muffled tones, as mourning for his sake — 
 
 When the great soul set sail for the great shore 
 With Time's own ' vale ' sounding in his wake, 
 
 And Death to be his pilot evermore. 
 
OF THE MUSES 107 
 
 PHILIP JAMES BAILEY 
 
 COLOSSAL, hidden in the shadow falling 
 
 From thy one shape, which fills the round of 
 Time, 
 Thou, mounting upward, hearest voices calling, 
 Upward, to win the height whose dizziness, 
 appalling, 
 Keeps others back who came intent to climb. 
 
 Brave mountaineer of Mount Eternity, 
 Where giant Milton, like a guide, goes leading, 
 
 The height attained, thou mayst look down and 
 see 
 
 Thy Festus at the base firm-planted like a tree, 
 An epic oak to life and thee receding. 
 
108 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Fear thou not Death : he builds thy triumph 
 higher. 
 Death is new life to those who leave behind 
 A heaven of work which brings true heaven the 
 
 nigher, 
 A truth whose lips prove Death a charlatan and 
 liar, 
 A Festus globing all the human mind. 
 
OF THE MUSES 109 
 
 EMILY BRONTE 
 
 Dear daughter of the mourning Muses, 
 
 Maid-minstrel of the stern man-hearted moors, 
 
 Spring never spreads but it infuses 
 
 Its singing bird-breath sweetly into yours, 
 
 And you re-rise, and sing, and are 
 
 A moon 'mong women and to men a star. 
 
 Dead daughter of the mourning Muses, 
 
 Girl-wife asleep with old Eternity, 
 Spring-blossoms from their carven cruses 
 
 Pour dewy medicines in your ear, and see ! 
 You stir and wake to singing soon, 
 Star of mankind whom women call the moon. 
 
no THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Clear singer to the sun, your poem 
 
 Had air for rhythm and the winds for rhyme ; 
 Its silver beats were but the proem 
 
 Which yet would gather to a golden chime : 
 Spring takes it up and sings instead 
 Till Death ev'n frowns among the sable dead. 
 
 Dread singer of one burning story, 
 
 One ode imperial unto love and hate, 
 That is your victory, that your glory, 
 
 Your tragic triumph o'er the Fiend of Fate- 
 That still you sing when Spring draws breath, 
 Still follow Summer in the face of Death. 
 
OF THE MUSES m 
 
 LECONTE DE LISLE 
 
 Naught interrupts the changeless march of 
 Nature, 
 
 No hand usurps her offices august 
 Whose height admits the sun's high candidature, 
 
 But bars all men from such ascents of trust 
 
 The earth whirls on as ever, naught disturbing 
 The mighty motions of the wheel of space ; 
 
 Fate ever riding, guiding, reining, curbing 
 The charger, Charice, in its predestined race. 
 
 It leaps the hurdles of our earthly vision : 
 ' 'Tis Chance,' we cry ; but all the while 'twas 
 Fate 
 
 Impelled the charger to the leap's decision, 
 And spurred all Nature with impulsions great. 
 
U2 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Nor Chance nor Fate are of man's nomenclature ; 
 
 Their names are of the world's their powers 
 control : 
 Man hath no power to stay the steps of Nature 
 
 With hand or heart or sword or sound or soul. 
 
 And so it is that thou, the Prince Imperial, 
 
 Since Hugo passed, of Song's bright court in 
 France — 
 
 Thou who hast hymned the world, the vast sidereal 
 Prolonged performances of Fate and Chance — 
 
 Thou, who art Poet of the Past and Future, 
 Unmarked by Nature to the grave dost go, 
 
 While she, with joining and with seam and suture, 
 Death's garment edge to edge with Life's doth 
 sew. 
 
 Nature, she heeds not Man, but, grandly heedless 
 Of aught, works on amid the golden dusk, 
 
OF THE MUSES 113 
 
 Though all the hearts of all mankind be seedless, 
 And her own heart be as a hollow husk. 
 
 They bore thee hence with chants and songs 
 funereal ; 
 
 She heeded not, intent upon the goal ; 
 But man, who knows what is in life imperial, 
 
 Marks well the passing of thy princely soul. 
 
 H 
 
ii 4 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 A POEM is a violet 
 
 Grown in the poet's April heart — 
 A tangible odour found and set 
 
 Beneath the sunlight-smiles of Art — 
 Life's very breath when low she speaks 
 
 Into the shadowing ear of God, 
 And feels the rose of awe upon her cheeks. 
 
 Thy heart is as a garden-close 
 
 Where mighty — gentle — fingers set 
 
 Each heavenly seed of song which grows, 
 Art-sunned, to a perfect violet. 
 
 The air is sweet ; and angels sing 
 Hosannas to the Gardener, God, 
 
 Who joys to see the flowers that love Him spring. 
 
OF THE MUSES 115 
 
 EBENEZER JONES 
 
 His greatness was not like the tower 
 Heaven's architectural azure builds, 
 
 But secret like the yellow flower 
 Which God, the self-same artist, gilds. 
 
 The sunrise decorates the sky 
 With spiral stairs of soaring flame ; ' 
 
 To the least flower that opens eye 
 The sunrise gives a golden frame. 
 
 In like wise greatness such as his 
 To God can claim relationship ; 
 
 The flower, the field where the flower is, 
 Are kindred of His heart and lip. 
 
n6 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 A Poet, his high themes were great 
 
 Though oft he stumbled when he ran ; 
 His bardic heart was fortunate 
 
 In beating through the breast of Man. 
 
 And, when he died, the Man died too, 
 Till one day chance's strange regard 
 
 Found the Man's heart still beating through 
 The undying body of the Bard. 
 
OF THE MUSES 117 
 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE 
 
 Smooth-cheeked, with eyes — inscrutable as 
 Hell— 
 ShadowingthesoulthatlookedonHellandsmiled, 
 He breathes from out the portrait — he who wiled 
 
 The only secret Venus had to tell 
 
 From lips whence Death's black incantations fell 
 Darkling. Tis he, the Poet, Venus' child, 
 Who knewtheblue seas flowering myriad-isled — 
 
 Baudelaire, adorable white infidel. 
 
 Comes he to mock me, for the heavy mouth, 
 Wet with the honey-dews of sin of old, 
 
 Curls, and the animal leers from out his eyes ? 
 And in dim chambers of the Asian South, 
 Through clouds of cloying incense, I behold 
 The face of him who spat on Paradise. 
 
n8 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 FLEURS DU MAL 
 
 The unnameable luxuriance of thy name — 
 Each clinging tendril and tentative shoot — 
 Climbs sheer to starward and takes heaven- 
 ward root, 
 
 Twined round the firm foundations of thy fame. 
 
 Blue blooms of fire and purple globes of flame — 
 A many-coloured fruit — 
 Show forth, and loudly lyre and viol and flute 
 
 Make music, for the lark hath here no claim 
 And Nature's self is mute. 
 
 As men, who kneel in some cathedral, faint 
 And passionless and purged of all desire, 
 Rise in each lifted rapture of the quire, 
 
 And in the vast stained windows strive to paint, 
 
OF THE MUSES 119 
 
 'Mid blazoned shape of Saviour and of saint, 
 
 In crimson script of fire 
 
 Their hearts' pure pain, thy flute, thy viol, thy 
 lyre, 
 Fledge many a flight to God, whose sweet restraint 
 
 Makes thine own Hell thrice dire. 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 Thou wert not one to kiss the heel of God, 
 
 Or own His blessing when it bloomed and fell : 
 Thy way was where not ev'n His feet had trod — 
 
 1 
 
 Minstrel of sin, and troubadour of Hell. 
 2"jtk January 1893. 
 
120 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Poet and scholar, tragically wise ! 
 
 Beloved poet and admired sage ! 
 
 You breathe revived from every smiling page ; 
 You live in every line which vivifies ; 
 You look with neutral universal eyes 
 
 From every thought: Death cannot catch or cage 
 
 Your birdlike beauties, nor touch you with age, 
 For Song lives ever though the poet dies. 
 
 From poem-peaks with snows of rhyme impearled, 
 You look, still living in your chiselled lays ; 
 And, as 'mong men your calm terrestrial gaze 
 
 Saw life, a leaf in fateful whirlwinds whirled, 
 So, dead, your spirit from your verse surveys 
 
 The leaves and blossoms of the branching world. 
 
OF THE MUSES 121 
 
 MORTIMER COLLINS 
 
 Crowned round with lovely lily-diadems, 
 With limbs of ivory and of milky pearl, 
 To me Love came, gold-haired as any girl, 
 
 And lo, rathe roses burgeoned from their stems ! 
 
 When he but spake, his lips were rich with gems, 
 And in his voice sang every morning merle ; — 
 To me Love came, when Spring bade cloudlets 
 curl, 
 
 And willows loved their shadows in our Thames. 
 
 'Twas in the faery realm of thy romance, 
 Thou towering lover of green English lanes, 
 Binding our hearts to Heaven with azure chains 
 Forged of the mind's divine inheritance, 
 Strong worker of rose-miracles that dance 
 In sight of man to spite his pigmy pains. 
 
122 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE BIRDS 
 
 In white or golden weather 
 When flakes or heat prevail, 
 Earth still had joys in hail 
 For thee, sweet bird, whose feather 
 Went glad and glib together 
 With robin or nightingale. 
 
 And glib and glad together 
 The robin and nightingale, 
 With whom all songs prevail, 
 Of whatsoever feather 
 In white or golden weather 
 Will give thee golden hail. 
 
OF THE MUSES 123 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The seasons filing 
 
 Through the year 
 Entrance its smiling 
 
 Amber sphere 
 With beguiling 
 Sounds we hear — 
 The four-fold harmonies hurled 
 Through the world* 
 
 The first is Springtime, 
 
 Lightly heard ; 
 The primal wing-time 
 
 Meet for bird, 
 Made to bring Time 
 
 Buds unstirred : 
 
124 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 That is thy smile, with laughter 
 Gurgling after. 
 
 'Tis Summer second 
 
 Sings and glides 
 As if it reckoned 
 
 Beauty's tides — 
 Summer, beckoned 
 By fair brides : 
 That is thy warm-voiced woman, 
 Heavenly-human. 
 
 Then Autumn sinking 
 
 Deep in sheaves ; 
 Like armour clinking, 
 
 Clash of leaves 
 Forging, linking, 
 Mail or greaves : 
 That is thy satire rattling, 
 Girt for battling. 
 
OF THE MUSES 125 
 
 And Winter lastly 
 Whistles, shrills, 
 With bulk built vastly 
 
 Like the hills, 
 Locking fastly 
 Icy rills : 
 That is the wide white fame 
 Of thy name. 
 
 The months too clamber 
 
 Through this sphere 
 Whose globed amber 
 
 Is the year ; 
 Drum and tambour, 
 Talking clear, 
 Tell each a glory thine 
 All-divine. 
 
126 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 A BROTHERLY FRIENDSHIP 
 
 To W. M. Rossetti 
 Brother of him who loved the bright white flocks 
 
 Of Beauty penned from hungry wolves of Sin, 
 When heaven above was as a gaming box, 
 
 And all the stars as dice for Fate therein, 
 Found not thine ear some music in the rattle, 
 
 Bidding previsions of the future wake, 
 Saying,thoughMan'gainstEnvy'sglaivemakebattle, 
 
 OurLordshalltriumph — Love shall win the stake? 
 He lies in hest and hearing of the sea. 
 
 That brassy orchestra of Nature plays 
 The oratorio of Eternity 
 
 Unto the beat of Gabriel 's golden days. 
 Hath Fate cast wrongly? Time's vast hand gives 
 
 And deeper grows the music of the ocean. 
 
OF THE MUSES 127 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 Dead poet, if with Dante thou art now — 
 Great Dante set in Heaven a sombre tree — 
 Then will his massive bulk pay thanks to thee 
 
 With beautied shade of many a bearing bough. 
 
 His silver dews down-falling on thy brow 
 Will keep thee cool, and all thy being will be 
 Sung to a sweeter and serener key 
 
 Than life's malevolent ministers allow. 
 
 There, high in Heaven, thy sweetest heart, thy wife, 
 Thy heart's own heart, thy loved Elizabeth, 
 From world-lips hallowed of the spirit's breath 
 
 Will breathe such wind of kisses on thy strife 
 That all the moving world might long for death, 
 
 So they could gaze for evermore on life. 
 
128 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 AT CHELSEA 
 
 I SAW Rossetti in his quaint old garden 
 
 At Chelsea stooping o'er a wondrous harp ; 
 At first the sounds were soft, then seemed to harden 
 
 Till every tone came querulous and sharp. 
 ' His soul's great harp,' I said. The music 
 blundered : 
 
 Life spake too sudden in his ear grown deaf ; 
 But soon again the strings took fire and 
 thundered, 
 
 The music mellowed to the lower clef. 
 Another hand had struck the starry strings ' 
 
 (I saw the poet weep, and then grow still) — 
 A hand that knew the clasp of Song's high kings, 
 
 Yet wore the gauntlet of a higher will. 
 I saw Fate's smiling lips, which oped in pleasure, 
 While loud, and louder, swelled the poet's measure. 
 
OF THE MUSES 129 
 
 CHLORAL 
 
 SUN-TRESSED, and radiant as the light auroral, 
 The attendant Hours troop ministerially round 
 The altar of his soul, and see it crowned 
 
 With full-leaved favours and with love-knots floral. 
 
 The star-accoutred future, loud and choral 
 With snatches of the present, gathers sound ; 
 But scouts and spies from deadly depths 
 profound 
 
 Foretoken Death or Death's grim agent, chloral. 
 
 Chloral ! — the word is terrible and dire 
 As with clandestine interviews of doom 
 Across the gulf of days, across the gloom, 
 
 By this one man to whom all harps aspire, 
 
 Who knows not sleep from death nor bed from 
 
 tomb, 
 
 Nor night from Hell nor his own heart from fire. 
 1 
 
130 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 AT BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA 
 
 Rossetti died on Easter Day ; 
 
 To God he mounted from his woes 
 
 As Christ in resurrection rose, 
 And, triumphing o'er night and day, 
 In Death became a light for aye. 
 
 On Easter Day Rossetti died. 
 
 I see him, sleepless, turn and toss : 
 
 Death took him, bleeding, from the cross — 
 
 Insomnia — whereon, crucified, 
 
 He hung, of sleep's dear use denied. 
 
 Rossetti died on Easter Day, 
 The day Christ rose to God of old. 
 Dawn builds a church of pearl and gold. 
 
 ' EASTER, WHEREON CHRIST SET HIS RAY, 
 
 ROSSETTI DIED IN ! ' Let us pray. 
 
OF THE MUSES 131 
 
 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI 
 
 1 
 
 THY words are wine to faint and weary ; 
 
 To hungry hands thy faith is bread ; 
 Thy quiet prayers — wind-quaint and eerie — 
 
 Awaken if the weary faint, 
 Are dreams to deify the dead. 
 
 Thy kiss is light to eyes when weeping ; 
 
 To lips else dumb thy voice is breath ; 
 Thy breast, where sobs or sighs are sleeping, 
 
 Is pillow pure for weeping eyes, 
 Is bush to screen the bird from death. 
 
 Sun-hues about thee shine, dim graces 
 Colour thy form and holy hair. 
 
132 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Woman ? I seek for sign or traces 
 
 Of earth whereto such graces shine, 
 Beatifying earth and air. 
 
 To me thou art that Mother, Mary, 
 Whom love and pity's pain sufficed, 
 
 For fancy — truth's true brother-fairy — 
 Hath worshipped thee as Mary-Mother, 
 
 Adoring all the world as Christ. 
 
 22nd July 1894. 
 
OF THE MUSES 133 
 
 II 
 
 There was great stir on earth to-day. 
 
 She, to whom Christ at christening came, 
 
 Went upward like a thin white flame 
 To dwell for aye 
 
 With her great namesake, Christ, whose fame 
 
 Enniches her Madonna's name 
 In Heaven to-day. 
 
 There was great stir in Heaven to-day ; 
 
 For she who to the temple, earth, 
 
 In joy's bright fulness, joy's bright dearth, 
 Brought song's bright ray, 
 
 Knows Heaven's unearthly bounds of birth, 
 
 Rejoices God, who lulls all mirth 
 On earth to-day. 
 
134 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 There was great stir on earth to-day. 
 It seems as if the Old Year sang 
 Her songs for the last time, then sprang 
 
 Weeping away ; 
 Yet feel I not a single pang, 
 For her songs ring, as ne'er they rang, 
 
 On earth to-day. 
 
 There was great stir in Heaven to-day. 
 
 The New Year rose and took* its station 
 
 At God's own side in jubilation : 
 I heard Him pray ; 
 
 And heard the sounding proclamation — 
 
 How all her songs should have God's dedication 
 On earth, in Heaven, alway. 
 
 December 1894. 
 
OF THE MUSES 13S 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH 
 
 MOUNTING the ladder of thy lofty verse, 
 I reach at last the topmost rung — of gold. 
 
 The o'ergorgeous mists of metaphor disperse, 
 And, calm, the skies of life begin to unfold. 
 
 Up here, beside thee by the parapet 
 
 Of Heaven, no din nor discord moves and mars 
 God's peace, and thine, who art a ruby set 
 
 Deep in the sun-claspt bracelet of the stars. 
 
 QUATRAIN 
 
 His songs were echoes only of the spheres. 
 
 Men saw him come divine and gave him hail, 
 Then strove to pierce him with apostate spears 
 
 That struck but sparks from off his golden mail. 
 
136 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 ROBERT, EARL OF LYTTON 
 
 Pale courtly poet nursing dreams 
 Half laughable, half tragic, 
 The moonbeam of your magic 
 Transforms the melancholy streams, 
 Where Marah moves in moan and dreams, 
 To waters — sweet — Elysian. 
 
 Your smile was like a wrinkled rose, 
 Your sorrow like a lily, 
 And, though the way was hilly, 
 
 You clomb till, at the perfect close, 
 
 The minarets of Beauty rose 
 Before your spirit's vision. 
 
OF THE MUSES 137 
 
 JAMES THOMSON (B. V.) 
 
 Life rose before him, pillared high in air t 
 With pure nobility of line and curve, 
 And he, with youthhood at his side to serve, 
 
 Found all forms lovely and all faces fair. 
 
 Love strove with Death, for Fate had matched 
 the pair : 
 
 His sweetheart died, who held in sweet reserve 
 
 Love's joy. Ah ! then his hopes were seen to 
 swerve — 
 
 Faith stumbled on the stones of his despair. 
 
 This was thy work, thou enigmatic Fate ; 
 
 This transformation God to thee recorded ; 
 
 But every sorrow, girt with gall and sworded 
 With dread, 'gainst which he battled till too late, 
 
 On thee deals back the blows thatonce he warded 
 With sombre bursts of ineffectual hate. 
 
138 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 B. V. 
 
 This London is a purple sea. 
 
 For winds, 'tis swept by Fortune's breath ; 
 Its waves are pain and poverty 
 
 Or riches Fortune scattereth : 
 Yet every wave in London's sea 
 
 Must break upon the reefs of death. 
 
 You knew its waves of pain, B. V., 
 
 While others, blown by Fortune's breath 
 
 Beheld the wave, Prosperity, 
 Which broke on reefs naught shattereth ; 
 
 But pain, rebounding off, B. V., 
 Foams back on life, defying death. 
 
OF THE MUSES 139 
 
 THE GLOOMY TOWN 
 
 Thou crude interpreter 
 
 Of all the curdling gibberish of Death 
 Whose monstrous and abominable breath, 
 
 Commemorative of the sepulchre, 
 
 Is wafted on the wind to earth, 
 Some empty devilry of odious Death 
 
 Seems to have waited on thy birth 
 
 And, gibing at the jocund earth, 
 
 Infected sea and air with ghoulish ghostly mirth. 
 
 Thou great astrologer, 
 Thee, by the bright horoscopy of Hope, 
 I greet with love the greater since who grope 
 
 In sorrow's universal massacre 
 
140 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Are Love's own children had by Life 
 
 In some high holiday of heavenly hope ; 
 And, looking back upon thy strife — 
 Thy harrowing enmity with life — 
 Watch the assassin, Death, still gloating o'er the 
 knife. 
 
OF THE MUSES 141 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 THEE I salute, not captain in the ranks 
 Of social crucial cause, nor architect 
 Planning new edificial rights to erect, 
 
 Nor swimmer 'gainst the millioned mountebanks ; 
 
 But as that Poet whom the Mother thanks 
 For service royally rendered to effect 
 The liberation of her dreams long-checked 
 
 By temporal chains whose heavy music clanks 
 
 Still on the ears emancipate of Man : 
 Thee I salute as Poet — yea, though reft 
 From Poesy, Poet — that the world, which cleft 
 
 The helm of Glory when thy fight began, 
 May still remember thou art live, art left, 
 
 Achilles-like, unconquered in the van. 
 
142 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE EARTHLY PARADISE 
 
 Thy dreams fall leaf-like from the flower thy brain, 
 Dripping with dews of visionary repose, 
 
 Come to men sleeping like the sleepy rain 
 Rimming the long dusk lashes of the rose 
 With lines of humid silver. Summer blows 
 
 Thy dreams to my feet as her green skirts trail by, 
 
 And now I dream, and now I yearn to die. 
 
 For thou hast led me to that hazy dreamland, 
 Where the sky faints into the purple sea, 
 
 Where the land, pure and pale.may never seem land 
 But one dim highway to Eternity, 
 Bereft of blossom and unblest with tree : 
 
 Lo, I am mixt corporeally with its sky, 
 
 And now I dream and now I yearn to die. 
 
OF THE MUSES 143 
 
 LOVE IS ENOUGH 
 
 Men do not grasp the meaning of your might, 
 Hold no conception of your soul's true light 
 And lustre, inconceivable to man 
 While still you walk, for all men's eyes to scan, 
 Along these terraces and streets of strife, 
 Or wind the lanes of multitudinous life. 
 Knowing you mortal, men can have no thought 
 Of what you have hewn and built and shaped and 
 
 wrought 
 Out of the marble of mortality — 
 A mountainous fabric which the living see 
 With dazed dumb wonder at the wondrous hand 
 That wrought it — shaped and built and hewed 
 
 and planned, 
 Plenipotent. God grant your life be long, 
 Your northern seas of deep unsounded song 
 
144 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Flow deeper as the years, like icebergs, loom 
 Up from the unfathomable arctic gloom 
 Of sunless time : God grant you grow with age, 
 And joy ride ever in your equipage ; 
 But at your death alone will all men learn 
 Your soul's true lustre and true light eterne, 
 Your universal and eternal might, 
 
 Champion and cherished of defenceless right, 
 
 » 
 
 Chastiser feared of retrogressive wrong. 
 
 For death, so oft ennobled by your song, 
 
 Ennobles and enlightens life, and shows 
 
 The o'erlooked perfection hidd'n within the rose ; 
 
 And so shall death, ennobling you, enlighten 
 
 Your songs and you with afterlife, and brighten 
 
 Lips that the names of Shakespeare, Wordsworth 
 
 fill 
 With yet another and beloved Will. 
 
OF THE MUSES 145 
 
 JOHN, LORD DE TABLEY 
 
 Monarchically throned, august 
 
 As God embodied in the heavenly blue, 
 
 You, sidelong gazing downward on the dust, 
 May know my verses yearn to you, 
 May see the soul's flame flaring through, 
 
 And god me with your gaze's noble trust. 
 
 The imperial purple of your verse, 
 
 The potent pauses and the kingly heights 
 
 Of some pure passage terrible and terse, 
 The dignity of days and nights 
 Sphering alternate glooms and lights — 
 
 Hard glooms and lights no glooms might e'er 
 
 asperse — 
 
 K 
 
146 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 These make you holy like the sun, 
 
 Robe you with planetary religiousness, 
 Ensilver all your fame with gleams that run 
 
 From earth's auroral loveliness, 
 
 While your soul's fragrance comes to bless — 
 A world of roses glorified to one. 
 
 Great Caesar of the Rome of Art, 
 Eternity your toga, and the years 
 
 Your yellow slaves, I, taking my small part 
 In loving what Love's self reveres, 
 Am corporate with the singing spheres, 
 
 And die a life-throb in Creation's heart. 
 
OF THE MUSES 147 
 
 THEODORE WATTS 
 
 Prime absolute monarch, whose wide reign extends 
 
 O'er all the kingdom of imperial song ! 
 
 King, to whose court all kings and princes throng, 
 Before whose throne the knee of kingship bends ! 
 In Song's proud realms, where might with right 
 meets, blends, 
 
 One principality doth most belong 
 
 To thee— the Sonnet — stronghold of the strong, 
 Tower where true mightmoves e'er to mightier ends. 
 
 This the poetic armies of the brain 
 
 Assault, attack — thoughts wildly charge and 
 storm 
 
 Firm bastions and fixt battlements of Form, 
 To learn repulse until, 'mid fancies slain, 
 The heart and soul of passion and thought remain 
 
 Triumphant, with the beams of victory warm. 
 
148 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 A GRAVE BY THE SEA 
 
 When he was dead whom all had known to love, 
 Not one beside thee in that silent group 
 Stood lone as thou whom Death at one fell swoop 
 
 Had robbed of friend — of friendship's brooding 
 dove. 
 
 Yet came no comfort from the stars above, 
 While sorrow's leaden lids refused to droop, 
 Nor would thy large, thy lofty spirit stoop 
 
 To lift Sleep's gage — to lift Sleep's vaunting glove. 
 
 Though of thy friend — thy brother — thou wert 
 robbed, 
 
 Others were nigh to bless thy desolate fears, 
 And ev'n when most the voice of Pity sobbed 
 
 Love held a balm to soothe thy bitter tears — 
 Love who could tell how Gabriel's heart still throbbed 
 
 And pulsed with life-blood of the glorious years. 
 
OF THE MUSES 149 
 
 AN OPEN-AIR FRIENDSHIP 
 George Borrow and Theodore Watts 
 I SAW old Lavengro, who mused and pondered, 
 
 Stalking through meadows with his giant stride ; 
 The poet-friend was with him as he wandered, 
 
 With wisdom's bark at anchor by his side. 
 The old man's hair — each windy lock blown 
 trembling — 
 To silver mist about his head seemed turned, 
 When sunset's burnisht cavalcades assembling, 
 
 His eyes in lurid conflagration burned. 
 Then home ! Though love may suffer life's eclipses, 
 What friendship lit with more revealing beams 
 Than theirs, who knew and loved the dusky gypsies, 
 Who loved and knew the woods and hurrying 
 streams ! 
 What love so bright in face of Fate or Sorrow — 
 God's gift, and man's, to quell and conquer Borrow ! 
 
ISO THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 GEORGE BORROW ON ELVIR HILL 
 To W. T. W. and T. G. H. 
 
 Boyhood lends Nature laughter ere it borrow 
 Her tears by usury of circumstance, 
 And yet some changeless magic as of chance 
 
 Throws midnight shadows over every morrow ; 
 
 For this fair child felt something like to sorrow 
 When only smiles are youth's inheritance : 
 The Elle-girls weaving the bright faery dance 
 
 Spake faery spells into the ear of Borrow. 
 
 And now to-day, with lucent tresses clinging, 
 Those elves and fairies of 'eternal fame 
 . Weave spells of love and laughter round his name, 
 Their greenest treasure from green woodlands 
 
 While those two friends, who clove so to him, claim 
 To set the chimes of his remembrance ringing. 
 
OF THE MUSES 151 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 Greatest since Shelley's tireless tide broke strong 
 Upon the strand of life in billowed rhyme, 
 Swinburne, whose glory gladdens Autumn's 
 prime 
 
 With praiseless music and with princely song, 
 
 Throned as a god above the kneeling throng, 
 Beholdest thou with godlike eyes sublime 
 Thy brine-breathed waves break o'er the wall of 
 time, 
 
 Floating the fame that doth to thee belong. 
 
 Far be the day when life must yield thee up, 
 Undying, to the deathless hands of Death 
 Whose winnowing wings divide the air above ; 
 
 Far be the day thou shalt have filled the cup 
 With wine of thine own soul, that loves the breath 
 Of foam-flowered fields rejoicing in thy love. 
 
1 52 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 'SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE' 
 
 THESE are the lyric fields where Shelley trod, 
 Where glad dews gleam like stars imparadised ; 
 Above, the blue lips of the air are spiced 
 
 With breath uprisen from dewy turf and sod. 
 
 Here Shelley sang, with feet for soaring shod, 
 But hands in Envy's mundane clutches viced : 
 His Heaven these fields wherein he walked as 
 Christ ; 
 
 Where may not we put crown on thee as God ? 
 
 Shelley is but a name, yet wind and wave 
 Speak never louder in their morning mirth 
 
 Than Shelley from the universe, his grave 
 Where Death writhes ever in the throes of birth ; — 
 
 And thy name shines with Shelley's, his who gave 
 Sunrise of singing as a creed for earth. 
 
OF THE MUSES 153 
 
 'AND THERE WAS LIGHT' 
 
 What art thou ! What the leaves are to the woods 
 When communist April revolutionises 
 
 Their lonely pride and grandiose solitudes 
 
 With primal thrills and throbbing new surprises ; 
 
 So thou to Song in all her myriad moods. 
 
 What art thou ! What the woods are to the gale 
 Bowing the trees like mellow violins, 
 
 When piny murmurs play a sombre scale 
 'Mid deep harmonics every elm begins ; 
 
 So thou to Song when shaping gusts prevail. 
 
 What art thou ! What the gale is to the earth — 
 
 The gale that races with the light and ranges 
 The hills and heights — the gale whose wrinkling 
 mirth 
 Moves morn to glowing jests and ruddy 
 changes ; 
 So thou to Song in plenitude or dearth. 
 
154 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 What , art thou ! What the earth is to the sun — 
 
 A line in the sestina of the stars, 
 Whose rhymes enlink and follow one by one — 
 
 A bar in Time's sonata built of bars ; 
 So thou in Song's great system web-like spun. 
 
 What art thou ! What the sun to space impearled 
 When Hallelujahs of the dawn are shouted 
 
 And graven standards of the light unfurled, 
 And raven soldieries of night are routed, 
 
 Art thou to Song — Light-giver of the world. 
 
OF THE MUSES ISS 
 
 AUGUSTA WEBSTER 
 
 THOU wert a woman, and thy wide warm heart 
 Loved all things lovable : thy singing breath 
 Curled upward through the silver air of Art, 
 Until from earth thy spirit did depart 
 'Mid dark proposals of audacious Death. 
 
 Thou wert a poet, and thy proud pure soul 
 Divined the poet's mission well — to teach 
 The world new wisdom from the olden scroll, 
 To thrill the mind as by the heart's control, 
 And girdle with imaginative speech. 
 
156 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 'Twas thine to win old Browning's grand regard ; 
 
 Fondly he loved his wife Elizabeth ; 
 And fresh from love of such as she, dawn-starred 
 His heart comes like the morning — sealed and 
 barred 
 
 Impenetrably 'gainst Despair and Death. 
 
OF THE MUSES IS7 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON 
 
 Bland courtier of the Muses ! 
 
 Diplomatist unscarred 
 Between the triple powers, whose ruses 
 
 Entrap and baulk the bard — 
 Rhyme and rhythm and form ! 
 
 On silken coat-lapel and border 
 
 Thy knighthood manifest, 
 How many a star and order 
 
 Re-decorate thy breast — 
 Rhyme and rhythm and form. 
 
 Love-playful or in play satiric, 
 Thou movest among the throng, 
 
158 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Thyself a living lyric, 
 
 A pure incarnate song — 
 Rhyme and rhythm and form. 
 
 I see thee smiling often, 
 
 But, when thou art alone, 
 Thy smiles will swoon to tears which soften 
 
 All sorrow with their own, 
 The man's heart piercing warm 
 Rhyme and rhythm and form. 
 
OF THE MUSES 159 
 
 ADAH ISAACS MENKEN 
 
 Half slave she was, and yet half queen ; 
 
 More queen in hand and heart than slave 
 In aught else that she may have been 
 
 Through acts her proud heart's prayers could 
 save. 
 But, queen or slave, her spirit gave 
 
 One mien alike to slave or queen, 
 To life, and what of grimy death was human — 
 The fame, the shame, the name of woman. 
 
 Day, was it day or starless night 
 Filled the nude gulfs where her eyes lay 
 
 Like twinned worlds wading in that light 
 Which laps the spirit's brows for aye ? 
 
 Ah ! night or day, her spirit's sway 
 Was light alike to day or night, 
 
160 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 To earth, or aught the lovely dews illumine — 
 Flame of the fame and shame of woman. 
 
 Like joys for Hell, from her heart's Heaven 
 
 Her honey of song oozed up and fell ; 
 As, when the months have counted seven, 
 
 The roses give the air their smell. 
 Of Heaven or Hell, her spirit's spell 
 Could leaven alike both Hell and Heaven 
 
 With colour and sound (god Raphael felt with 
 Schumann) — 
 
 The fame, the shame, the name of woman. 
 
OF THE MUSES 161 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER 
 
 Round the earth the moon of matchless Song e'er 
 
 circles brimmed and bright, 
 Bright and brimful with the secret whose solution 
 
 is but Light, 
 And the earth, with eyes bedazzled by the 
 
 sunlight launched effulgent 
 From the sun of Fate upon the seas of seeing 
 
 and of sight, 
 Glories in the moon of Song unmatched in either 
 
 day or night. — 
 
 Glories, for her eyes, recovered of the daylight's 
 
 dazzlement, 
 Gaze above and understand the moonlight whence 
 
 a balm is sent 
 
162 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Weaving Sorrow's wounds with joy whereof is 
 
 Sorrow's self indulgent — 
 Understand the message, song, and grasp the 
 
 songful meaning meant : 
 Light that dubs the darkness Day, and caps the 
 
 world with sweet content. 
 
 Thou — the only morning-star the barren morning 
 
 bears and yields 
 Heaven in worldless heights alone the New 
 
 World's towering future shields — 
 Sing'st and, singing, bring'st the moon a 
 service more than Fate melodious 
 (Fate the sun who lends to Song whatever sceptred 
 
 light she wields) — 
 Bring'st and, bringing, sing'st, the starriest flower 
 
 of all the starless fields. 
 
OF THE MUSES 163 
 
 Thou, her only star-dove, plainest whiter than the 
 
 pleading snow, 
 Pleadest on thy heights Columbian where the 
 reptile shadows go 
 In and out amid the morning with insinua- 
 tions odious — 
 
 * 
 
 Bleedest in thy whiteness as her other star-bird, 
 
 Edgar Poe, 
 Like a pitchy raven watched the blood upon his 
 
 plumage glow. 
 
164 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 ENVOY 
 
 Starry splendour singing ever though the mouth 
 
 that sang is mute, 
 Soul, a flower on earth too fragrant that in Heaven 
 
 hast taken root, 
 Springing up among the hidden spheres which 
 
 God bedews with singing, 
 Verse like thine can take me, touch me, string me, 
 
 strike me like a lute, 
 Lift me to the lips of rapture, sound and play me 
 
 like a flute, 
 
OF THE MUSES 165 
 
 JOHN PAYNE 
 
 Immortal, crowned with lily-wreaths of light, 
 Whose voice of old so softly, sweetly sang, 
 May I not bring the reverence which upsprang 
 
 As dawn upsprings from out the house of night ? 
 
 Thy House of Dreams rose lovely in my sight ; 
 Far from the iron strife of bells that clang 
 Thy silver chimes of starry speech outrang, 
 
 Hanging upon mine ear like jewels bright. 
 
 Immortal, crowned with lily-wreaths of flame, 
 
 Thou who hast ever soft and sweetly spoken, 
 Like those sea-fostered mariners who came 
 
 To the isle that hath pale lotus leaves for token, 
 Forgetting friends or hope of home or fame, 
 
 Here could I sit through all mischance hath 
 wroken, 
 Striving to catch some magic of thy name, 
 
 Until the spell upon thy lips be broken. 
 
166 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 ON HIS 'VILLON' 
 In spirit and in sense with song to wit 
 In this rare book is all that Villon writ ; 
 John Payne the author, and he seems to fence 
 The name of Villon round with lustre whence 
 The lanterns of the stars themselves are lit. 
 
 John Payne the author, and such excellence 
 Herein is found, such odour breathing hence, 
 Aloft with Villon's self he seems to sit 
 In spirit and in sense ! 
 
 John Payne the author, and in husht suspense 
 We look to Heaven where clinging clouds are 
 dense, 
 But a voice clangs loud from out the Devil's pit 
 Where the last links of dreadful night are knit : 
 ' Villon he sought in Hell, and knew him thence 
 In spirit and in sense.' 
 
OF THE MUSES , 167 
 
 A MASQUE I 
 
 Thou perfume, the brown-hearted hedges 
 Are odorous of thee ; 
 
 June brings thee with her when she edges 
 The year with silver, and the bee 
 Puts gold upon his wings for thee. 
 
 Thou colour, every cloud's clear margent 
 
 Encoloured glows with thee ; 
 Eve brings thee with her, grandly argent, 
 
 When space grows pious, and the sea 
 
 Puts purple on his eyes for thee. 
 
 All perfumes, colours, strangely blending, 
 Are wonderful through thee ; 
 
 The hues, the scents of life's great ending 
 Are fragrant — fair — Eternity 
 Puts kisses on Death's mouth for thee. 
 
168 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 JOAQUIN MILLER 
 
 LONE poet, where the skirts of sunset roll, 
 There roll the dreams of folded sleep, which 
 seem 
 
 To mix and mingle with thy mighty soul, 
 There where the lidded mountains lie asleep, 
 And husht clouds keep and solemnise theirdream 
 
 As at some festival of fear and dole. 
 
 On the sierras of thy soul they melt — 
 The glittering snows of Poesy, to flow 
 
 In running rivers round the world, a belt 
 Girdling the massive hips of Time with grace, 
 Old Time whose face is thin and like the snow, 
 
 Haggard with fear, and filled with dole unfelt. 
 
OF THE MUSES 169 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 Smooth mouthpiece for the clarionet 
 Whence Bion and Theocritus 
 Blew music blandly garrulous, 
 
 Thy murmuring music haunts me yet. 
 
 Instead of thyme and cytisus — 
 Twin darlings of thy Sicily — 
 The heather and the hills I see, 
 
 And the dark broom auriferous. 
 
 For, while I hear, I picture thee, 
 Priest of the sacred Rod and Creel, 
 Watching the dazed whipped ripples reel 
 
 Upon the loch Eternity. 
 
170 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 I see thee, as the shadows wheel, 
 Bring Homer like a fish to land — 
 A thing of leaping silver, grand, 
 
 And brightly bendable as steel. 
 
 Or gypsy-like I view thee stand, 
 My boyhood's Bedouin strangely set 
 'Mong books which ask, * Canst thou forget 
 
 His tent 'mid life's Sahara-sand ? ' 
 
OF THE MUSES 171 
 
 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 WHITE swan upon our Thames of Poesy, 
 
 Thy shadow etched upon the waters there 
 Seems bearing and significant to me, 
 For o'er its darkling outlines do I see 
 Thyself carved crystal in the amber air. 
 
 The gracious contours of the virgin bird, 
 
 The virgin colour of its gracious plumes, 
 Chisel the air with beauty, clear, unblurred, 
 Beyond the effort of the beauteous word 
 
 To touch with light of language that illumes. 
 
 I only know thou art there : the senses feel 
 Thy grace, which clarifies the air with light, 
 
172 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Seen as the morn, make quiet pulses reel, 
 Heard as a holy sound, unseal, reveal, 
 Dim purities of spirit from the night. 
 
 As down thou floatest I have striven to borrow 
 Meet speech from mysteries encompassing — 
 
 To weave my web of words about to-morrow — 
 
 I, reconciled to joy in face of sorrow, 
 
 Hymn thee, who joy in every human thing. 
 
OF THE MUSES 173 
 
 ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY 
 
 Thy world was a whirlwind of music, whose 
 measure 
 Was set to the dance of the wind on the trees ; 
 The leaves of thy lips were so stirred that their 
 treasure — 
 Thesong-seed of kisses — was given to thebreeze, 
 Was lost by the breeze in its passion of pleasure, 
 And scattered as breath of the land by the sea's. 
 
 The town where thou dwelledst was song, and thy 
 dwelling 
 Wasbuiltin the terrace God flagged with the stars, 
 But 'way to the woods, where the willows stood 
 telling 
 Of May to the lilies afloat in their cars, 
 How often thou rann'st when, as midnight was 
 knelling, 
 The town turned as human, grew ghastly with 
 scars. 
 
174 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Thy dream was a cameo of colour ; when sleeping, 
 When waking, thy dream was beside thee, was 
 near. 
 Thy seeing grew keen of its sight till the weeping, 
 Tears-blood, of thy heart blurred the eyes that 
 saw clear ; 
 But the Heaven which thou hast — that hath thee 
 in its keeping — 
 Transfigures the smile and effaces the tear. 
 
OF THE MUSES 175 
 
 PAUL VERLAINE 
 
 THE Muses loved thee in thy joys and pains, 
 
 Thy smiles and tears, and, when joy's light 
 grew less, 
 
 Forthysake loved thycares, which seemed to bless 
 Life with the clank of their melodious chains. 
 The Muses loved thee, and their love remains 
 
 In many a page's pious loveliness, 
 
 And, ringing through the trumpet of ' Sagesse,' 
 Time's voice links Villon's victory with Verlaine's. 
 
 When thou art dead, methinks thy grave should be 
 Some hill where God's pure passion of peace is rife, 
 
 In sound and hearing of the haggard sea, 
 That in its noble elemental strife 
 
 Man might behold a test and type of thee, 
 Thou billowy harp for every wind of life. 
 
176 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 mes h6pitaux 
 
 Oft thou, in hospital lying still, 
 
 Hast watched the watchful flowerets grow 
 Like poems on the window-sill, 
 
 And seen the solemn sunlight flow 
 O'er heaven as water o'er a mill. 
 
 So we, in these gray wards of strife, 
 Watch, watch thy gracious poems grow 
 
 Like flowerets with dim secrets rife, 
 And weep to see thy soul's light flow 
 
 As sunlight over sordid life. 
 
OF THE MUSES 177 
 
 ARTHUR RIMBAUD 
 
 The glare and gleam from many a yellow lamp 
 Fall on the face of one who, in the street, 
 Seems to have gilded sandals for his feet, 
 
 Whose brow seems glad forglory's brand and stamp. 
 
 He holds a wand of starlight, bright and damp 
 With pearled fantastic dews ; his eyes are sweet 
 With legend ; and his spirit-pinions beat 
 
 Against the bars that cage them round and cramp. 
 
 Rimbaud, your youth was but a flame unfanned, 
 Those days you lived had petals still unblown ; 
 The wand you shattered, it was not your own — 
 'Twas all the world's : Heaven saw it in your hand, 
 When lo, it fell, and on life's desert sand 
 
 One pearl was left resplendent and alone ! 
 
 M 
 
178 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY 
 
 Unconquerable soul ! 
 
 Your march is music to the human mind 
 
 As, glowing, variously incarnadined 
 
 With streaming wounds and gashes 
 
 Whence Fate's malignance flashes, 
 You go to conquer the unconquered goal, 
 
 Your spirit's victory lighting up life's ashes. 
 
 Indomitable soul ! 
 
 Your large symphonious star-concerted art, 
 
 Your instrumental harmonies of heart, 
 
 Your spirit's orchestration, 
 
 Are all a revelation 
 How from the sounding-board of Fate re-roll 
 
 Your doming thunders of unmoved laudation. 
 
OF THE MUSES 179 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 Scholar, who seest in every olden tome 
 
 That wears the dusty book-plate of the years 
 A magic as of morning, when the dome 
 
 Is bright with sheen of shaggy orient spears ! 
 Like one who lifts a curtain of some rare stuff 
 
 I peer within, and see the age antique, 
 When hearts were rare though man's own speech 
 was rough 
 
 As billows bounding in ' the silver streak.' 
 Those wondrous days that tinge the seas of time 
 
 With dolphin splendours of Elizabeth, 
 When the refrain of every running rhyme 
 
 Rang clear to iron challenges of Death ! 
 Dark night beneath and glory overhanging, 
 See, how they shine with gleaming armour 
 clanging ! 
 
180 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 STEPHANE MALLARME 
 
 With cheeks that take the morning's radiant hues, 
 
 With ears that stoop and eyes that swim and 
 glisten, 
 
 Forwhatthin-spoken word dostthounow listen? — 
 What cooing murmur of the blithesome Muse ? 
 Art thou some angel whom the stars accuse 
 
 With awful lips thou hast so often kissen ? 
 
 Art man ? or but a babe for dreams to christen 
 With coloured light and beaming rainbow dews ? 
 
 Thy gaze sought out the sun the planets serve 
 With liege devotion of the godlike knee ; 
 
 Thy task was Light: when duty thought to swerve, 
 The eyes that gazed had lost the strength to see: 
 
 We are blind as thou, but thy soul's eyes observe 
 The shadowy pageants of Eternity. 
 
OF THE MUSES 181 
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 
 ON HIS BIRTHDAY 
 
 The shadow of God fell o'er thy face, and rolled 
 
 Night on the dim horizon of thy birth ; 
 
 Our night is now thy dawn, with lasting dearth 
 Of pain, thy sponsor in iron days of old. t 
 Love, who so loved thee, let thy heart behold 
 
 Life'sseemingsorrowandDeath'sunseemlyrairth; 
 
 And what was thine? far whispers from mid- 
 earth — 
 The golden miracle of things untold. 
 
 A pilgrim from the glittering courts of Love, 
 I kneel and kiss the slipper of thy fame, 
 Make dedicate this day to thy sweet name 
 Bright with the light from skies that bend above, 
 Where now thou singest, as a silver dove 
 Heard 'mid the years' harmonious acclaim. 
 
1 82 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 WHJ\T OF DEATH? 
 
 You might not look upon the sun, 
 
 Yet, ah, the sun was kind ! 
 
 And, though you could not see, being blind, 
 You felt his warm endearments run 
 Through you. Thank the sun ! 
 
 You might not look upon the sea, 
 
 Yet, ah, the sea was kind ! 
 
 And (though you only heard, being blind) 
 Its waters, tipped-eternally, 
 Knew you. Bless the sea ! 
 
 You might not look on Life, whose breath 
 
 Was blizzard-like, unkind ; 
 
 And, as you could not see, being blind, 
 That God might give your sight back Death 
 Slew you. What of Death ? 
 
OF THE MUSES 183 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 There by the clear Samoan sands 
 Where stooping billows kiss, take hands, 
 
 Then die, 
 Thine is the form I find in dreams 
 Where o'er thee, as a mother, stands 
 
 The sky. 
 
 Thy paradise of taper palms, 
 Fingering the ivory air, thy balms, 
 
 Thy birds, 
 Thy holy dusk of dim slim dreams — 
 They come to me, and, like old psalms, 
 
 Thy words. 
 
1 84 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 They have in them the old gold ring, 
 And fields green-tartaned with the spring 
 Flash by, 
 Colour the doming glass of dreams, 
 And from the Forth grey mists unking 
 The sky. 
 
 From the pure Pentlands hear the call ! 
 ' Come back, come back, the mists enthrall 
 
 The sea ; 
 The heather's eyes are thick with dreams ; 
 Come back ! thy country offers all 
 
 To thee.' 
 
 2nd August 1894. 
 
OF THE MUSES 185 
 
 II 
 
 On Vaea's mountain-top he lies — 
 Sleeps soundly, say, but never dies ; 
 
 Ah, no ! 
 From his pure height he sees not Death, 
 Who prowls with ever-watchful eyes 
 
 Below. 
 
 On Vaea's mountain-top he sleeps, 
 And all the passionate forest-deeps 
 
 Are stirred 
 As if the ringing axe of Death 
 Had startled Nature's self, who weeps 
 
 Unheard. 
 
1 86 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 The panther sea with foam-white paws, 
 The moon — a flashing curve of gauze, 
 A leaf 
 Dropped from theglimmering brows of Death — 
 Each seems to have a piteous cause 
 For grief. 
 
 He sleeps the dreamful sleep of rest, 
 Our Parsifal of Prose, whose quest 
 
 And strife 
 Are calmed and quelled at last by Death, 
 The keeper of the Grail possessed 
 
 Of life. 
 
 24M December 1894. 
 
OF THE MUSES 187 
 
 JOSE-MARIA DE HEREDIA 
 
 If thou indeed be not a phantom shape, 
 And thine harmonious verse be not a dream — 
 
 If the full thought thou dost so richly drape 
 With wordy jewels catching fancy's gleam 
 Have no false part in Love's misleading scheme, 
 
 And thou art all my senses make believe — 
 
 God still can work in gold, and earth would seem 
 
 Still to have golden chances to achieve. 
 
 For when I hear thy ' bosomed sonnets ' heave, 
 Washing the air with music, then my heart — 
 
 That ruddy tapestry for love to inweave 
 
 With purple threads of pleasure at thine art — 
 
 Trembles, and Heaven a planet's space comes 
 nearer, 
 
 And light seems lovelier still, and night seems 
 clearer. 
 
1 88 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 AVEC LES TROPHEES 
 
 My king, and captain of that corps 
 
 Who march beneath the Sonnet's banner — 
 Most regal of all who ever wore 
 
 The coronet, Form, in kingly manner — 
 See, I would merely touch your stirrup 
 
 As, 'mid the dust of days, you pass : 
 May not the humblest field-bird chirrup 
 
 When nightingales mouth summer's mass ! 
 You fade. I hear your horse's hooves 
 
 Hallooing to the echoes round, 
 And with you half a glory moves, 
 
 While I stand here austerely crowned, 
 Richer than kings or turbaned sophys, 
 Rich with the coin of God, thy Trophies. 
 
OF THE MUSES 189 
 
 OLIVER MADOX-BROWN 
 ROSE PARABLES: NO. 2 
 DEATH (like that Nimrod who of old decreed 
 A prophet's youth should glut the hungering fire) 
 Spake thus to Life, whose smiles enkindled ire — 
 Ire that his doom alone could fill or feed : 
 ' Die thou, and sate the flames, that in their greed 
 Fight with the wind who curbs the fiend, desire :' 
 And Life the child was flung where flames were 
 dire, 
 And mists of smoke, upwreathing, seemed to plead. 
 
 But He, whose name the stars keep ever bright, 
 Turned the fell flames to a bed of laughing roses 
 Whence every petal each pure blossom throws is 
 
 Rubied with tincture of celestial light, 
 
 And, while Life's eyes a silver sleep encloses, 
 
 We know not whether it be day or night. 
 
iao THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 FRENZY-FLOWER 
 
 Oh, Oliver ! Oh, Oliver ! 
 The mists are heavy on the hills of time ; 
 But, through the years as, whorled and white, they 
 climb, 
 I view your visage darkly silhouetted, 
 And over all looms Death, whose lean hand 
 whetted 
 The encrimsoned knife that winced and blushed 
 with crime. 
 
 Yea, Oliver ! My Oliver ! 
 For it was crime to kill you whose young breath 
 Spake youth for watchword, youth for shibboleth, 
 Till Fate intrigued your soul's assassination, 
 Searing the blade with blood for her oblation 
 In some momentous anarchy of Death. 
 
OF THE MUSES 191 
 
 Oh, Oliver ! Oh, Oliver ! 
 Life darkens waywardly towards the gloom 
 Where, gibbeted on gallows-trees of doom, 
 
 Like human things dance Death's maleficent 
 
 actions 
 And criminal deeds to fit with Fate's exactions, 
 And there his crime in killing you hath room. 
 
 Yea, Oliver ! My Oliver ! 
 You did not die : Death slew you ere half your 
 
 prime ; 
 No pardon could encompass such a crime 
 
 Save your great heart which from its fleshly 
 
 fastness 
 Beat with the spirit, and took in its vastness 
 Such grand circumference of the hills of time. 
 
192 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 To-day our city is in some wise fair, 
 
 As morning's roseate pulses throb and beat, 
 For all her ways are hallowed of thy feet, 
 
 Breathing thy presence like an incense rare. 
 
 With Art for guide thou hast clomb the jewelled 
 stair, 
 Yea, stood with Dante in the sacred street, 
 And sweet it is to think, if thought be sweet, 
 
 Thou hast a lily for Edina's hair — 
 
 A lily from the charmed fields of speech, 
 Messiah of the Beautiful, who bidst 
 Beauty give ear to what thou hast to teach, 
 
 While we, with joy's bright missal new unfolden, 
 Hail thee whose soul, enkindling in our midst, 
 
 Breaks into light and burns divinely golden. 
 
OF THE MUSES 193 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 What odours hang about thee, 
 
 Warm from the rose of great Rossetti's prime ; 
 The crier hours do shout thee, 
 
 Describe thee down the hollow halls of time. 
 
 What noises move around thee, 
 
 Deep from the mellow wood of Death's bassoon, 
 Since Gabriel died who bound thee 
 
 With ropes of love which God undid so soon. 
 
 What colours burn above thee, 
 
 Bright from the brush which turned thy friend- 
 ship gold ; 
 'Twere effort not to love thee 
 
 Who loved that living splendour triple-souled. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 What can God see beneath thee ! 
 
 Under thy feet God knows my heart lies gory, 
 And mists of Fate may sheathe thee, 
 
 But thou, knowing Gabriel, art assured of glory. 
 
OF THE MUSES 195 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON 
 WITH 'FLEET STREET ECLOGUES' 
 
 The Muses love thee, and their loves evince 
 Such light and jewelled fire of passionate joy 
 Spring grows more bold: no longer, cool and coy, 
 
 Meeting the sun with eyes that droop and wince. 
 
 Yea, Spring is princess now, and Love the prince 
 Hath given her many a rainy bow for toy, 
 And gave, when Chaucer met them as a boy ; 
 
 Ah, Spring hath been one starry anthem since ! 
 
 And now, John Davidson (whose sylvan ruses 
 Have waked the spring from dreams of sun and 
 
 flowers, 
 From sleepy visions of the folded hours), 
 She waits thy gift — waits, while her gaze infuses 
 New life in the eyes of thy great loves, the Muses, 
 Who ring thee round in honey-hearted bowers. 
 
196 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 WITH THE 'PLAYS' 
 
 Trotting by Shakespeare's side, thou seem'st to 
 catch 
 
 A splendour from his presence known and felt 
 
 In all thine actions : Pity's tears may melt ; 
 But thou hast joys and shining smiles to match : 
 Defeat with mailed and desperate hands may snatch 
 
 The dagger, shame, from Victory's glittering belt ; 
 
 But thou hast balm for every buffet dealt, 
 Hast unguents rare for every wound and scratch. 
 
 Reiterate running rumours are abroad 
 Of Summer's coronation : tree and bird 
 
 Take voice together ; wind and stream applaud ; 
 And thou (for God did dub thee bard, and gird 
 
 With glaive of gleaming speech), hast thou no laud, 
 To whom the seasons and the sun give word ? 
 
OF THE MUSES 197 
 
 WITH THE 'BALLADS AND SONGS' 
 
 UNBOWED he sings, and lifts elate 
 The pennon of his thoughts and dreams ; 
 
 And Life and Death and Chance and Fate 
 He chooses as his glowing themes. 
 
 Into the lists of splendid song 
 He rides with Death to run at tilt, 
 
 Where plumy Right unhorses Wrong, 
 And Purity engages Guilt. 
 
 From out the lists he comes to ride, 
 With victory's beady dews impearled, 
 
 Accepting, as he kneels in pride, 
 
 The crown of Beauty from the world. 
 
198 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 HADLEY WOOD 
 
 England, he loves thee, and his love 
 
 Appeareth like the spring 
 With beauty for a sky above 
 
 And health a bird to sing. 
 
 When Summer holds her bergomask, 
 He fares along as Spring ; 
 
 Nor spring nor summer shall I ask 
 If he will only sing ! 
 
OF THE MUSES 199 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON 
 
 Thy words win love as roses 
 
 Win the spring, 
 For all my heart uncloses, 
 Clings to sing and sings to cling, 
 Around thee, of thee, like the spring. 
 
 Thy ' Paestan roses ' blooming 
 
 May not fade ; 
 My heart, a wood, grows glooming, 
 Made to shade with shade dim-made 
 And cool for blooms too fair to fade. 
 
200 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Thy blooms are of such colour 
 
 All the light 
 Lifts lighter, while the night dies duller, 
 White at sight of sight so white — 
 Blancht beauty of thy spirit's light. 
 
OF THE MUSES 201 
 
 WILLIAM WATSON 
 
 WHAT charms are these thou buildest over life ? 
 
 What sober beauties house its heavy care ? 
 
 What grandiose periods of what peace make 
 fair 
 The days of its retributory strife 
 
 With white perfection of religious air ? 
 
 Thine edificial fancies are its charms. 
 A heavenly roof its earthly sorrows find 
 Beneath thy kingly spaciousness of mind. 
 
 Thy large embrace of intellectual arms 
 Brings comfort to its hurried days behind. 
 
 From what high mansions of the Muse art thou, 
 On embassies of awful import sent, 
 
202 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Come to the ample courts of earth, content, 
 
 Though algebraic mysteries move us now, 
 To know that God is sure of what is meant. 
 
 In lines of thine which come and come again 
 
 I catch a glory of the pagan sea, 
 
 And ofttimes hear miraculously through thee 
 The storm's contralto murmurs unto men, 
 
 The thunder droning like a golden bee. 
 
OF THE MUSES 203 
 
 FRANCIS THOMPSON 
 
 Thou bowl for God to fill with sacred wine, 
 And sweeten with the cedar-spice of song, 
 Thee happy angels in a starry throng 
 
 Twine brightly o'er with rose and eglantine ; 
 
 I lift thee brimming to these lips of mine 
 (Lips wet with waters of the earth how long !) ; 
 I drink, and hand and soul become twice strong 
 
 To thank the vintner God — to thank the Vine. 
 
 Thou crucifix, that Heaven hath chose to carve 
 From out the ivory fragments of His heart 
 Who gave His blood to all the veins of earth, 
 Worshipping thee, the soul, once wont to starve 
 For Faith's fair sustenance, sees the world's 
 eyes start 
 Like almond blossoms into lovelier birth, 
 
204 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Filled with such grave sweet mirth, 
 Such part-sad laughter of divine compassion, 
 That Hope, with lips tight-locked and strange 
 
 and ashen, 
 Finds strength whereby to fashion 
 A temple rare as ever angel trod, 
 Husht as the vast white beating heart of God. 
 
 CREATION 
 
 THOU shouldst with Crashawhaveadored and knelt 
 In some dim sanctuary of olden time. 
 
 What raptures would each heart in turn have felt! 
 How soul replied to soul as rhyme to rhyme ! 
 
 Perchance God made thee when He Crashaw made, 
 Then let thee sleep, till here thou wokest to find 
 
 The fugue atfaultwhich earth's hidd'n organplayed, 
 Clashing with golden preludes from thy mind. 
 
OF THE MUSES 205 
 
 GRAHAM R. TOMSON 
 
 Exquisite and airy, 
 
 How thy verses ramble 
 
 Through their lyric broom and bramble ! 
 How their footsteps vary, 
 Thou entrancing fairy 
 Threading the wild woods of words like a huntress 
 
 wary! 
 
 When the springtime twitches 
 
 Eager thumb and finger, 
 
 Twines them round the flakes that linger 
 In forgotten niches, 
 Witch, thy wand bewitches 
 Those miraculous woods of ours, mistress of their 
 
 riches. 
 
2o6 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 A CAT-REVERIE 
 
 ' Sphinx of my quiet hearth/ my cat 
 
 Sits at my feet and purrs. 
 I marvel what it marvels at 
 
 As, blinking at the fire, 
 It questions Fate what force is hers, 
 
 What longing, what desire. 
 
 I think of you ; the fire burns bright ; 
 
 From glowing frames of coal 
 Your face gleams lovely on my sight 
 
 I stoop and stroke my cat, 
 As Love might stoop and stroke your soul 
 
 If at God's feet you sat. 
 
OF THE MUSES 207 
 
 NORMAN GALE 
 
 The country and the country fields, 
 
 The wild rose in the forest, 
 The creamy bloom the wild rose yields, 
 
 The thicket's cuckoo chorist, 
 All fair things that sing and shine, 
 For a moment they are mine ; 
 Thou hast made them : they are thine. 
 
 God made the fields and birds and flowers, 
 
 But poets can re-make them, 
 When Death looms darkly in the bowers, 
 
 And sound and light forsake them ; 
 Let the world in shadow pine, 
 Song and splendour still are mine ; 
 Thou hast made them : they are thine. 
 
208 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Thou hast re-made Spring's universe, 
 
 For glad brooks change and chuckle ; 
 Thou gavest the winds the leaf to nurse, 
 
 The dews the rose to suckle : 
 Poet, dainty and divine, 
 All thy rural joys are mine ; 
 Thou hast made them : they are thine. 
 
OF THE MUSES 209 
 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 
 A STAR shone at thy birth, I trow, 
 
 Whose amethystine sphere 
 Coloured the air above, below, 
 
 With loving lustres clear ; 
 Shone, and the young white soul of thee 
 Grew bright with all the future was to be. 
 
 Still, still, it shines as at thy birth, 
 
 And from its skyey seat 
 It mellows every mood of earth 
 With colour grave and sweet ; 
 But never was its royal ray 
 So rich in splendour as it is to-day. 
 
 Hist November 1893. 
 
 O 
 
2io THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 HESPER 
 
 The shadows droop ; her dusky tresses 
 Night lets fall o'er earth's dim eyes ; 
 With fingers starry-ringed she presses 
 
 Hands she loved ere daylight dies. 
 Now sits she all alone, and hears 
 Time playing low and strange and faint 
 His quaint old harpsichord of years. 
 
 The shadows stoop ; the world is sleeping : 
 
 Fate between us twain hath crept — 
 Crept past the stealthy shadows creeping, 
 
 While the darkness dozed and slept. 
 Darkness ? Behold the stars, and see 
 Where heavenly Hesper drapes the breast 
 Of western heaven with light — for thee. 
 
OF THE MUSES 211 
 
 RELIGIO AMANTIS 
 
 Bea uty my one religion is, 
 
 By which I hold, by which I swear, 
 And God may truly call it His, 
 
 For 'tis significantly fair. 
 
 The lucence of my lady's eye 
 To me is more than any creed; 
 
 Her joys, her smiles and wiles, supply 
 My only spiritual need. 
 
 The blue confessional of air, 
 By all the holy seasons trod 
 
 Inclineth to my lightest prayer 
 The very auricle of God, 
 
212 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 To me the lily, any star, 
 
 Are but His crosier, but His sword ; 
 The solemn thunder from afar 
 
 Reads out the lesson of my Lord. 
 
 Beauty my one religion is, 
 
 On earth I find it, and in love ; 
 
 The earth and love and all are His — 
 But what of Him ? Is He above ? 
 
OF THE MUSES 213 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 
 
 Born for the poet's purple, thou 
 Art nominated by the Muses now, 
 Art pointed out the Apollonian throne, 
 And half-reluctant made to own 
 The bays which bind thy brow. 
 
 Life built of tears and smiles — 
 Based upon smiles but topped with tears — 
 The hive of heaven and all the humming spheres- 
 Are thine — the unearthly-architectured piles, 
 The Olympian measurements of miles. 
 
214 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Strange women at thy feet are fain, 
 Green-eyed imperishably like the main, 
 Tressed with the sun-gold's (see, ah, see !) 
 Imperial indestructibility, 
 Moving in joy or pain. 
 
 They are thy girls of Passion, 
 
 Thy passion-women lipped for kissing : 
 
 With feet that halt in Hell and voices hissing, 
 
 They lead Love's dances, joyless, ashen — 
 
 White festering things the hands of genius fashion. 
 
OF THE MUSES 215 
 
 JOHN GRAY 
 
 John Gray, thy name brings sweetly back to me 
 The savour of the seaweed and the sea, 
 For in some wise my heart goes out to thee 
 As doth the sea-bird to the sallow sea. 
 
 And, when 'tis traced in silver on thy page 
 (Thy heart's dim yearning to a twilit age), 
 My heart too seems to beat my body's cage, 
 Yearning for twilight of a twilit age. 
 
 CADENCES 
 
 N Fate, moving by mad semitones 
 Right up the scale of life, 
 Struck thee, thou treble note, 
 And from thine ebon throat 
 Came music high and clear and rife 
 With mirth which melted into moans. 
 
216 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 But moans or mirth, despair or joy, 
 Thou ringest in mine ears, 
 For Fate, whose fingers hit 
 Thy soul, staccatoing it, 
 Left vibrant all the mellow spheres 
 Which string the harp called heaven, rare boy. 
 
 Thou ringest in mine ears, I say, 
 A marvellous monotone ; 
 To the deep air around 
 Thou givest a heart of sound ; 
 When God and I are left alone, 
 I wonder wilt thou die away. 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 ENVOY 
 
THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 THE RELIGION OF A BOOKXOVER 
 
 All kail, my books ! I greet ye, friends and fellows, 
 Greet ye as never pilgrim, ages back, 
 Greeted that Lady in whose shining track 
 
 Heavenwalkethwiththelightthat moves and mellows. 
 
 All hail,my books! My blues, andgreens, andyellows, 
 That weave the rainbow of my joy, I lack 
 No patch of sunshine when the sky grows black, 
 
 And thunder like a trampled lion bellows. 
 
 For ye, my books, who are Father and Son to me 
 {Rich arteries of the earth 's eternal heart), 
 Have smiles to parry Sorrow's darkest dart — 
 
 Sorrow, who grinds her curst white teeth to see 
 How from the centre of the world ye start, 
 
 And wind yourselves about Eternity. 
 
 ■yd December 1893. 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 ALPHABETICAL INDEX 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 .lEschylus ..... 
 
 7 
 
 Aristophanes .... 
 
 9 
 
 Arnold, Matthew .... 
 
 I20 
 
 Bailey, Philip James 
 
 107 
 
 Barnfield, Richard .... 
 
 34 
 
 Baudelaire, Charles 
 
 117 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher 
 
 36 
 
 Beddoes, Thomas Lovell . 
 
 91 
 
 Behn, Aphra .... 
 
 49 
 
 Blake, William .... 
 
 64 
 
 Bridges, Robert .... 
 
 171 
 
 Bronte, Emily .... 
 
 109 
 
 Brown, Oliver Madox- 
 
 189 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 
 
 99 
 
 Browning, Robert .... 
 
 105 
 
 Burns, Robert .... 
 
 6 S 
 
 Byron, George, Lord 
 
 76 
 
 Campion, Thomas .... 
 
 3° 
 
 Carew, Thomas .... 
 
 37 
 
220 
 
 Catullus 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey . 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 
 Collins, Mortimer . 
 Collins, William . 
 Crashaw, Richard . 
 
 Dante 
 
 Davidson, John 
 De Lisle, Leconte . 
 De Tabley, John, Lord 
 Dobson, Austin 
 Donne, John 
 Dryden, John 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward 
 
 Gale, Norman 
 Gautier, Theophile 
 Goethe 
 
 Gosse, Edmund 
 Gray, John . 
 Gray, Thomas 
 
 Hake, Thomas Gordon 
 Henley, William Ernest 
 Heredia, Jose-Maria de 
 Herrick, Robert 
 
 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 PAGE 
 It 
 
 61 
 
 18 
 
 69 
 
 121 
 
 55 
 45 
 
 13 
 195 
 in 
 
 145 
 
 157 
 
 3i 
 
 47 
 
 94 
 
 207 
 103 
 
 57 
 179 
 215 
 
 53 
 
 95 
 178 
 187 
 
 39 
 
OF THE MUSES 
 
 Homer 
 Hugo, Victor 
 
 Johnson, Lionel 
 Jones, Ebenezer 
 Jonson, Ben 
 
 Keats, John 
 
 Lamb, Charles 
 Landor, Walter Savage 
 Lang, Andrew 
 Lanier, Sidney 
 Le Gallienne, Richard 
 Leopardi . 
 Lovelace, Richard . 
 Lytton, Robert, Earl of 
 
 Mallarme, Stephane 
 Marlowe, Christopher* 
 Marston, Philip Bourke 
 Menken, Adah Isaacs 
 Meredith, George . 
 Miller, Joaquin 
 Milton, John 
 Morris, William 
 
 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur 
 
 Patmore, Coventry 
 
 221 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 8 9 
 
 199 
 
 "5 
 
 33 
 
 81 
 
 75 
 
 73 
 
 169 
 
 161 
 
 209 
 
 85 
 
 46 
 
 136 
 
 180 
 
 25 
 181 
 
 159 
 123 
 168 
 
 41 
 
 141 
 
 i73 
 114 
 
222 
 
 THE WHITE BOOK 
 
 Payne, John 
 
 
 
 
 
 165 
 
 Pope, Alexander . 
 
 
 
 
 
 Si 
 
 Petrarch 
 
 
 
 
 
 i7 
 
 Rimbaud, Arthur . 
 
 
 
 
 
 177 
 
 Rossetti, Christina . 
 
 
 
 
 
 *3» 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 
 
 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 Sappho 
 
 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter . 
 
 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 Shakespeare, William 
 
 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 Sharp, William 
 
 
 
 
 
 193 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 
 
 
 
 
 
 77 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip . 
 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Smith, Alexander . 
 
 
 
 
 
 I3S 
 
 Spenser, Edmund . 
 
 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis 
 
 
 
 
 
 183 
 
 Suckling, Sir John . 
 
 
 
 
 
 44 
 
 Symons, Arthur 
 
 
 
 
 
 213 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Char 
 
 es 
 
 
 
 
 'Si 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 
 
 
 
 
 
 101 
 
 Theocritus . 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 Thompson, Francis 
 
 
 
 
 
 203 
 
 Thomson, James (B. V.) . 
 
 
 
 
 
 137 
 
 Tomson, Graham R. 
 
 
 
 
 
 205 
 
 Tourneur, Cyril 
 
 
 
 
 
 3S 
 
 Verlaine, Paul 
 
 
 
 
 
 175 
 
 Villon, Francois . 
 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
Watson, William . 
 
 223 
 
 PAGE 
 20I 
 
 Watts, Theodore . 
 
 147 
 
 Webster, Augusta . 
 Wells, Charles 
 
 155 
 87 
 
 Wilde, Oscar 
 
 192 
 
 Wordsworth, William 
 
 67 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press