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GEOFFREY CHAUCER 
 
THE POETS' SONG 
 OF POETS 
 
 Anna Sheldon Camp Sneath 
 
 Bards of Passion and of Mirth, 
 Ye have hft your souls on earthi 
 Have ye souls in heaven too. 
 Double-lived in regions new? 
 
 — ^JoHN Kbats 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE 60BHAM PRESS 
 BOSTON 
 
 <8^, 
 
Copyright 19111, bp Anna Sheldon Camp Snsath 
 All rights reserved 
 
 AT-^3^n 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. 8. A. 
 
TO MY HUSBAND 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book, as its title indicates, is a collection of poems 
 in which the poets express their appreciation and estimate 
 of their fellow poets. Except in a few instances, their 
 attitude is eminently just, and this expression of their 
 views constitutes a unique and important contribution to 
 literary criticism. Poetry relating to EngKsh poets only 
 is included in the collection. It is hoped that the book 
 may prove interesting and serviceable to lovers of poets 
 and their^art. 
 
 The editor desires to offer her thanks and acknowledg- 
 ment to: 
 
 The Century Company and to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell for 
 the use of his poems "Coleridge at Chamouny" and 
 "Tennyson." 
 
 To Houghton MifiSin Company for permission to use 
 Bayard Taylor's "Ode to Shelley"; E. C. Stedman's 
 "Byron"; Harriet P. Spofford's "Goldsmith's Whistle"; 
 J. G. Whittier's "Bums" and "Wordsworth"; O. W. 
 Holmes' "For the Bums Centennial Celebration," "After 
 a Lecture on Shelley," "After a Lectiu-e on Keats," 
 "After a Lecture on Wordsworth"; T. B. Aldrich's 
 "Tennyson"; Henry W. LongfeUow's "Chaucer," "Shake- 
 speare," "Milton," "Robert Bums," "Keats," "Wapentake 
 To Alfred Tennyson"; Richard Watson Gilder's "An In- 
 scription in Rome," and "Keats"; J. R. Lowell's "To 
 the Spirit of Keats." 
 
 To the John Lane Company, New York, and John Lane, 
 The Bodley Head, London, for Robert Stephen Hawker's 
 "Alfred Tennyson"; William Watson's "The Scott 
 Monument," "Shelley Centenary," "To James Brom- 
 
ley," "Lines in a Fly-leaf of Christabel," "Lachrymae 
 Musarum," and "To Lord Tennyson." 
 
 To Little, Brown & Company for Dante Gabriel Ros- 
 setti's "Percy Bysshe Shelley," "John Keats," and 
 "Samuel Taylor Coleridge." 
 
 To Lloyd Mifflin for his sonnets "Milton" and "Tenny- 
 son, In Memoriam, 1892. " 
 
 To the Macmillan Company for Matthew Arnold's 
 "Shakespeare," "Memorial Verses (Byron and Words- 
 worth)"; Aubrey De Vere's "In Spring," "To Burns' 
 Highland Mary," "Coleridge," "Alfred Tennyson," 
 "Robert Browning"; and Francis T. Palgrave's "William 
 Wordsworth. " 
 
 To Charles Scribner's Sons for Andrew Lang's "Epistle 
 to Mr. Alexander Pope," "To Lord Byron"; Henry Tan 
 Dyke's "Tennyson"; Richard Henry Stoddard's "William 
 Shakespeare," "To the Memory of Keats"; and George 
 Meredith's "The Poetry of Chaucer," "The Poetry of 
 Spenser," "The Poetry of Shakespeare," "The Spirit of 
 Shakespeare." "The Poetry of Milton," "The Poetry of 
 SheUey, " "The Poetry of Keats, " "The Poetry of Words- 
 worth," "The Poetry of Southey," and "The Poetry 
 of Coleridge." 
 
 A. S. C. S. 
 
 New Haven, Ct., January, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer 
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 15 
 
 Of English Verse 15 
 
 An Account of the Greatest English Poets 16 
 
 Inscription for a Statue of Chaucer at Woodstock. ... 16 
 
 The Progress of Envy 17 
 
 To Chaucer 17 
 
 Chaucer and Windsor 18 
 
 Written on the Blank Space of a Leaf at the end of 
 
 Chaucer's tale of "The Flowre and the Life " . . . . 19 
 
 Chaucer 19 
 
 A Dream of Fair Women 20 
 
 In Spring 20 
 
 The Poetry of Chaucer 21 
 
 On a Country Road 21 
 
 Edmund Spenseb 
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 25 
 
 An Account of the Greatest English Poets 25 
 
 Ode to the King 26 
 
 The Prelude 26 
 
 The Lay of the Laureate 27 
 
 Sonnet 27 
 
 Spenser 28 
 
 The Poetry of Spenser 29 
 
 William Shakespeare 
 
 The Teares of the Muses 33 
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 33 
 
 To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Master 
 
 WilHam Shakespeare; and What He Hath Left Us 33 
 
 On Shakespeare 36 
 
 Prologue 36 
 
The Progress of Poesy 87 
 
 WarwicKshire 37 
 
 Inscriptions 39 
 
 Shakespeare 39 
 
 To Shakespeare 41 
 
 Shakespeare 42 
 
 The Names 42 
 
 Shakespeare 43 
 
 William Shakespeare 43 
 
 The Spirit of Shakespeare 47 
 
 The Poetry of Shakespeare 48 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon 48 
 
 William Shakespeare 49 
 
 Ben Jonson 
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 53 
 
 Prayer to Ben Jonson 53 
 
 An Ode for Ben Jonson 53 
 
 Upon Ben Jonson 54 
 
 Prologue 55 
 
 The Rosciad 56 
 
 Ben Jonson 56 
 
 John Milton 
 
 Under the Portrait of John Milton '. 59 
 
 On Master Milton's "Paradise Lost" 59 
 
 An Account of the Greatest English Poets 61 
 
 The Seasons — Summer 62 
 
 The Progress of Poesy 62 
 
 Milton— In Youth 63 
 
 Milton— In Age 63 
 
 Sonnet 64 
 
 Fragment: Milton's Spirit 64 
 
 On a Lock of Milton's Hair 65 
 
 Milton 66 
 
 Milton 67 
 
 The Poetry of Milton 67 
 
 Milton 67 
 
 To Milton— Blind 68 
 
John Dbtdsk 
 
 A Satire Against Wit 71 
 
 An Account of the Greatest English Poets 71 
 
 To Mr. Dryden 72 
 
 The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace 73 
 
 Marmion 73 
 
 The Village Curate 74 
 
 Dryden 74 
 
 Alexander Pope 
 
 To Mr. Pope 79 
 
 On a Miscellany of Poems 79 
 
 The Wanderer 79 
 
 Lines to Alexander Pope 80 
 
 Table Talk , 80 
 
 To Mr. Pope 81 
 
 Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope 83 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith 
 
 Jupiter and Mercury 89 
 
 The Streatham Portraits 89 
 
 Erin 90 
 
 Yoimg and his Contemporaries 90 
 
 Goldsmith's Whistle 91 
 
 William Cowper 
 
 In Memory of William Cowper, Esq 95 
 
 The Pursuits of Literature 95 
 
 The Harp, and Despair, of Cowper 95 
 
 Last Fruit off an Old Tree 96 
 
 Cowper's Grave 97 
 
 To Cowper 100 
 
 Robert Bitrns 
 
 A Bard's Epitaph 105 
 
 At the Grave of Burns 106 
 
 Thoughts 108 
 
 Robert Burns 110 
 
Written in Bums' Cottage 11* 
 
 Robert Bums H* 
 
 Bums 114 
 
 For the Burns Centennial Celebration 118 
 
 To Bums' "HigUand Mary" 120 
 
 Bums: An Ode 125 
 
 Sm Walter Scott 
 
 To Sir Walter Scott 131 
 
 The Queen's Wake 131 
 
 On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotts- 
 ford for Naples 132 
 
 Yarrow Revisited 132 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.. 133 
 
 Introductions to Lays and Legends of Ancient Greece 134 
 
 The Scott Monument, Princess Street, Edinburgh . . 134 
 
 William Wobdswobth 
 
 To a Gentleman 137 
 
 To Wordsworth 140 
 
 The Last Emit off an Old Tree 143 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 143 
 
 To Wordsworth 144 
 
 To Wordsworth 144 
 
 To Wordsworth 145 
 
 Wordsworth 146 
 
 On a Portrait of Wordsworth by B. R. Haydon 147 
 
 After a Lecture on Wordsworth 147 
 
 Memorial Verses 151 
 
 William Wordsworth 152 
 
 The Poetry of Wordsworth 154 
 
 To Wordsworth 154 
 
 Wordsworth's Grave 154 
 
 To James Bromley 161 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 
 From the Prelude 165 
 
 English Bards'and Scotch Reviewers 166 
 
 On Reading Coleridge's Epitaph Written by Himself 166 
 
Coleridge 167 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 168 
 
 The Poetry of Coleridge 169 
 
 Coleridge at Chamouny 169 
 
 Coleridge 170 
 
 Lines in a Flyleaf of "Christabel" 171 
 
 ROBBRT SOUTHET 
 
 Inscription 175 
 
 On Southey's Birthday, November 4 175 
 
 To Southey 176 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 178 
 
 To Robert Southey 179 
 
 The Poetry of Southey 180 
 
 LoBD Btron 
 
 Sonnet to Byron 183 
 
 Fragment: To Byron 183 
 
 Byron 183 
 
 Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron 184 
 
 Lord Byron and the Armenian Convent 185 
 
 Memorial Verses 186 
 
 Byron 186 
 
 Byron's Grave 188 
 
 To Lord Byron 190 
 
 To Byron 194 
 
 Pebct Btsshe Shellbt 
 
 After a Lecture on Shelley 197 
 
 Pauline 198 
 
 Ode to Shelley 200 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley 202 
 
 The Poetry of Shelley 203 
 
 Shelley 203 
 
 SheUey 203 
 
 To Shelley.. 204 
 
 Shelley's Centenary : 204 
 
John Keats 
 
 Fragment on Keats 211 
 
 Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats 211 
 
 Sonnet 216 
 
 Keats 216 
 
 After a Lecture on Keats 217 
 
 Aurora Leigh 218 
 
 To the Spirit of Keats 219 
 
 To the Memory of Keats 219 
 
 John Keats 220 
 
 The Poetry of Keats 220 
 
 An Liscription in Rome 221 
 
 Keats; 221 
 
 Keats 222 
 
 Alfred Tennyson 
 
 To Alfred Tennyson 225 
 
 Wapentake 225 
 
 Alfred Tennyson. . . ». 226 
 
 Tennyson 228 
 
 To Lord Tennyson 228 
 
 Tennyson 230 
 
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson 231 
 
 To Alfred Tennyson 232 
 
 Tennyson 232 
 
 In Memoriam — ^Alfred, Lord Tennyson 233 
 
 Tennyson 235 
 
 To Lord Tennyson 236 
 
 Lachrymae Musarum 236 
 
 Robert Browning 
 
 Robert Browning 243 
 
 Robert Browning 243 
 
 Robert Browning 244 
 
 A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of Robert Brown- 
 ing 244 
 
 Robert Browning: Chief Poet of the Age 247 
 
 The Burial of Robert Browning 248 
 
 The Twelfth of December 250 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 GeoflPrey Chaucer Frontispiece 
 
 TO TACE PAGE 
 
 Edmund Spenser 24 
 
 William Shakespeare 32 
 
 Ben Jonson 52 
 
 John Milton 58 
 
 John Dryden 70 
 
 Alexander Pope 78 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith 88 
 
 William Cowper 94 
 
 Robert Bums 104 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 130 
 
 William Wordsworth 136 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 164 
 
 Robert Southey 174 
 
 Lord Byron 182 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley 196 
 
 John Keats 210 
 
 Alfred Tennyson 224 
 
 Robert Browning 242 
 
GEOFFREY CHAUCER 
 1340(?)— 1400 
 
(Frmn) 
 
 OF POETS AND POESY 
 
 That noble Chaucer, in those former times. 
 The first inriched our English with his rhymes; 
 And was the first of ours, that ever brake 
 Into the Muses' treasure; and first spake 
 In weighty Numbers: delving in the mine 
 Of perfect knowledge, which he could refine 
 And coin for current; and as much as then 
 The English language could express to men, 
 He made it do ! and, by his wondrous skill, 
 Gave us much hght from his abundant quill. 
 
 — ^Michael Drayton 
 
 (From) 
 
 OF ENGLISH VERSE 
 
 Chaucer, his sense can only boast; 
 The glory of his numbers lost! 
 Years have defaced hip matchless strain; 
 And yet he did not sing in vain! 
 
 The beauties which adorned that age. 
 The shining subjects of his rage. 
 Hoping they should immortal prove 
 Rewarded with success his love. 
 
 This was the gen'rous poet's scope; 
 And all an English pen can hope. 
 To make the fair approve his flame. 
 That can so far extend their fame! 
 
 Verse, thus design 'd, has no ill fate. 
 If it arrive but at the date 
 Of fading beauty; if it prove 
 But as long-lived as present Love. 
 
 — Edmund Waller 
 15 
 
(From) 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF 
 THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS 
 
 Long had our dull forefathers slept supine, 
 Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine; 
 'Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose. 
 And many a story told in rhyme and prose. 
 But age has rusted what the poet writ. 
 Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit: 
 In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain. 
 And tries to make his readers laugh in vain. 
 
 — ^Joseph Addison 
 
 (From) 
 mSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF CHAUCER 
 AT WOODSTOCK 
 
 Such was old Chaucer; such the placid mien 
 
 Of him who first with harmony inform'd 
 
 The language of our fathers. Here he dwelt 
 
 For many a cheerful day. These ancient walls 
 
 Have often heard him, while his legends blithe 
 
 He sang; of love, or knighthood, or the wiles 
 
 Of homely life: through each estate and age. 
 
 The fashions and the follies of the world 
 
 With cunning hand portraying. Though perchance 
 
 From Blenheim's towers, O stranger, thou art come 
 
 Glowing with Churchill's trophies; yet in vain 
 
 Dost thou applaud them if thy breast be cold 
 
 To him, this other hero; who, in times 
 
 Dark and untaught, began with charming verse 
 
 To tame the rudeness of his native land. 
 
 — ^Mabk Akensidb 
 
 16 
 
(From) 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF ENVY 
 
 Not far from these,* Dan Chaucer, antient wight, 
 A lofty seat on Mount Parnassus held. 
 Who long had been the Muses' chief dehght; 
 , His reverend locks were silver'd o'er with eld; 
 Grave was his visage, and his habit plain; 
 And while he sung, fair nature he display'd 
 In verse albeit uncouth, and simple strain; 
 Ne mote he well be seen, so thick the shade 
 Which elms and aged oaks had all around him made. 
 
 — ^Robert Lloyd 
 *Speiiser and Milton. 
 
 TO CHAUCER 
 
 Chaucer, O how I wish thou wert 
 Alive and, as of yore, alert! 
 Then, after bandied tales, what fun 
 Would we two have with monk and nun. 
 Ah, surely verse was never meant 
 To render mortals somnolent. 
 In Spenser's labyrinthine rhymes 
 I throw my arms o'erhead at times. 
 Opening sonorous mouth as wide 
 As oystershells at ebb of tide. 
 Mistake me not: I honour him 
 Whose magic made the Muses dream 
 Of things they never knew before. 
 And scenes they never wandered o'er. 
 I dare not follow, nor again 
 Be wafted with tlie wizard train. 
 No bodyless and soulless elves 
 I seek, but creatures like ourselves. 
 If any poet now runs after 
 The Faeries, they will split with laughter. 
 Leaving him in the desert, where 
 17 
 
{Frcym) 
 
 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN 
 
 I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade, 
 "The Legend of Good Women, " long ago 
 
 Sung by the morning star of song, who made 
 His music heard below; 
 
 Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath 
 Preluded those melodious bursts that fill 
 
 The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
 With sounds that edio still. 
 
 And, for a while, the knowledge of his art 
 Held me above the subject, as strong gales 
 
 Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho' my heart. 
 Brimful of those wild tales, 
 
 Charged both mine eyes with tears. 
 
 — ^Alfred Tennyson 
 
 IN SPRING 
 
 In Spring, when the breast of the lime-grove gathers 
 Its roseate cloud; when the flushed streams sing. 
 And the mavis tricks her in gayer feathers; 
 
 Read Chaucer then; for Chaucer is spring! 
 On lonely evenings in dull Novembers 
 
 When rills run choked under skies of lead. 
 And on forest-hearths the year's last embers 
 
 Wind-heaped and glowing, lie, yellow and red. 
 Read Chaucer still ! In his ivied beaker 
 
 With knights and wood-gods, and saints embossed 
 Spring hides her head till the wintry breaker 
 
 Thunders no more on the far-off coast. 
 
 — ^Aubrey Db Vebe 
 
 20 
 
THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 
 
 Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy 
 As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard 
 
 Chaunticlere. 
 Tender to tearfulness — childlike, and maiJy, and motherly; 
 Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet 
 
 English groxmd. 
 
 — George Meredith 
 
 {From) 
 
 ON A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 Our father, lord long since of lordly rhyme . . . 
 Each year that England clothes herself with May, 
 She takes thy likeness on her. Time hath spun 
 Fresh raiment all in vain and strange array 
 For earth and man's new spirit, fain to shun 
 Things past for dreams of better to be won. 
 Through many a century since thy funeral chime 
 Rang, and men deemed it death's most direful crime 
 To have spared not thee for very love or shame; 
 And yet, whUe mists round last year's memories climb. 
 Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name . . . 
 
 . . . the soul sublime 
 That sang for song's love more than lust of fame. 
 
 — Chables Algernon Swinburne 
 
 21 
 
EDMUND SPENSER 
 1552?— 1599 
 
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 EDMUND SPENSER 
 
(JFram) 
 
 OF POETS AND POESY 
 
 Grave moral Spenser, 
 
 Than whom, I am persuaded, there was none. 
 Since the blind Bard, his Iliads up did make. 
 Fitter a task like that, to undertake; 
 To set down boldly! bravely to invent! 
 In all high knowledge, surely, excellent! 
 
 — ^Michael Dbatton 
 
 {From) 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREATEST ENGLISH 
 POETS 
 
 Old Spenser, next, warm'd with poetic rage. 
 In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age; 
 An age that yet uncultivate and rude. 
 Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursu'd 
 Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods. 
 To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods. 
 But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore. 
 Can charm an understanding age no more; 
 The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, 
 While the dull moral lies too plain below. 
 We view weU-pleas'd at distance all the sights 
 Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights. 
 And damsels in distress, and courteous knights. 
 But when we look too near, the shades decay, 
 And all the pleasing landscape fades away. 
 
 — ^Joseph Addison 
 
 25 
 
ODE TO THE KING 
 
 Sage Spenser waked his lofty lay 
 To grace Eliza's golden sway: 
 O'er the proud theme new lustre to di£Fuse, 
 He chose the gorgeous allegoric muse. 
 And call'd to lite old Uther's elfin tale. 
 And rov'd thro' many a necromantic vale. 
 Portraying chiefs that knew to tame 
 The goblin's ire, the dragon's fiame, 
 To pierce the dark enchanted hall. 
 Where virtue sate in lonely thrall. 
 From fabling Fancy's inmost store 
 A rich romantic robe he bore; 
 A veil with visionary trappings hung. 
 And o'er his virgin-queen the fairy texture flung. 
 
 — ^Thomas Wakton 
 
 (From) 
 
 THE PRELUDE 
 
 That gentle Bard, 
 Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State — 
 Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven 
 With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace, 
 I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend! 
 
 — William Wordsworth 
 
 26 
 
{From) 
 
 THE LAY OF THE LAUREATE 
 17 
 
 But then my Master dear arose to mind, 
 He on whose song while yet I was a boy. 
 
 My spirit fed, attracted to its kind. 
 And still insatiate of the growing joy; 
 
 He on whose tomb these eyes were wont to dwell, 
 With inward yearnings which I may not tell; 
 
 18 
 
 He whose green bays shall bloom forever young. 
 And whose dear name whenever I repeat. 
 
 Reverence and love are trembling on my tongue; 
 Sweet Spenser, sweetest Bard; yet not more sweet 
 
 Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise. 
 High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries. 
 
 — ^Robert Southey 
 
 SONNET 
 
 Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine, 
 
 A forester deep in thy midmost trees. 
 Did, last eve, ask my promise to refine 
 
 Some English, that might strive thine ear to please. 
 
 But, Elfin-poet! 'tis impossible 
 For an inhabitant of wintry earth 
 
 To rise, like Phoebus, with a golden quill, 
 Fire-wing'd, and make a morning in his mirth. 
 
 It is impossible to 'scape from toil 
 O' the sudden, and receive thy spiriting: 
 
 The flower must drink the nature of the soil 
 Before it can put forth its blossoming: 
 
 Be with me in the summer days, and I 
 
 Will for thine honour and his pleasure try. 
 
 — ^JoHN Keats 
 
 27 
 
SPENSER 
 
 Sweet was the youth of virgin Poesy, 
 
 That virgin sweetness which she gave to thee, 
 
 My Spenser, bard of happy innocence ! 
 
 For thou didst with a bridegroom's love intense 
 
 Caress the fair inventions of thy brain. 
 
 Those babes of paraidise, without the pain 
 
 Of mortal birth, to fairest heritage 
 
 Bom in the freshness of their perfect age. 
 
 Thy Faery Knight had all the world in fee. 
 
 For all the world was Faeryland to thee. 
 
 Thine is no tale, once acted, then forgot; 
 
 Thy creatures never were, and never will be not. 
 
 Oh ! look not for them in the dark abyss 
 
 Where all things have been, and where nothing is — 
 
 The spectral past; — ^nor in the troubled sea 
 
 Where all strange fancies are about to be — 
 
 The unabiding present. Seek them where 
 
 For ever lives the Good, the True, the Fair, 
 
 In the eternal silence of the heart. 
 
 There Spenser found them; thence his magic art 
 
 Their shades evoked in feature, form, and limb. 
 
 Real as a human self, and bright as cherubim. 
 
 And what though wistful love and emulous arms. 
 
 And all the wizard might of mutter'd charms, — 
 
 Though sUmy snakes disgorge their loathly rage. 
 
 And monstrous phantoms wait on Archimage: 
 
 These are but dreams, that come, and go, and peep 
 
 Through the thin curtain of a morning sleep. 
 
 And leave no pressure on the soul, that wakes 
 
 And hails the glad creation that it makes. 
 
 — ^Haktlet Coleridge 
 
 28 
 
THE POETRY OF SPENSER 
 
 Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and 
 
 softness; 
 Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance; 
 Forests that glimmer with twilight round fevel-bright 
 
 palaces; 
 Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst 
 
 ladies and knights. 
 
 — Geobge: Mebedith 
 
 29 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
 1564—1616 
 
^AtjU^K^ ■■ ^1^%'-^ - ; .jit^ ■■■', 
 
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 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
 
{From) 
 
 THE TEARES OF THE MUSES 
 
 And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made 
 To mock her selfe, and Truth to imitate, 
 With kindly counter under Mimick shade, 
 Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late: 
 With whom all joy and joUy meriment 
 Is also deaded, and in dolour drent. 
 
 — ^Edmund Spenser 
 
 (From) 
 
 OF POETS AND POESY 
 
 And be it said of thee, 
 
 Shakespeare ! thou hadst as smooth a comic vein. 
 Fitting the Sock! and, in thy natural brain. 
 As strong conception, and as clear a rage. 
 As any one that trafficked with the Stage! 
 
 — ^Michael Dratton 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED, THE 
 
 AUTHOR. MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ; 
 
 AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US 
 
 To draw no envy, Shakespeare! on thy Name, 
 Am I thus ample to thy Book and fame; 
 While I confess thy Writings to be such 
 As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much! 
 'Tis true! and all men's suffrage! But these ways 
 Were not the paths, I meant unto thy praise! 
 
 For silliest Ignorance on these may light; 
 Which, when it sounds at best, 's but Echo's right! 
 Or blind Affection, which doth ne'er advance 
 The truth; but gropes, and urgeth all by chance! 
 Or crafty MaUce might pretend this praise; 
 And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise! 
 These are, as some infamous bawd, or whore. 
 Should praise a Matron! What could hurt her more? 
 
But thou art proof against them: and, mdeed, 
 Above th' ill fortune of them; or the need! 
 
 I therefore will begin. Soul of the Age! 
 The applause, dehght, and wonder, of our Stage! 
 My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by 
 Chaucer, or Spenser; or bid Beaumont lie 
 A little further, to make thee a room ! 
 Thou art a Monument, without a tomb! 
 And art alive still, while thy Book doth live; 
 And we have wits to read, and praise to give. 
 
 That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses; 
 I mean, with great, but disproportioned. Muses: 
 For, if I thought my judgment were of years, 
 I should commit thee, surely, with thy peers! 
 And tell, how far thou didst our Lyly outshine; 
 Or sportinig Kyd, or Marlow's mighty line. 
 
 And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek; 
 From thence, to honour thee, I would not seek 
 For names: but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus, 
 Euripides, and Sophocles to us ! 
 Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, 
 To life again ! to hear thy Buskin tread 
 And shake a Stage ! Or when thy Sock was on, 
 Leave thee alone! for the comparison 
 Of all that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome, 
 Sent forth; or since did, from their ashes come. 
 
 Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show, 
 To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He was not of an Age; but for all Time! 
 And all the Muses still were in their prime. 
 When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 
 Our ears; or, like a Mercury, to charm. 
 
 Nature herself was proud of his designs; 
 And joyed to wear the dressing of his Imes! 
 
 34 
 
Which were so ricU^^ qmn, tmi. wsven so fit. 
 As, since, she will vouoisafe no other Wit! 
 The meny Greelc, tsui; Aristophanes, 
 Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please! 
 But antiquated and deserted lie. 
 As they were not of Nature's family. 
 
 Yet must I not give Nature all ! Thy Ai^ 
 My gentle Shake^eare! must enjoy a part! 
 For though the Poet's matter. Nature be; 
 His Art doth give the fashion! And that he 
 Who casts to write a living line, must sweat 
 (Such as thine are!), and strike the second heat 
 Upon the Muses' anvil! turn the same, 
 (And himself with it!) that he thinks to frame! 
 Or for the laurel; he may gain a scorn! 
 
 For a good Poet's made, as well as bom; 
 And such wert thou ! Look how the father's fiaee 
 Lives in his issue; even so, the race 
 Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 
 In his well-turned and true-fillfed lines! 
 In each of which, he seems to Shake a Lance! 
 As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance. 
 
 Sweet Swan of Avon ! What a. sight it were. 
 To see thee in our waters yet appear; 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
 That so did take Eliza, and our James ! 
 
 But, stay! I see thee in the hemisi^<KFe 
 Advanced; and make a Constellation there! 
 Shine forth, thou Star of Poets! and with rage. 
 Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping Stage! 
 Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like 
 
 night 
 And despiurs day, but for thy Volume's light. 
 
 — ^Bbn Jonson 
 
 S5 
 
ON SHAKESPEAR. 16S0 
 
 What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones, 
 
 The labour of an age in piled Stones, 
 
 Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid 
 
 Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid? 
 
 Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, 
 
 What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name? 
 
 Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
 
 Hast built thy self a live-long Monument. 
 
 For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art, 
 
 Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart 
 
 Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book, 
 
 Those Delphick lines with deep impression took. 
 
 Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving. 
 
 Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving; 
 
 And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie. 
 
 That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die. 
 
 — ^JoHN Melton 
 
 (From) 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 SPOKEN BT MB. 6ABBICE, 
 
 AT THE OPENING OF THE THEATRE BOTAL, DBUBT LANE, 
 
 1747 
 
 When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes 
 First reared the Stage, immortal Shakespeare rose! 
 Each change of many-coloured life he drew; 
 Exhausted Worlds, and then imagined new! 
 Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign; 
 And panting Time toiled after him in vain! 
 His powerful strokes presiding Truth imprest; 
 And unresisted Passion stormed the breast! 
 
 —Samuel Johnson 
 
 36 
 
{From) 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF POESY 
 
 III 
 
 Far from the sun and summer gale. 
 In thy green lap was Nature's Darling* laid. 
 
 What time, where lucid Avon strayed. 
 To him the mighty Mother did unveil 
 
 Her awful face. The dauntless Child 
 
 Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled. 
 'This pencil take, ' she said, 'whose colours clear 
 
 Richly paint the vernal year: 
 Thine too, these golden keys, immortal Boy! 
 
 This can unlock the gates of Joy; 
 
 Of Horrour that, and thrilling Fears, 
 Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears!' 
 
 — ^Thomas Gkat 
 
 WARWICKSHIREt 
 
 Ye Warwickshire Lads, and ye Lasses! 
 See what at our Jubilee passes! 
 Come, revel away! Rejoice, and be glad! 
 For the Lad of all lads, was a Warwickshire Lad ! 
 Warwickshire Lad! 
 All be glad. 
 For the Lad of all lads, was a Warwickshire Lad! 
 
 Be proud of the charms of your County; 
 Where Nature has lavished her bounty! 
 Where much she has given, and some to be spared; 
 For the Bard of all bards, was a Warwickshire Bard! 
 Warwickshire Bard! 
 Never paired! 
 For the Bard of all bards, was a Warwickshire Bard! 
 
 *Shakespeare. 
 
 tSongs in connection with the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-upon- 
 Avon, September 7. 1769. 
 
 37 
 
Each Shire has its different pleasures, 
 Each Shire has its different treasures : 
 But to rare Warwickshire all must submit; 
 For the Wit of all wits, was a Warwickshire Wit! 
 Warwickshire Wit! 
 How he writ! 
 For the Wit of all wits, was a Warwickshire Wit! 
 
 Old Ben, Thomas Otway, John Dryden; 
 And half a score more, we take pride in! 
 Of famous Will Congreve we boast too the skUl; 
 But the Will of all Wills, was a Warwickshire Will ! 
 Warwickshire Will! 
 Matchless still! 
 For the Will of Wills, was a Warwickshire Will! 
 
 Our Shakespeare compared is to no man; 
 Nor Frenchman, nor Grecian, nor Roman! 
 Their swans are all geese, to the Avon's sweet Swan; 
 And the Man of all men, was a Warwickshire Man! 
 Warwickshire Man! 
 Avon's Swan! 
 And the Man of aU men, was a Warwickshire Man! 
 
 As ven'son is very inviting. 
 To steal it our Bard took delight in! 
 To make his friends merry, he never was lag: 
 And the Wag of all wags, was a Warwickshire Wag! 
 Warwickshire Wag! 
 Ever brag! 
 For the Wag of all wags, was a Warwickshire Wag! 
 
 There never was seen such a creature! 
 Of all she was worth, he robbed Nature! 
 He took aU her smiles, and he took all her grief; 
 And the Thief of all thieves, was a Warwickshire Thief! 
 Warwickshire Thief! 
 He's the chief! 
 For the Thief of all thieves, was a Warwickshire Thief! 
 
 — ^David Gabbick 
 38 
 
{Fnm) 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS 
 
 IV 
 
 O youths and virgins: O declining eld: 
 O pale misfortune's slaves: O ye who dwell 
 Unknown with humble quiet; ye who wait 
 In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings : 
 O sons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch 
 That weep'st for jealous love, or the sore wounds 
 Of conscious guilt, or death's rapacious hand 
 Which left thee void of hope : O ye who roam 
 In exile; ye who through the embattled field 
 Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms 
 Contend, the leaders of a public cause; 
 Approach: behold this marble. Know ye not 
 The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue 
 Told you the fashion of your own estate. 
 The secrets of your bosom? Here then, round 
 His monument with reverence while ye stand. 
 Say to each other: — 'This was Shakespeare's form; 
 Who walk'd in every path of human life. 
 Felt every passion; and to all mankind 
 Doth now, will ever, that experience yield 
 Which his own genius only could acquire.' 
 
 — Maek Akbnbide 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 O sovereign Master! who with lonely state 
 Dost rule as in some isle's enchanted land. 
 
 On whom soft airs and shadowy spirits wait. 
 
 Whilst scenes of "faerie" bloom at thy command, 
 
 On thy wild shores forgetful could I lie. 
 
 And list, till earth dissolved to thy sweet minstrelsy! 
 
 39 
 
Called by thy magic from the hoary deep. 
 Aerial forms should in bright troops ascend. 
 
 And then a wondrous masque before me sweep; 
 
 Whilst sounds, that the earth owned not, seem to blend 
 
 Their stealing melodies, that when the strain 
 
 Ceased, / should weep, and wovM so dream again! 
 
 The song hath ceased. Ah! who, pale shade, art thou. 
 Sad raving to the rude tempestuous night! 
 
 Sure thou hast had much wrong, so stem thy brow. 
 So piteous thou dost tear thy tresses white; 
 
 So wildly thou dost cry. Blow, hitter wind! 
 
 Ye elements, I call not you unkind!* 
 
 Beneath the shade of nodding branches grey, 
 'Mid rude romantic woods, and glens forlorn. 
 
 The merry hunters wear the hours away; 
 Rings the deep forest to the joyous horn! 
 
 Joyous to all, but him,t who with sad look 
 
 Hangs idly musing by the brawling brook. 
 
 But mark the merry elves of fairy land!| 
 
 To the high moon's gleamy glance. 
 They with shadowy morris dance; 
 
 Soft music dies along the desert sand; 
 Soon at peep of cold-eyed day. 
 
 Soon the numerous lights decay; 
 Merrily, now merrily. 
 After the dewy moon they fly. 
 
 The charm is wrought : I see an aged form. 
 In white robes, on the winding sea-shore stand; 
 O'er the careering surge he waves his wand : 
 
 Hark! on the bleak rock bursts the swelling storm: 
 
 *Lear. fJaques: As You Like It. tMidsummer Nights Dream. 
 
 40 
 
Now from bright opening clouds I hear a lay, 
 Come to these yellow sands, fair stranger* come awcHy! 
 
 Saw ye pass by the weird sisters pale If ; 
 
 Marked ye tiie lowering castle on the heath! 
 Hark, hark, is the deed done — the deed of death! 
 
 The deed is done: — ^Hail, king of Scotland, hail! 
 I see no more; — to many a fearful sound 
 The bloody cauldron sinks, and all is dark around. 
 
 Pity ! touch the trembling strings, 
 A maid, a beauteous maniac, wildly sings: 
 
 They laid him in the ground so cold,f 
 Upon his breast the earth is thrown; 
 
 High is heaped the grassy mould, 
 Ohl he is dead and gone. 
 
 The winds of the winter blow o'er his cold breast. 
 
 But pleasant shall be his rest. 
 
 O sovereign Master! at whose sole command 
 We start with terror, or with pity weep; 
 
 Oh! where is now thy all-creating wand; 
 
 Buried ten thousand thousand fathoms deep! 
 
 The staff is broke, the powerful spell is fled. 
 
 And never earthly guest shall in thy circle tread. 
 — William Lisle Bowles 
 
 TO SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The soul of man is larger than the sky. 
 Deeper than ocean — or the abysmal dark 
 Of the unf athom'd centre. Like that Ark, 
 Which in its sacred hold uplifted high. 
 O'er the drown'd hills, the human family, 
 ♦Ferdinand: see The Tempest. fMacbeth. {Ophelia: Hamlet. 
 
 41 
 
And stock reserved of every living kind. 
 
 So, in the compass of the single mind, 
 
 The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie. 
 
 That make all worlds. Great Poet, 'twas thy art 
 
 To know thyself, and in thyself to be 
 
 Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny. 
 
 Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart. 
 
 Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same. 
 
 Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame. 
 
 — ^Habtlet Colebidge 
 
 SHAKESPEARE* 
 
 A vision as of crowded city streets. 
 With human life in endless overflow; 
 Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow 
 To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats. 
 
 Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets; 
 Tolling of bells in turrets, and below 
 Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw 
 O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets! 
 
 This vision comes to me when I unfold 
 The volume of the Poet paramount. 
 Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone; — 
 
 Into his hands they put the lyre of gold. 
 And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount. 
 Placed him as Musagetes on their throne. 
 
 — ^Henby Wadswohth Longfellow 
 
 THE NAMESt 
 Shakespeare! — ^To such name's sounding, what succeeds 
 Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell, — 
 Act follows word, the speaker knows full well, 
 Nor tampers with its magic more than needs. 
 Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads 
 With his soul only : if from lips it fell, 
 Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell, 
 *Copyright 1876 by Henry WadsworthJLongfellow, 1903 by Ernest 
 W. Lonjgfellow. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
 tCopyrighted by Houghton Mifflin Co. Published by permission. 
 
Would own "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes 
 We voice the other name, man's most of might, 
 Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love 
 Mutely await their working, leave to sight 
 All of the issue as — ^below — above — 
 Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove. 
 Through dread — ^this finite from that infinite. 
 
 ROBEBT BbOWNINO 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
 We ask and ask — ^Thou smilest and art still. 
 Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill, 
 Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty. 
 
 Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea. 
 Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, 
 Spares but the cloudy border of his base 
 To the foil'd searching of mortality; 
 
 And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, 
 Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self -secure. 
 Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. — Better so! 
 
 All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 
 
 All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, 
 
 Find their sole speech in that victorious brow. 
 
 — Matthew Arnold 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
 
 (APRIL eS, 1564) 
 
 She sat in her eternal house. 
 
 The sovereign mother of mankind; 
 
 Before her was the peopled world. 
 The hollow night behind. 
 43 
 
"Below my feet the thunders break, 
 Above my head the stars rejoice; 
 
 But man, although he babbles much. 
 Has never found a voice. 
 
 Ten thousand years have come and gone, 
 
 And not an hour of any day 
 But he has dumbly looked to me 
 
 The things he could not say. 
 
 It shall be so no more, " she said. 
 
 And then, revolving in her mind. 
 She thought: "I will create a child 
 
 Shall speak for all his kind. " 
 
 It was the spring-time of the year. 
 And lo, where Avon's waters flow. 
 
 The child, her darling, came on earth 
 Three hundred years ago. 
 
 There was no portent in the sky. 
 No cry, like Pan's, along the seas. 
 
 Nor hovered round his baby mouth 
 The swarm of classic bees. 
 
 What other children were he was. 
 If more, 't was not to mortal ken; 
 
 The being likest to mankind 
 Made fim the man of men. 
 
 They gossiped, after he was dead. 
 
 An idle tale of stealing deer; 
 One thinks he was a lawyer's clerk; 
 
 But nothing now is clear, * 
 
 Save that he married, in his youth, 
 A maid, his elder; went to town; 
 44 
 
Wrote plays, made money; and at last; 
 Came bade, and settled down, 
 
 A prosperous man, among his kin, 
 In Stratford, where his bones repose. 
 
 And this — ^what can be less? is all 
 The world of Shakespeare knows. 
 
 It irks us that we know no more. 
 For where we love we would know all; 
 
 What would be small in common men 
 In great is never smalL 
 
 Their daily habits, how they looked. 
 
 The color of their eyes and hair. 
 Their prayers, their oaths, the wine they drank, 
 
 The clothes they used to wear. 
 
 Trifles like these declare the men, 
 
 And should survive them — nay, they must; 
 We'll find them somewhere; if it needs. 
 
 We'll rake among their dustl 
 
 Not Shakespeare's! He hath l^t his curse 
 
 On him disturbs it: let it rest. 
 The mightiest that ever Death 
 
 Laid in the earth's dark breast. 
 
 Not to himself did he belong, 
 
 Nor does his life belong to us; 
 Enough he was; give up tiie search 
 
 If he were thus, or thus. 
 
 Before he came his like was not, 
 
 Nor left he heirs to share his powers; 
 
 The mighty Mother sent him here. 
 To be her voice and ours. 
 45 
 
To be her oracle to man; 
 
 To be what man may be to her; 
 Between the Maker and the made 
 
 The best interpreter. 
 
 The hearts of all men beat in his. 
 
 Alike in pleasure and in pain; 
 And he contained their myriad minds, 
 
 Mankind in heart and brain. 
 
 Shakespeare! What shapes are conjured up 
 By that one word! They come and go, 
 
 More real, shadows though they be. 
 Than many a man we know. 
 
 Hamlet, the Dane, unhappy Prince 
 Who most enjoys when suffering most: 
 
 His soul is haunted by itself — 
 There needs no other Ghost. 
 
 The Thane, whose murderous fancy sees 
 
 The dagger painted in the air; 
 The guilty King, who stands appalled 
 
 When Banquo fills his chair. 
 
 Lear in the tempest, old and crazed, 
 
 "Blow winds. Spit fire, singe my white head!" 
 Or, sadder, watching for the breath 
 
 Of dear Cordelia— dead! 
 
 The much-abused, relentless Jew, 
 
 Grave Prospero, in his magic isle. 
 And she who captived Anthony, 
 
 The serpent of old Nile. 
 
 Imperial forms, heroic souls, 
 
 Greek, Roman, masters of the world, 
 46 
 
Kings, queens, the soldier, scholar, priest. 
 The courtier, sleek and curled; 
 
 He knew and drew all ranks of men. 
 
 And did such life to them impart 
 They grow not old, immortal types, 
 
 The lords of Life and Art! 
 
 Their sovereign he, as she was his. 
 
 The awful Mother of the Race, 
 Who, hid from all her children's eyes. 
 
 Unveiled to him her face; 
 
 Spake to him till her speech was known. 
 Through him till man had learned it; then 
 
 Enthroned him in her Heavenly House, 
 The most Supreme of Men! 
 
 — ^RicHABD Henky Stoddard 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I 
 
 Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsour'd 
 He knew thy sons. He prob'd from hell to hell 
 Of human passions, but of love deflower'd 
 His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well. 
 Thence came the honey'd corner at his lips. 
 The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails 
 Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips. 
 Yet full of speech and intershifting tales. 
 Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh 
 We feel is thine; broad as ten thousand beeves 
 At pasture! thence thy songs that winnow chaff 
 From grain, bid sick Philosophy's last leaves 
 Whirl, if they have no response — ^they enforced 
 To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced. 
 47 
 
II 
 
 How smiles he at a generation rank'd 
 
 In gloomy noddings over life! They pass. 
 
 Not he to feed upon a breast unthank'd, 
 
 Or eye a beauteous face in a crack'd glass. 
 
 But he can spy that little twist of brain 
 
 Which mov'd some weighty leader of the blind, 
 
 Unwitting 'twas the goad of personal pain. 
 
 To view in curs'd eclipse our Mother's mind, 
 
 And show us of some rigid harridan 
 
 The wretched bondmen till the end of time. 
 
 O liv'd the Master now to paint us Man, 
 
 That little twist of brain would ring a chime 
 
 Of whence it came and what it caus'd, to start 
 
 Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart. 
 
 — George Meredith 
 
 THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming 
 
 ocean; — 
 Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays; 
 Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above 
 
 Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one 
 great human heart. 
 
 — George Meredith 
 
 STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 Be glad in heaven above all souls ii^sphered. 
 Most royal and most loyal born of men, 
 Shakespeare, of all on earth beloved or feared 
 Or worshipped, highest in sight of human ken. 
 The homestead hallowed by thy sovereign birth. 
 Whose name, being one with thine, stands higher than 
 Rome, 
 
 48 
 
Forgets not how of all on English earth 
 Their trust is holiest, there who have their home. 
 Stratford is thine and England's. None that hate 
 The commonweal whose empire sets men free 
 Find comfort there, where once by grace of fate 
 A soul was born as boundless as the sea. 
 If life, if love, if memory now be thine. 
 Rejoice that still thy Stratford bears thy sign. 
 
 — ^Algernon Chables Swinbxjbne 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Not if men's tongues and angels' all in one 
 
 Spake, might the word be said that might speak Thee. 
 
 Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea, 
 the sea. 
 What power is in them all to praise the sun? 
 His praise is this, — ^he can be praised of none. 
 
 Man, woman, child, praise God for him; but he 
 
 Exults not to be worshipped, but to be. 
 He is; and, being, beholds his work well done. 
 All joy, all glory, all sorrow, all strength, all mirth. 
 Are his : without him, day were night on earth. 
 
 Time knows not his from time's own period. 
 All lutes, all harps, all viols, all flutes, all lyres. 
 Fall dumb before him ere one string suspires. 
 
 All stars are angels; but the sun is God. 
 
 — ^Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 
 49 
 
BEN JONSON 
 
 1573P-1637 
 
BEN JONSON 
 
OF POETS And pOesy 
 
 Next these, leam'd Jonsoiij in this list I bring: 
 Who had drunk deep of the Pierian spring, 
 Whose knowledge did him worthily prefer; 
 And long was Lord here of the Theatre. 
 Who, in opinion, made our learn'st to stick. 
 Whether in Poems rightly Dramatic, 
 Strong Seneca, or Plautus, he, or they. 
 Should bear the Buskin, or the Sock, away? 
 
 ^MlCHAEL DkAYTON 
 
 PRAYER TO BEN JONSON 
 
 When I a Verse shall make. 
 
 Know, I have praid thee. 
 For old Religion's sake. 
 
 Saint Ben, to aide me! 
 
 Make the way smooth for me 
 
 When I, thy Herrick, 
 -Honouring thee, on my knee 
 
 0£Per my Lyrick 
 
 Candles De give to thee. 
 
 And a new Altar; 
 And tibou. Saint Ben, shalt be 
 
 Writ in my Psalter! 
 
 ^ROBEBT HeBBICK 
 
 AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON 
 
 Ah Ben! 
 Say how, or when 
 Shall we thy Guests, 
 Meet at those Lyric Feasts, 
 Made at the Sun, 
 The Dog, the Triple Tunne? 
 
Where we such clusters had. 
 As made us nobly wild, not mad; 
 
 And yet each Verse of thine 
 Out-did the meate, out-did the frolick wine. 
 
 My Ben! 
 Or come agen: 
 Or send to us. 
 Thy wit's great over-plus; 
 But teach us yet 
 Wisely to husband it; 
 Lest we that Tallent spend: 
 And having once brought to an end 
 That precious stock; the store 
 Of such a wit; the world sho'd haVe no more. 
 
 ROBEBT HeBBICK 
 
 UPON BEN JONSON 
 
 Mirror of poets ! mirror of our age ! 
 Which her whole face beholding on thy stage, 
 Pleased and displeased with her own faults, endures 
 A remedy like those whom music cures. 
 Thou hast alone those various inclinations 
 Which Nature gives to ages, sexes, nations; 
 So traced with thy all-resembling pen. 
 That whate'er custom has imposed on men. 
 Or ill-got habit (which deforms them so. 
 That scarce a brother can his brother know) 
 Is represented to the wondering eyes 
 Of all that see, or read, thy comedies. 
 Whoever in those glasses looks, may find 
 The spots returned, or graces, of his mind; 
 And by the help of so divine an art. 
 At leisure view, and dress, his nobler part. 
 Narcissus, cozened by that flattering well. 
 Which nothing could but of his beauty tell. 
 Had here, discovering the deformed estate 
 54 
 
Of his fond mind, preserved himself with hate. 
 
 But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad 
 
 In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had 
 
 Beheld, what his high fancy once embraced. 
 
 Virtue with colours, speech, and motion graced. 
 
 The sundry postures of thy copious Muse 
 
 Who would express, a thousand tongues must use: 
 
 Whose fate's no less peculiar than thy art; 
 
 For as thou couldst all characters impart. 
 
 So none could render thine, which stiU escapes. 
 
 Like Proteus, in variety of shapes; 
 
 Who was nor this nor that; but all we find. 
 
 And all we can imagine, in mankind. 
 
 — ^Edmund Wallbb 
 
 (From) 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 SPOKEN BT MB. GAKRICK, 
 
 AT THE OPENING OF THE THEATRE BOTAL, DBTTBT LANE, 
 
 1747 
 
 Then Jonson came,* instructed from the School, 
 To please in method, and invent by rule. 
 His studious patience and laborious art 
 By regular approach assayed the heart! 
 Cold Approbation gave the ling'ring Bays; 
 For those who durst not censure, scarce could ptaise! 
 A mortal bom, he met the general doom; 
 But left, like Egypt's Kings, a lasting tomb. 
 
 — Samuel Johnson 
 
 *After Shakespeare. 
 
 55 
 
THE EOSCIAD 
 
 The book of man he read with nicest art. 
 
 And ransack'd all the secrets of the heart; 
 
 Exerted penetration's utmost force. 
 
 And traced each passion to its proper source; 
 
 Then, strongly mark'd, in Hveliest colours drew 
 
 And brought each foible forth to pubKc view: 
 
 The coxcomb felt a lash in every word, 
 
 And fools, hung out, their brother fools deterr'd. 
 
 His comic humour kept the world in awe. 
 
 And laughter frighten'd Folly more than Law. 
 
 — Charles Churchill 
 
 BEN JONSON 
 
 Broad-based, broad-fronted, bounteous, multiform, 
 With many a valley impleached with ivy and vine, 
 Wherein the springs of all the streams run wine. 
 
 And many a crag full-faced against the storm. 
 
 The mountain where thy Muse's feet made warm 
 Those lawns that revelled with her dance divine 
 Shines yet with fire as it was wont to shine 
 
 From tossing torches round the dance aswarm. 
 
 Nor less, high-stationed on the grey grave heights, 
 High-thoughted seers with heaven's heart-kindling lights 
 
 Hold converse : and the herd of meaner things 
 Knows or by fiery scourge or fiery shaft 
 When wrath on thy broad brows has risen, and laughed 
 
 Darkening thy soul with shadow of thunderous wings. 
 — ^Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 
 56 
 
JOHN MILTON 
 1608-1674 
 
JOHN MILTON 
 
UNDER THE PORTBAIT OF JOHN MILTON 
 
 Three poets, in three distant ages born. 
 Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
 The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, 
 The next in majesty, in both the last: 
 The force of Nature could no farther go; 
 To make a third, she join'd the former two. 
 
 — John Drtden 
 
 ON MASTER MILTON'S 'PARADISE LOST' 
 
 When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, 
 In slender book his vast design unfold, 
 Messiah crowned, GOD'S reconciled decree. 
 Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree, 
 Heaven, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All! the Argument 
 Held me a while: misdoubting his intent. 
 That he would Aaa (for I saw him strong!) 
 The Sacred Truths, to Fable and old Song. 
 So Samson groped the Temple's posts in spite; 
 The World o'erwhelming, to revenge his sight. 
 
 Yet, as I read, soon growijog less severe, 
 I liked hia Project; the success did fear! 
 Through that wide field, how he his way should find. 
 O'er which lame Faith leads Understanding blind: 
 Lest he'd perplex the things he would explain; 
 And what was easy, he should render vain. 
 
 Or, if, a Work so infinite he spanned; 
 Jealous I was, that some less skilful hand 
 (Such as disquiet always what is well: 
 And by ill imitating, would excel !) 
 Might hence presume, the whole Creation's Day, 
 To change in Scenes ; and show it in a Play ! 
 
 Pardon me, mighty Poet! nor despise 
 My causeless, yet not impious, surmise! 
 But I am now convinced! and none will dare 
 59 
 
Within thy labours to pretend a share! 
 
 Thou hast not missed one thought that could be fit; 
 
 And all that was improper dost omit: 
 
 So that no room is here for Writers left. 
 
 But to detect their ignorance, or theft. 
 
 That majesty which through thy Work doth reign, 
 Draws the devout ; deterring the profane ! 
 And things divine thou treat's (t) of in such State 
 As them preserves, and thee, inviolate ! 
 
 At once DeUght and Horror on us seize. 
 Thou sing'st with so much gravity and ease; 
 And, above human flight, doth soar aloft 
 With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft! 
 The Bird named from that Paradise you sing. 
 So never flags; but always keeps on wing. 
 
 Where couldst thou Words of such a compass find; 
 Whence furnish such a vast expanse of mind ! 
 Just Heaven, thee, like Tiresias, to requite. 
 Rewards with Prophecy thy loss of sight! 
 
 Well might thou scorn, thy Readers to allure 
 With tinkling rhyme ! of thy own sense secure : 
 While the Town-Bays writes all the while, and spells; 
 And, like a pack-horse, tires without his bells. 
 Their fancies like our bushy points appear : 
 The Poets tag them; we, for fashion, wear. 
 I too, transported by the mode, offend; 
 And while I meant to praise thee, must commend. 
 
 Thy Verse created, like thy Theme, sublime. 
 In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme. 
 
 — ^Andrew Maevell 
 
 60 
 
{From) 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF 
 THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS 
 
 But Milton, next, with high and haughty stalks, 
 Unfetter'd in majestick numbers walks; 
 No vulgar hero can his muse ingage; 
 Nor earth's wide scene confine his haUow'd rage. 
 See! see, he upward springs, and tow'rihg high 
 Spurns the dull province of mortaUty, 
 Shakes heaven's eternal throne with dire alarms. 
 And sets the Almighty thunderer in arms. 
 What-e'er his pen describes I more than see. 
 Whilst ev'ry verse arrayed in majesty. 
 Bold, and subHme, my whole attention draws. 
 And seems above the critick's nicer laws. 
 How are you struck with terror and delight. 
 When angel with arch-angel copes in fight! 
 When great Messilah's oht-spread banner shines. 
 How does the chariot rattle in his lines ! 
 What sounds of brazeii wheels, what thimder, scare. 
 And stun the reader with the din of war! 
 With fear my spirits land my blood retire. 
 To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fire; 
 But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise. 
 And view the first gay scenes of Paradise; 
 What tongue, what words of rapture can express 
 A vision so profuse of pleasantness. 
 Oh had the poet ne'er profan'd his pen. 
 To varnish o'er the guUt of faithless men; 
 His other works might have deserv'd applause! 
 But now the language can't support the cause; 
 While the clean current, tho' serene and bright. 
 Betrays a bottom odious to the sight. 
 
 — Joseph Addison 
 
 61 
 
{From) 
 
 {Frmt} 
 
 THE SEASONS,— SUMMER 
 
 Is not each great, each amiable Muse 
 Of dassic ages in thy Milton met? 
 A genius universal as his theme; 
 Astonishing as Chaos, as the bloom 
 Of blowing Eden fair, as Heaven sublime! 
 
 — ijiMEa THOUaoN 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF POESY 
 
 m 
 
 Nor second* He,t that rode sublime 
 Upon the Seraph-wings of ecstasy. 
 
 The secrets of th' Abyss to spy? 
 He passed the flaming bounds of Place and Time \ 
 
 The living Throne, the sapphire blaze. 
 
 Where Angels tremble whfie they gaze. 
 He saw r but, blasted with excess^ of light, 
 
 Closed his eyes in endless ni^t! 
 Behold! where Dryden's less presumptuous car 
 
 Wide o'er the Fields of Gl«Hy bear 
 
 Two coursers of ethereal race. 
 With necks in tiumder clothed and long-resounding' pace. 
 
 — Tbobias! Gbat 
 •To ShakespeiHe. f Miltcnr. 
 
 6£ 
 
MILTON 
 
 ON THE BUSTS OF MILTON, IN YOUTH AND AGE, AT 
 STOUEHEAD 
 
 IN YOUTH 
 
 Milton, our noblest poet, in the grace 
 
 Of youth, in those fair eyes and clustering hair. 
 That brow untouched by one faint line of care. 
 To mar its openness, we seem to trace 
 The front of the first lord of human race, 
 'Mid thine own Paradise portrayed so fair, 
 Ere Sin or Sorrow scathed it : such the air 
 That characters thy youth. Shall time efface 
 
 These lineaments as crowding cares assail! 
 It is the lot of fall'n humanity. 
 
 What boots it! armed in adamantine mail^ 
 The unconquerable mind, and genius high, 
 Right onward hold their way through weal and woe, 
 Or whether life's brief lot be high or low! 
 
 — ^William Lisle Bowles 
 
 MILTON 
 
 IN AGE 
 
 And art thou he, now "fall'n on evil days," 
 
 And changed indeed! Yet what do ibis sunk cheek. 
 These thinner locks, and that calm forehead speak! 
 
 A spirit reckless of man's blame or praise, — 
 
 A spirit, when thine eyes to the noon's blaze 
 Their dark orbs roll in vain, in suffering meek. 
 As in the sight of God intent to seek, 
 
 'Mid solitude or age, or through the ways 
 Of hard adversity, the approving look 
 
 Of its great Master; whilst the conscious pride 
 Of wisdom, patient and content to brook 
 63 
 
All ills to that sole Master's task applied. 
 
 Shall show before high heaven the unaltered mind, 
 
 Milton, though thou art poor, and old, and blind! 
 
 — William Lisle Bowles 
 
 SONNET 
 
 Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: 
 England hath need of thee: she is a fen 
 Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen. 
 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower. 
 Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
 Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; 
 Oh! raise us up, return to us again; 
 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
 Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; 
 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea : 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way. 
 In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart 
 The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 
 
 — William Woedswohth 
 
 FRAGMENT: MILTON'S SPIRIT 
 
 I dreamed that Milton's spirit rose, and took 
 
 From life's green tree his Uranian lute; 
 And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook 
 All human things built in contempt of man, — 
 And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked. 
 Prisons and citadels .... 
 
 — ^Pebcy Bysshe Shelley 
 
 64 
 
ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR 
 
 / was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with 
 a real authenticated lock of Milton's hair. I know you would 
 like what I wrote thereon, so here it is — as they say of a Sheep 
 in a Nursery Book. Jan. 1818. 
 
 Chief of organic numbers ! 
 Old Scholar of the Spheres ! 
 Thy spirit never slumbers, 
 But rolls about our ears 
 For ever and for ever! 
 O what a mad endeavour 
 
 Worketh He, 
 Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse 
 Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse 
 
 And melody. 
 
 How heavenward thou soundest ! 
 Live Temple of sweet noise, 
 And Discord unconfoundest. 
 Giving Dehght new joys. 
 And Pleasure nobler pinions: 
 O where are thy dominions? 
 
 Lend thine ear 
 To a young Delian oath — ^ay, by thy soul, 
 By all that from thy mortal lips did roll. 
 And by the kernel of thy earthly love. 
 Beauty in things on earth and things above, 
 
 I swear! 
 
 When every childish fashion 
 Has vanished from my rhyme, 
 WiU I, grey gone in passion. 
 Leave to an after-time 
 Hymning and Harmony 
 Of thee and of thy works, and of thy life; 
 65 
 
But vain is now the burning and the strife; 
 Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife 
 
 With old Philosophy, 
 And mad with glimpses of futurity. 
 
 For many years my offerings must be hush'd; 
 When I do speak, I'll think upon this hour, 
 Because I feel my forehead hot and flushed. 
 Even at the simplest vassal of thy power, 
 
 A lock of thy bright hair, — 
 
 Sudden it came. 
 And I was startled when I caught thy name 
 
 Coupled so unaware; 
 Yet at the moment temperate was my blood — 
 I thought I had beheld it from the flood! 
 
 — ^JoHN Keats 
 
 MILTON* 
 
 I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold 
 How the voluminous billows roll and run, 
 Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun 
 shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled, 
 
 And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold 
 All its loose-flowing garments into one, 
 Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun 
 Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold. 
 
 So in majestic cadence rise and fall 
 The mighty xmdulations of thy song, 
 O sightless bard, England's Maeonides! 
 
 And ever and anon, high over all 
 
 Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong. 
 Floods all the soul with its melodious seas. 
 
 — ^Henkt Wadswobth Longfellow 
 
 *Copyright 1875 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 1903 by Er- 
 nest W. Longfellow. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
 
 66 
 
MILTON 
 
 O mighty-mauth'd inventor of harmonies, 
 O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, 
 
 God-^ted organ-voice of England, 
 AHlton, a name to resound for agesj 
 Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdi^ 
 Starr 'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, 
 
 Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean 
 Rings to the roar of an angel onset — 
 
 Me rather all that bowery loneliness. 
 The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring. 
 
 And bloom profuse and xsedar arches 
 
 Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, 
 Where some xefulgeait sunset of India 
 Streams o'er a ridi ambrosial ocean isle. 
 And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods 
 
 Whisper in odorous heights of even, 
 
 — ^Alfred Lobd Tsusottson 
 
 TflE POETRY OF MILTON 
 
 Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiiiation. 
 Serenely majestic In utt^anoe, lofty and <:alm. 
 Interprets to mortals with judody great as its burtiben. 
 The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the 
 brigbt ^>heres. 
 
 — GS0B6£ MURESOTH 
 
 MILTON 
 
 His feet were shod with music, and had wings 
 
 Like Hermes; far upon the peaks of song 
 
 His footfalls sounded silverly along; 
 
 The dull world blossomed into beauteous iMogia 
 Where'er he trod; and Heliconian springs 
 
 Gushed from the rocks he touched; round him a throng 
 
 Of fair invisibles, seraphic, strong, 
 
 67 
 
Struck Orphean murmers out of golden strings; 
 But he, spreading keen pinions for a white 
 
 Immensity of radiance and of peace, 
 
 Uplooming to the empyreal infinite. 
 Far through ethereal fields and zenith seas. 
 
 High, with strong wing-beats and with eagle ease, 
 
 Soared in a solitude of glorious light ! 
 
 — ^LlOYD MlFFLtN 
 
 TO MILTON,— BLIND* 
 
 He who said suddenly, "Let there be light!" 
 
 To thee the dark dehberately gave; 
 
 That those full eyes might undistracted be 
 
 By this beguiling show of sky and field. 
 
 This brilliance, that so lures us from the Truth. 
 
 He gave thee back original night, tos own 
 
 Tremendous canvas, large and blank and free. 
 
 Where at each thought a star flashed out and sang. 
 
 O blinded with a special lighting, thou 
 
 Hadst once again the virgin Dark! and when 
 
 The pleasant flowery sight, which had deterred 
 
 Thine eyes from seeing, when this recent world 
 
 Was quite withdrawn; then burst upon thy view 
 
 The elder glory; space again in pangs. 
 
 And Eden odorous in the early mist. 
 
 That heaving watery plain that was the world. 
 
 Then the burned earth, and Christ coming in clouds. 
 
 Or rather a special leave to thee was given 
 
 By the high power, and thou with bandaged eyes 
 
 Wast guided through the glimmering camp of God. 
 
 Thy hand was taken by angels who patrol 
 
 The evening, or are sentries to the dawn. 
 
 Or pace the wide air everlastingly. 
 
 Thou wast admitted to the presence, and deep 
 
 Argument heardest, and the large design 
 
 That brings this world out of the woe to bliss. 
 
 — Stephen Phillips 
 *Copyright 1897 by John Lane, copyright 1905 by John Lane Company . 
 
 68 
 
JOHN DRYDEN 
 1631-1700 
 
JOHN DRYDEK 
 
A SATIRE AGAINST WIT 
 
 'Tis true, that ^en the coarse and worthless dross 
 Is purg'd away, there will be Etughty loss; 
 Ev'n CoQgreve, Southern, manly Wycherley, 
 Whem tiius refin'd, will grievous sufferers be; 
 Into the melting pot when Dryden comes. 
 What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fijmes! 
 How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay, 
 And wicked mixture, sh'll be purg'd away! 
 
 ^SiH RicHABD BiaCemore: 
 
 {From) 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF 
 THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS 
 
 But see where artful Dryden next appears 
 Grown old in rhyme, but charming ev'n in years. 
 Great Dryden next, whose tuneful muse affords 
 The sweetest numbers, and the fittest words. 
 Whether in comick sounds or tragick airs 
 She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears. 
 If satire or heroic strain she writes. 
 Her hero pleases, and her satire bites. 
 From her no harsh unartful numbers fall. 
 She wears all dresses, and she charms in all. 
 How might we fear our EngUsh poetry. 
 That long has flourish'd, shou'd decay Avith thee; 
 Did not the muses other hope appear. 
 Harmonious Congreve, and forbid our fear: 
 Congreve! whose fancy's unexhausted store 
 Has given already much, and promis'd more. 
 Congreve shall still preserve thy fame alive. 
 And Dryden's muse shall in his friend survive. 
 
 — ^Joseph Addison 
 
 71 
 
TO MR. DRYDEN 
 
 How long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays 
 
 Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise? 
 
 Can neither injuries of time, or age. 
 
 Damp thy poetick heat, and quench thy rage? 
 
 Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote. 
 
 Grief chill'd his breast, and check'd his rising thought; 
 
 Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays 
 
 The Roman genius in its last decays. 
 
 Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest. 
 And secbpd youth is kindled in thy breast; 
 Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known, 
 And England boasts of riches not her own; 
 Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty, 
 And Horace wonders at himself in thee. 
 Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle 
 In smoother numbers, and a clearer stile; 
 And Juvenal, instructed in thy page, 
 Edges his satyr, and improves his rage. 
 Thy copy casts a fairer light on all. 
 And still outshines the bright original. 
 
 Now Ovid boasts the advantage of thy song. 
 And tells his story in the British tongue; 
 Thy charming verse, and fair translations, show 
 How thy own laurel first began to grow; 
 How wild Lycaon chang'd by angry gods. 
 And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods. 
 
 O mayst thou still the noble task prolong. 
 Nor age, nor sickness interrupt thy song: 
 Then may we wondering read, how human limbs 
 Have water'd kingdoms, and dissolv'd in streams; 
 Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mould 
 Turn'd yellow by degrees, and ripen'd into gold: 
 How some in feathers, or a ragged hide. 
 Have liv'd a second life, and diflFerent natures try'd. 
 Then will thy Ovid, thus transform'd, reveal 
 A nobler change than he himself can tell. 
 
 72 — ^JosBPH Addison 
 
(Frmn) 
 
 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK 
 OF HORACE 
 
 Dryden taught to join 
 The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, and energy divine 
 Tho' still some traces of our rustic vein 
 And splay-foot verse remain'd, and will remain. 
 
 E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot. 
 The last and greatest art — ^the art to blot. 
 
 — Alexander Pope 
 (From) 
 
 MARMION 
 (introduction to canto first) 
 
 The mightiest chiefs of British song 
 Scorn'd not such legends to prolong: 
 They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream. 
 And mix in Milton's heavenly theme; 
 And Dryden, in immortal strain. 
 Had raised the Table Round again. 
 But that a ribald King and Court 
 Bade him toil on, to make them sport; 
 Demanded for their niggard pay. 
 Fit for their souls, a looser lay. 
 Licentious satire, song, and play; 
 The world defrauded of the high design. 
 Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the 
 
 lofty line. 
 
 — ^Walter Scott 
 
 73 
 
(From) 
 
 THE VILLAGE CURATE 
 
 Then comes a bard. 
 Worn out and penniless, and poet still, 
 Though bent with years, and in impetuous rhyme 
 Pours out his unexhausted song. What muse 
 So flexible, so generous as thine. 
 Immortal Dryden! From her copious fount 
 Large draughts he took, and unbeseeming song 
 Inebriated sang. Who does not grieve 
 To hear the foul and insolent rebuke 
 Of angry satire from a bard so rare. 
 To trace thie lubricous and oily course 
 Of abject adulation, the lewd line 
 Of shameless vice from page to page, and find 
 The judgment bribed, the heart unprincipled. 
 And only loyal at the expense of truth. 
 Of justice, and of virtue? 
 
 — ^James HUBDIS 
 
 DRYDEN 
 
 Then Dryden came, a mind of giant mould. 
 Like the north wind, impetuous, keen, and coM; 
 Born to effect what Waller but essay'd. 
 In rank and file his numbers he array'd. 
 Compact as troops exact in battle's trade. 
 Firm by constraint, and regularly strong. 
 His vigorous lines resistless march along, 
 By martial music order'd and inspired, 
 Like glowing wheels by their own motion fired. 
 So as agnation long inured to arms, 
 And stirring strains, fierce pleasures, brisk alarms, 
 Disdains a calm, and can no longer bear 
 A soft, a pensive, or a solemn air; 
 Thus Dryden taught the English to despise 
 The simply sweet, long-lingering melo(Hes 
 That lovely Spenser and his thoughtful peers 
 74 
 
Had warbled erst to rapt attentive ears. 
 E'en Milton's billowy ocean of high sound. 
 Delighted little, though it might astound; 
 The restless crowd impatient tum'd away. 
 And sought a shorter, shriller, Ughter lay. 
 
 Yet Dryden nobly eam'd the poet's name, 
 And won new honours from the gift of fame. 
 His life was long, and when his head was grey, 
 His fortune broken, and usurp'd his bay, 
 His dauntless genius own'd no cold dismay; 
 Nor in repining notes of vain regret 
 He made his crack'd pipe pitifully fret. 
 But when cashier'd and laid upon the shelf, 
 To shame the court excell'd his former self, 
 Who meant to clip, but imp'd his moulted wings. 
 And cured him of his ancient itch of praising kings. 
 He sat gigantic on the shore of time, 
 And watch'd the ingress of encroaching slime, 
 Nor dream'd how much of evil or of good 
 Might work amid the far unfathom'd flood. 
 
 — ^Hartley Coleridge 
 
 76 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 1688-1744 
 
ALEXANDER POPE 
 
(From) 
 
 TO MR. POPE 
 
 1728 
 
 Three times I've read your Bliad o'er; 
 
 The first time pleas'd me well; 
 New beauties unobserv'd before. 
 
 Next pleas'd me better still. 
 
 Again I tri'd to find a flaw, 
 
 Examin'd ilka line; 
 The third time pleas'd me best of a'. 
 
 The labour seem'd divine. 
 
 Henceforward I'll not tempt my fate, 
 
 On dazzling rays to stare. 
 Lest I should tine dear self-conceit. 
 
 And read and write nae mair. 
 
 — ^Allan Ramsay 
 
 ON A MISCELLANY OF POEMS 
 
 When Pope's harmonious muse with pleasure roves, 
 Amidst the plains, the murm'ring streams and groves. 
 Attentive Echo, pleased to hear his songs. 
 Thro' the glad shade each warbling note prolongs; 
 His various numbers charm our ravish'd ears. 
 His steady judgment far out-shoots his years. 
 And early in youth the god appears. 
 
 — ^JoHN Gat 
 
 (From) 
 
 THE WANDERER 
 
 CANTO I 
 
 Pope, the monarch of the tuneful train! 
 
 To whom be Nature's, and Britannia's praise! 
 All their bright honours rush into his lays! 
 And all that glorious warmth his lays reveal, 
 79 
 
Which only poets, kings, and patriots feel ! 
 Tho' gay as mirth, as curious though sedate, 
 As elegance polite, as pow'r elate; 
 Profound as reason, and as justice clear; 
 Soft as compassion, yet as truth severe; 
 As bounty copious, as persuasion sweet. 
 Like Nature various, and like Art complete; 
 So fine her morals, so sublime her views. 
 His life is almost equall'd by his Muse. 
 
 — ^Richard Savage 
 
 LINES TO ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 While malice. Pope, denies thy page 
 Its own celestial fires; 
 While critics, and while bards in rage. 
 Admiring, won't admire: 
 
 While wayward pens thy worth assail. 
 
 And envious tongues decry; 
 
 These times, though many a friend bewail. 
 
 These times bewail not I. 
 
 But when the world's loud praise is thine. 
 
 And spleen no more shall blame: 
 
 When with thy Homer thou shalt shine 
 
 In one unclouded fame: 
 
 When none shall rail, and every lay 
 Devote a wreath to thee; 
 That day, (for come it will,) that day 
 Shall I lament to see. 
 
 — ^David Lewis 
 
 {From) 
 
 TABLE TALK 
 
 Then Pope, as harmony itself exact. 
 In verse well disciplined, complete, compact, 
 80 
 
Gave virtue and morality a grace 
 
 That quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face, 
 
 Levied a tax of wonder and applause, 
 
 Even on the fools that trampled on their laws. 
 
 But he, (his musical finesse was such, 
 
 So nice his ear, so delicate his touch) 
 
 Made poetry a mere mechanic art. 
 
 And every warbler has his tune by heart. 
 
 — William Cowpeb 
 
 TO MR. POPE 
 
 To move the springs of nature as we please. 
 To think with spirit, but to write with ease : 
 With living words to warm the conscious heart. 
 Or please the soul with nicer charms of art. 
 For this the Grecian soar'd in epic strains. 
 And softer Maro left the Mantuan plains : 
 Melodious Spenser felt the lover's fire. 
 And awful Milton strung his heavenly lyre. 
 
 'Tis yours, hke these, with curious toil to trace 
 The powers of language, harmony, and grace. 
 How nature's self with living lustre shines; 
 How judgment strengthens, and how art refines; 
 How to grow bold with conscious sense of fame. 
 And force a pleasure which we dare not blame; 
 To charm us more through negligence than pains. 
 And give ev'n life and action to the strains : 
 Led by some law, whose powerful impulse guides 
 Each happy stroke, and in the soul presides: 
 Some fairer image of perfection, giv'n 
 To inspire mankind, itself deriv'd from Heav'n. 
 
 O evier worthy, ever crown'd with praise; 
 Bless'd in thy life, and bless'd in all thy lays! 
 Add, that the Sisters every thought refine: 
 Or ev'n thy life be faultless as thy hue : 
 Yet envy still with fiercer rage pursues, 
 Obscures the virtue, and defames the muse, 
 81 
 
A soul like thine, in pains, in grief resign'd, 
 Views with vain scorn the malice of mankind: 
 Not critics, but their planets prove unjust : 
 And are they blam'd who sin because they must? 
 
 Yet sure not so must all piu:sue thy lays; 
 I cannot rival — ^and yet dare to praise. 
 A thousand charms at once my thoughts engage, 
 Sappho's soft sweetness, Pindar's warmer rage, 
 Statins' free vigour, Virgil's studious care. 
 And Homer's force, and Ovid's easier air. 
 
 So seems some picture, where exact design. 
 And curious pains, and strength and sweetness join : 
 Where the free thought its pleasing grace bestows. 
 And each warm stroke with Uving colour glows: 
 Soft without weakness, without labour fair; 
 Wrought up at once with happiness and care ! 
 
 How bless'd the man that from the world removes 
 To joys that Mordaunt, or his Pope approves; 
 Whose taste exact each author can explore, 
 And live the present and past ages o'er: 
 Who free from pride, from penitence, or strife, 
 Move calmly forward to the verge of hfe: 
 Such be my days, and such my fortunes be. 
 To live by reason, and to write by thee! 
 
 Nor deem this verse, though humble, thy disgrace: 
 All are not born the glory of their race: 
 Yet all are born to adore the great man's name. 
 And trace his footsteps in the paths to fame. 
 The Muse who now this early homage pays. 
 First learn'd from thee to animate her lays: 
 A muse as yet unhonour'd, but unstain'd, 
 Who prais'd no vices, no preferment gain'd: 
 Unbiass'd or to censure or commend, 
 Who knows no envy, and who grieves no friend; 
 Perhaps too fond to make those virtues known. 
 And fix her fame immortal on thy own. 
 
 — ^Walter Harte 
 
 8S 
 
EPISTLE TO MR. ALEXANDER POPE 
 
 From mortal Gratitude, decide, my Pope, 
 Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope? 
 Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame, 
 Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim, 
 Then Commentaljors, in unwieldy Dapce, 
 Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, 
 Pursue the Poet, like Actaeon's Hounds, 
 Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds, 
 Rend from the sin^ng Robes each borrowed Gem, 
 Rend from the lalirel'd Brows the Diadem, 
 And, if one Rag of Character they spare. 
 Comes the Biographer, and strips it tare! 
 
 Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom. 
 Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet's Tomb, 
 With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line, 
 Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! 
 Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends 
 To interview the Drudges of your Friends. 
 Though still your Courthope holds your merits high. 
 And still proclaims your Poems Poetry, 
 Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered. 
 And Dunces edit Mm whom Dunces feared! 
 
 They say; what say they? Not in vain You ask. 
 To tfeU you what they say, behold my Task! 
 'Metiiinks alrea3y I your Tears survey' 
 As I repeat 'the horrid Things they say.'* 
 
 Comes El— li first: I fancy you'll agree 
 
 Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; 
 
 For El — n's Introduction, crabbed and dry. 
 
 Like Churchill's Cudgel'sf marked with Lie, and Lie ! 
 
 *Rape of the Lock. ^la Mr. Hogarth's Caiicatuia. 
 
*Too dull to know what his own System meant. 
 
 Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent; 
 
 A Snake that puffed himself and stung his Friends, 
 
 Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends; 
 
 His mind, like Flesh inflamed,* was raw and sore, 
 
 And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more! 
 
 Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right, 
 
 His Spirit sank when he was called to fight. 
 
 Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole, 
 
 Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole, 
 
 And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel, 
 
 Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele! 
 
 Still he denied the Letters he had writ. 
 
 And still mistook Indecency for Wit. 
 
 His very Grammar, so DeQuincey cries, 
 
 "Detains the Reader, and at times defies!" ' 
 
 Fierce El — n thus : no Line escapes his Rage, 
 
 And furious Foot-notes growl 'neath every Page : 
 
 See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale, 
 
 Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail! 
 
 'Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South, 
 
 But Pope, poor D — 1, lied from Hand to Mouth ;t 
 
 Affected, hypocritical, and vain, 
 
 A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain; 
 
 A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour. 
 
 The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power. 
 
 Pope yet possessed' — (the Praise will make you start) — 
 
 'Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart! 
 
 And still we marvel at the Man, and still 
 
 Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill: 
 
 Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form, 
 
 Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm, 
 
 Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line 
 
 That from the Noble separates the Fine!' 
 
 ♦Elwin's Pope, ii. 15. 
 
 t'Poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar.' Pope, by Leslie 
 Stephen, 139. 
 
 84 
 
The Learned thus, and who can quite reply, 
 Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie? 
 You reap, in armed Hates that haunt Your name. 
 Reap what you sowed, the Dragon's Teeth of Fame: 
 You could not write, and from unenvious Time 
 Expect the Wreath that crowns the lofty Rhyme, 
 You still must fight, retreat, attack, defend. 
 And oft, to snatch a Laurel, lose a Friend! 
 
 The Pity of it! And the changing Taste 
 Of changing Time leaves half your Work a Waste! 
 My Childhood fled your couplet's clarion tone. 
 And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn. 
 StiU through the Dust of that dim Prose appears 
 The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears; 
 Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel, 
 And hear the Bronze that hurtles on the Steel! 
 But, ah, your Iliad seems half-pretence. 
 Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in Fence, 
 And great Achilles' Eloquence doth show 
 As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau! 
 
 Again, your Verse is orderly, — and more, — 
 'The Waves behind impel the Waves before;' 
 Monotonously musical they glide. 
 Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied. 
 But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep! 
 Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; 
 This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth. 
 Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, 
 Sombre in all its sniUen Deeps, and all 
 Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall, 
 The next with silver Murmur dies away. 
 Like Tides that falter to Calypso's Bay! 
 Thus Time, with sordid Alchemy and dread. 
 Turns half the Glory of your Gold to Lead; 
 Thus Time, — at Ronsard's wreath that vainly bit,— 
 Has marred the Poet to preserve the Wit, 
 85 
 
Who almost left on Addison a stain, 
 
 Whose knife cut cleanest with a poisoned pain, — 
 
 Yet Thou (strange Fate that clings to all of Thine!) 
 
 When most a Wit dost most a Poet shine. 
 
 In Poetry thy Dunciad expires. 
 
 When Wit has shot 'her momentary Fires.' 
 
 'T is Tragedy that watches by the Bed 
 
 'Where tawdry Yellow strove with dirty Red,' 
 
 And Men, remembering all, can scarce deny 
 
 To lay the Laurel where thine Ashes lie! 
 
 — ^Andrew Lang 
 
 88 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
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 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
JUPITER AND MERCURY 
 
 A FABLE 
 
 Here Hermes, says Jove who with nectar was mellow, 
 Go fetch me some clay — I will make an odd fellow: 
 Right and wrong shall be jumbled — much gold and some 
 
 dross; 
 Without cause be he pleas'd, without cause be he cross; 
 Be surfe as I work to throw in contradictions, 
 A great love of truth; ytet a mind turn'd to fictions; 
 Now mix these ingred^nts, which warm'd in the baking, 
 Turn to learning, and gaming, rehgion and raking. 
 With the love of a wench, let his writings be chaste; 
 Tip his tongue with strange matter, his pen with fine 
 
 taste; 
 That the rake and the poet o'er all may prevail, 
 Set fire to the head, and set fire to the tail: 
 For the joy of each sex, on the world I'll bestow it: 
 This Scholar, Rake, Christian, Dupe, Gamester and Poet, 
 Thro' a mixture so odd, he shall merit great fame. 
 And among brother mortals — ^be GOLDSMITH his name! 
 When on earth this strange meteor no more shall appear, 
 You, Hermes, shall fetch him — ^to make us sport here! 
 
 — ^David Garkick 
 
 {From) 
 
 THE STREATHAM PORTRAITS 
 
 From our Goldsmith's anomalous character, who 
 Can withhold his contempt, and his reverence too? 
 From a poet so poUshed, so paltry a fellow! 
 From critic, historian, or vile Punchinello ! 
 From a heart in which meanness had made her abode, 
 From a foot that each path of vulgarity trod; 
 From a head to invent and a hand to adorn. 
 Unskilled in the schools, a philosopher bom. 
 By disguise undefended, by jealousy smit, 
 
This lusus naturae nondescript in wit. 
 
 May best be compared to those Anamorphoses; 
 
 Which for lectures to ladies th' optician proposes; 
 
 All deformity seeming, in some points of view. 
 
 In others quite accurate, regular, true : 
 
 Till the student no more sees the figure that shocked her. 
 
 But all in his likeness, — our odd little doctor. 
 
 — Hester Lynch Piozzi 
 
 (From) 
 
 ERIN 
 
 Forgettest thou thy bard, who hurried home 
 From distant lands and, bent by poverty, 
 Reposed among the quiet scenes he loved 
 In native Auburn, nor disdain'd to join 
 The village dancers on the sanded floor? 
 No poet since hath Nature drawn so close 
 To her pure bosom as her OKver. 
 
 — Waltee Savage Landob 
 
 {From) 
 
 YOUNG AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 But gentler GOLDSMITH, whom no man could hate, 
 Beloved by Heaven, pursued by wayward fate. 
 Whose verse shall live in every British mind. 
 Though sweet, yet strong; though nervous, yet refined; — 
 A motley part he play'd in life's gay scene. 
 The dupe of vanity and wayward spleen; 
 Aping lie world, a strange fantastic elf; 
 Great, generous, noble, when he was himself. 
 
 — ^Hartley Colebidge 
 
 90 
 
GOLDSMITH'S WHISTLE 
 
 As fabled beasts before the lyre 
 
 Fell prone, so want and hunger fled; 
 The way was free to his desire. 
 
 And he like one with manna fed. 
 The world, the world, for him was meant; 
 
 Cathedral towers, and Alpine torrents! 
 He trod a measure as he went. 
 
 And piped and sang his way to Florence! 
 Great wit and scholar though he be, 
 
 I love, of all his famous days. 
 This time of simple vagrancy 
 
 Ere youth and bliss had parted ways. 
 With what a careless heart he strayed. 
 
 Light as the down upon a thistle. 
 Made other hearts his own, and paid 
 
 His way through Europe with a whistle! 
 
 — ^Habbiet Phescott Spofford 
 
 01 
 
WILLIAM COWPER 
 1731-1800 
 

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 WILLIAM COWPER 
 
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. 
 
 BORN IN HERTFOBDSHIBE, 1731 
 BURIED IN THIS CHTJHCH, 1800 
 
 Ye, who with warmth the public triumph feel 
 Of talents, dignified by sacred zeal. 
 Here, to devotion's Bard devoutly just. 
 Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust! 
 England, exulting in his spotless fame. 
 Ranks with her dearest sons his fav'rite name; 
 Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise 
 So clear a title to afPection's praise : 
 His highest honors to the heart belong; 
 His virtues form'd the magic of his song. 
 
 — ^William Hatley 
 
 (From) 
 
 THE PURSUITS OF LITERATURE 
 
 With England's Bard, with Cowper who shall vie? 
 Original in strength and dignity, 
 WiQi more than painter's fancy blest, with lays 
 Holy, as saints to heav'n expiring raise. 
 
 — ^Thosias James Mathias 
 
 THE HARP, AND DESPAIR, OF COWPER 
 
 Sweet bard, whose tones great Milton might approve. 
 
 And Shakespeare, from high Fancy's sphere. 
 
 Turning to the sound his ear. 
 Bend down a look of sympathy and love; 
 
 Oh, swell the lyre again. 
 
 As if in full accord it poured an angel's strain! 
 But oh! what means that look aghast, 
 
 Ev'n whilst it seemed in holy trance, 
 
 On scenes of bliss above to glance! 
 
 95 
 
Was it a fiend of darkness passed! 
 Oh, speak — 
 Paleness is upon his cheek — 
 On his brow the big drops stand. 
 
 To airy vacancy 
 Points the dread silence of his eye. 
 And the loved lyre it falls, falls from his nerveless hand ! 
 Come, peace of mind, delightful guest! 
 Oh, come, and make thy downy nest 
 
 Once more on this sad heart! 
 Meek Faith, a drop of comfort shed; 
 Sweet Hope, support his aged head; 
 And Charity, avert the burning dart ! 
 Fruitless the prayer — ^the night of deeper woes 
 Seems o'er the head even now to close; 
 In vain the path of purity he trod. 
 
 In vain, in vain. 
 He poured from Fancy's shell his sweetest hermit strain- 
 He has no hope on earth: forsake him not, O God! 
 
 — William Lisle Bowles 
 
 {From) 
 
 LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE 
 
 CCVIII 
 
 Tenderest of tender hearts, of spirits pure 
 The purest! such, O Cowper! such wert thou. 
 But such are not the happiest: thou wert not, 
 Till borne where all those hearts and spirits rest. 
 Young was I, when from Latin lore and Greek 
 I played the truant for thy sweeter Task, 
 Nor since that hour hath aught our Muses held 
 Before me seem'd so precious; in one hour, 
 I saw the poet and the sage unite. 
 More grave than man, more versatile than boy! 
 — ^Walter Savage Landob 
 
 96 
 
COWPER'S GRAVE 
 I 
 
 It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's 
 
 decaying; 
 It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their 
 
 praying: 
 Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish : 
 Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave 
 
 her anguish. 
 
 II 
 
 O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless 
 singing! 
 
 O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was 
 clinging! 
 
 O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths be- 
 guiling. 
 
 Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye 
 were smilmg! 
 
 Ill 
 
 And now, what time ye all may read through dimming 
 
 tears hfe stoty. 
 How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory, 
 And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering 
 
 lights departed. 
 He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted, 
 
 IV 
 
 He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, 
 And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration; 
 Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken. 
 Named softly as the household name of one whom God 
 hath taken. 
 
 97 
 
With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon 
 
 him, 
 With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven 
 
 hath won him. 
 Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to 
 
 blind him; 
 But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could 
 
 find him, 
 
 VI 
 
 And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic 
 senses 
 
 As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious in- 
 fluences: 
 
 The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number. 
 
 And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a 
 slumber. 
 
 VII 
 
 Wild, timid hares were drawn from woods to share his 
 
 home-caresses, 
 Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses: 
 The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's 
 
 ways removing. 
 Its women and its men became, beside him, true and 
 
 loving. 
 
 VIII 
 
 And though, in blindness, he remained unconscious of 
 
 that guiding. 
 And things provided came without the sweet sense of 
 
 providing. 
 He testified this solemn truth, while frenzy desolated, 
 — ^Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created. 
 
 08 
 
IX 
 
 lake a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she 
 
 blesses, 
 And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses; 
 That turns his fevered eyes around — "My mother! where's 
 
 my mother? " 
 As if such tender word and deeds could come from any 
 
 other! — 
 
 The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending 
 
 o'er him. 
 Her face all pale from watchful love, — ^the unweary love 
 
 she bore him! — 
 Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever 
 
 gave him. 
 Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes which closed in death to 
 
 save him. 
 
 XI 
 
 Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth can image that 
 
 awaking 
 Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs round him 
 
 breaking. 
 Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted. 
 But felt those eyes alone, and knew, — "My Saviour! not 
 
 deserted!" 
 
 XII 
 
 Deserted! Who hath dreamt, that when the cross in 
 
 darkness rested. 
 Upon the victim's hidden face no love was manifested? 
 \^at frantic hands outstretched have e'er the atoning 
 
 drops averted? 
 What tears have washed them from the soul, that one 
 
 should be deserted? 
 
 99 
 
xni 
 
 Deserted! God could separate from his own essence rather; 
 And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son 
 
 and Father: 
 Yea, once Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath 
 
 shaken — 
 It went up single, echoless, "My God, I am forsaken!" 
 
 XIV 
 
 It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation, 
 
 That of the lost no son should use those words of desola- 
 tion; 
 
 That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not 
 hope's fruition; 
 
 And I, op Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a 
 vision. 
 
 — ^Elizabeth Babbett Browning 
 
 TO COWPER 
 
 Sweet are thy strains, Celestial Bard; 
 
 And oft, in childhood's years, 
 I've read them o'er and o'er again, 
 
 With floods of silent tears. 
 
 The language of my inmost heart 
 
 I traced in every hne; 
 My sins, my sorrows, hopes, and fears. 
 
 Were there — and only mine. 
 
 All for myself the sigh would swell, 
 
 The tear of anguish start; 
 I little knew what wilder woe 
 
 Had filled the Poet's heart. 
 
 I did not know the nights of gloom. 
 The days of misery : 
 100 
 
The long, long years of dark despair. 
 That crushed and tortured thee. 
 
 But they are gone; from earth at length 
 
 Thy gentle soul is pass'd. 
 And in the bosom of its God 
 
 Has found its home at last. 
 
 It must be so, if God is love. 
 
 And answers fervent prayer; 
 Then surely thou shalt dwell on high, 
 
 And I may meet thee there. 
 
 Is He the source of every good. 
 
 The spring of purity? 
 Then in thine hours of deepest woe. 
 
 Thy God was still with thee. 
 
 How else, when every hope was fled, 
 
 Could thou so fondly cling 
 To holy things and holy men? 
 
 And how so sweetly sing 
 
 Of things that God alone could teach? 
 
 And whence that purity. 
 That hatred of all sinful ways — 
 
 That gentle charity? 
 
 Are these the symptoms of a heart 
 
 Of heavenly grace bereft — 
 Forever banished from its God, 
 
 To Satan's fury left? 
 
 Yet, should thy darkest fears be true. 
 
 If Heaven be so severe. 
 That such a soul as thine is lost, — 
 
 Oh! how shall / appear? 
 
 — ^Anne Bronte 
 
 101 
 
ROBERT BURNS 
 1759-1796 
 
ROBERT BURNS 
 
A BARD'S EPITAPH 
 
 Is there a whim-inspiFed fool, 
 
 Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 
 
 Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 
 
 Let him draw near; 
 And owre this grassy heap sing dool. 
 
 And drap a tear. 
 
 Is there a bard of rustic song. 
 
 Who, noteless, steals the crowds among. 
 
 That weekly this area throng, 
 
 O, pass not by! 
 But, with a frater-feeling strong. 
 
 Here heave a sigh. 
 
 Is there a man whose judgment clear. 
 Can others teach the course to steer. 
 Yet runs, himself, life's mad career. 
 
 Wild as the wave; 
 Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear, 
 
 Survey this grave. 
 
 The poor inhabitant below 
 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know. 
 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow, 
 
 And softer flame; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low. 
 
 And stain'd his name! 
 
 Reader, attend! whether thy soul 
 Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole. 
 Or darkling grubs this earthly hole. 
 
 In low pursuit; 
 Know prudent cautious self-control 
 
 Is wisdom's root. 
 
 — ^RoBEBT Burns 
 
 10$ 
 
AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS 
 
 SEVEN YEARS AFTEB HIS DEATH 
 
 I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold. 
 
 At thought of what I now behold: 
 
 As vapours breathed from dungeons cold 
 
 Strike pleasure dead. 
 So sadness comes from out the mould 
 
 Where Bums is laid. 
 
 And have I then thy bones so near. 
 And thou forbidden to appear? 
 As if it were thyself that's here 
 
 I shrink with pain; 
 And both my wishes and my fear 
 
 Alike are vain. 
 
 OflP weight — ^nor press on weight! — ^away 
 Dark thoughts! — ^they came, but not to stay; 
 With chastened feelings would I pay 
 
 The tribute due 
 To him, and aught that hides his clay 
 
 From mortal view. 
 
 Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth 
 He sang, his genius "glinted" forth. 
 Rose hke a star that touching earth. 
 
 For so it seems. 
 Doth glorify its humble birth 
 
 With matchless beams. 
 
 The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow. 
 The struggling heart, where be they now? — 
 Full soon the Aspirant of the plough. 
 
 The prompt, the brave, 
 Slept, wiUi the obscurest, in the low 
 
 And silent grave. 
 106 
 
I mourned with thousands, but as one 
 More deeply grieved, for He was gone 
 Whose li^t I hailed when first it shone. 
 
 And showed my youth 
 How Verse may build a princely throne 
 
 On humble truth. 
 
 Alas! where'er the current tends. 
 Regret pursues and with it blends, — 
 Huge Criffel's hoary top ascends 
 
 By Skiddaw seen, — 
 Neighbours we were, and loving friends 
 
 We might have been; 
 
 True friends though diversely inclined; 
 But heart with heart and mind with mind, 
 Where the main fibres are entwined. 
 
 Through Nature's skill. 
 May even by contraries be joined 
 
 More closely still. 
 
 The tear will start, and let it flow; 
 Thou "poor Inhabitant below," 
 At this dread moment — even so — 
 
 Might we together 
 Have sate and talked where gowans blow. 
 
 Or on wild heather. 
 
 What treasures would have then been placed 
 Within my reach; of knowledge graced 
 By fancy what a rich repast! 
 
 But why go on? — 
 Oh! spare to sweep, thou mournful blast, 
 
 His grave grass-grown. . 
 
 There, too, a Son, his joy and pride, 
 (Not three weeks past the Striphng died,) 
 Lies gathered to his Father's side, 
 107 
 
Soul-moving sight! 
 Yet one to which is not denied 
 Some sad delight. 
 
 For he is safe, a quiet bed 
 
 Hath early found among the dead. 
 
 Harboured where none can be misled. 
 
 Wronged, or distrest; 
 And surely here it may be said 
 
 That such are blest. 
 
 And oh for Thee, by pitying grace 
 Checked oft-times in a devious race, 
 May He who halloweth the place 
 
 Where Man is laid, 
 Receive thy Spirit in the embrace 
 
 For which it prayed ! 
 
 Sighing I turned away; but ere 
 Night fell I heard, or seemed to hear. 
 Music that sorrow comes not near, 
 
 A ritual hymn. 
 Chanted in love that casts out fear 
 
 By Seraphim. 
 
 — ^William Wokdswohth 
 
 THOUGHTS 
 
 SUGGESTED THE DAY FOLLOWING, ON THE BANKS OF NITH, 
 NEAB THE POET's RESIDENCE 
 
 Too frail to keep the lofty vow 
 
 That must have followed when his brow 
 
 Was wreathed — "The Vision" tells us how — 
 
 With holly spray. 
 He faltered, drifted to and fro. 
 
 And passed away. 
 108 
 
Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng 
 Our minds when, lingering all too long. 
 Over the grave of Bums we hung 
 
 In social grief — 
 Indulged as if it were a wrong 
 
 To seek relief. 
 
 But, leaviug each unquiet theme 
 Where gentlest judgments may misdeetD, 
 And prompt to welcome every gleam 
 
 Of good and fair. 
 Let us beside this limpid Stream 
 
 Breathe hopeful air. 
 
 Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight; 
 Think rather of those moments bright 
 When to the consciousness of right 
 
 His course was true. 
 When Wisdom prospered in his sight 
 
 And virtue grew. 
 
 Yes, freely let our hearts expand. 
 Freely as in youth's season bland. 
 When side by side, his Book in hand. 
 
 We wont to stray. 
 Our pleasure varying at comand 
 
 Of each sweet Lay. 
 
 How oft inspired must he have trod 
 These pathways, yon far-stretching road! 
 There lurks his home; in that Abode, 
 
 With mirth elate. 
 Or in his nobly-pensive mood. 
 
 The Rustic sate. 
 
 Proud thoughts that Image overawes, 
 Before it humbly let us pause. 
 And ask of Nature, from what cause 
 109 
 
And by what rules 
 She trained her Bums to win applause 
 That shames the Schools. 
 
 Through busiest street and loneliest glen 
 
 Are felt the flashes of his pen; 
 
 He rules 'mid winter snows, and when 
 
 Bees fill their hives; 
 Deep in the general heart of men 
 
 His power survives. 
 
 What need of fields in some far clime 
 Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime. 
 And all that fetched the flowing rhyme 
 
 From genuine springs, 
 Shall dwell together till old Time 
 
 Folds up his wings? 
 
 Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven 
 This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; 
 The rueful conflict, the heart riven 
 
 With vain endeavour. 
 And memory of Earth's bitter leaven. 
 
 Effaced for ever. 
 
 But why to Him confine the prayer. 
 When landred thoughts and yearnings bear 
 On the frail heart the purest share 
 
 With all that live?— 
 The best of what we do and are. 
 
 Just God, forgive! 
 
 — ^William Wordsworth 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 What bird, in beauty, flight, or song. 
 
 Can with the Bard compare. 
 Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as strong. 
 As ever child of air? 
 110 
 
His plume, his note, his form, could BURNS 
 
 For whim or pleasure change; 
 He was not one, but all by turns. 
 
 With transmigration strange. 
 
 The Blackbird, oracle of spring. 
 
 When flow'd his moral lay; 
 The Swallow wheeling on the wing. 
 
 Capriciously at play: 
 
 The Humming-bird, from bloom to bloom. 
 
 Inhaling heavenly balm; 
 The Raven, in the tempest's gloom; 
 
 The Halcyon, in the calm: 
 
 In "auld Kirk AUoway," the Owl, 
 
 At witching time of night; 
 By "bonnie Doon," the earliest Fowl 
 
 That caroU'd to the l^t. 
 
 He was the Wren amidst the grove. 
 
 When in his homely vein; 
 At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove, 
 
 With thunder in his train: 
 
 The Woodlark, in his mournful hours; 
 
 The Goldfinch, in his mirth; 
 The Thrush, a spendthrift of his powers, 
 
 Enrapturing heaven and earth; 
 
 The Swan, in majesty and grace. 
 
 Contemplative and still: 
 But roused, — ^no Falcon, in the chase, 
 
 Could like his satire kill. 
 
 The Linnet in simplicity. 
 
 In tenderness the Dove; 
 But more than all beside was he 
 
 The Nightingale in love. 
 Ill 
 
Oh ! had he never stoop'd to shame. 
 
 Nor lent a charm to vice. 
 How had Devotion loved to name 
 
 That Bird of Paradise! 
 
 Peace to the dead! — in Scotia's choir 
 
 Of Minstrels great and small. 
 He sprang from his spontaneous fire. 
 
 The Phoenix of them all. 
 
 — ^James Montgombky 
 
 WRITTEN IN BURNS' COTTAGE 
 
 This mortal body of a thousand days 
 Now fills, O Bums, a space in thine own room. 
 Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, 
 Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom! 
 My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree, 
 My head is light with pledging a great soul. 
 My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see, 
 Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal; 
 Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor. 
 Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find 
 The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er, — 
 Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, — 
 Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, — 
 O smile among the shades, for this is fame! 
 
 — John Keats 
 
 ROBERT BURNS* 
 
 I see amid the fields of Ayr 
 
 A ploughman, who, in foul and fair, 
 
 Sings at his task 
 So clear, we know not if it is 
 The laverock's song we hear, or his, 
 Nor care to ask. 
 •Copyright 1880 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 1908 by Ernest W . 
 Longfellow. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
 112 
 
For him the ploughing of those fields 
 A more ethereal harvest yields 
 
 Than sheaves of grain; 
 Songs flush with purple bloom the rye, 
 The plover's call, the curlew's cry, 
 
 Sing in his brain. 
 
 Touched by his hand, the wayside weed 
 Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed 
 
 Beside the stream 
 Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass 
 And heather, where his footsteps pass, 
 
 The brighter seem. 
 
 He sings of love, whose flame illumes 
 The darkness of lone cottage rooms ; 
 
 He feels the force. 
 The treacherous undertow and stress 
 Of wayward passions, and no less 
 
 The keen remorse. 
 
 At moments, wrestling with his fate. 
 His voice is harsh, but not with hate; 
 
 The brush-wood, hung 
 Above the tavern door, lets fall 
 Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall 
 
 Upon his tongue. 
 
 But still the music of his song 
 Bises o'er all, elate and strong; 
 
 Its master-chords 
 Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood, 
 Its discords but an interlude 
 
 Between the words. 
 
 And then to die so young and leave 
 Unfinished what he might achieve! 
 Yet better sure 
 113 
 
Is this, than wandering up and down. 
 An old man in a country town. 
 Infirm and poor. 
 
 For now he haunts his native land 
 As an immortal youth; his hand 
 
 Guides every plough; 
 He sits beside each ingle-nook, 
 His voice is in each rushing brook. 
 
 Each rustling bough. 
 
 His presence haunts this room to-night, 
 A form of mingled mist and light 
 
 From that far coast. 
 Welcome beneath this roof of mine! 
 Welcome! this vacant chair is thine. 
 
 Dear guest and ghost! 
 
 — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
 
 BURNS 
 
 ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM 
 
 No more these simple flowers belong 
 
 To Scottish maid and lover; 
 Sown in the common soil of song. 
 
 They bloom the wide world over. 
 
 In smiles and tears, in sun and showers. 
 
 The minstrel and the heather. 
 The deathless singer and the flowers 
 
 He sang of live together. 
 
 Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! 
 
 The moorland flower and peasant! 
 How, at their mention, memory turns 
 
 Her pages old and pleasant! 
 114 
 
The gray sky wears a^ain its gold 
 
 And purple of adorning, 
 And manhood's noonday shadows hold 
 
 The dews of boyhood's morning. 
 
 The dews that washed the dust and soil 
 From ofiF the wings of pleasure. 
 
 The sky, that flecked the ground of toil 
 With golden threads of leisure. 
 
 I call to mind the simuuer day. 
 
 The early harvest mowing, 
 The sky with sun and clouds at play, 
 
 And flowers with breezes blowing. 
 
 I hear the blackbird in the com. 
 
 The locust in the haying; 
 And, hke the fabled hunter's horn. 
 
 Old tunes my heart is playing. 
 
 How oft that day, with fond delay, 
 
 I sought the maple's shadow. 
 And sang with Bums the hours away, 
 
 Forgetful of the meadow! 
 
 Bees hununed, birds twittered, overhead 
 
 I heard the squirrels leaping. 
 The good dog listened while I read. 
 
 And wagged his tail in keeping. 
 
 I watched him while in sportive mood 
 
 I read " The twa Dogs' " story. 
 And half believed he understood 
 
 The poet's allegory. 
 
 Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours 
 
 Grew brighter for that singing. 
 From brook and bird and meadow flowers 
 
 A dearer welcome bringing. 
 115 
 
New light on home-seen Nature beamed. 
 
 New glory over Woman; 
 And daily life and duty seemed 
 
 No longer poor and common. 
 
 I woke to find the simple truth 
 
 Of fact and feeling better 
 Than all the dreams that held my youth 
 
 A still repining debtor: 
 
 That Nature gives her handmaid. Art, 
 The themes of sweet discoursing; 
 
 The tender idyls of the heart 
 In every tongue rehearsing. 
 
 Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, 
 
 eft loving knight and lady. 
 When farmer boy and barefoot girl 
 
 Were wandering there already? 
 
 I saw through all familiar things 
 The romance underlying; 
 The joys and griefs that plume the wings 
 Of Fancy sk3rward flying. 
 
 I saw the same blithe day return. 
 
 The same sweet fall of even, 
 That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, 
 
 And sank on crystal Devon. 
 
 I matched with Scotland's heathery hills 
 The sweetbrier and the clover; 
 
 With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 
 Their wood hymns chanting over. 
 
 O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 
 
 I saw the Man uprising; 
 No longer common or unclean, 
 
 The child of God's baptizing! 
 116 
 
with clearer eyes I saw the worth 
 
 Of life among the lowly; 
 The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 
 
 Had made my own more holy. 
 
 And if at times an evil strain, 
 
 To lawless love appealing. 
 Broke in upon the sweet refrain 
 
 Of pure and healthful feeling. 
 
 It died upon the eye and ear. 
 
 No inward answer gaining; 
 No heart had I to see or hear 
 
 The discord and the staining. 
 
 Let those who never erred forget 
 His worth, in vain bewaUings ; 
 
 Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt 
 Uncancelled by his failings! 
 
 Lament who will the ribald line 
 Which tells his lapse from duty. 
 
 How kissed the maddening lips of wine 
 Or wanton ones of beauty; 
 
 But think, while falls that shade between 
 
 The erring one and Heaven, 
 That he who loved like Magdalen, 
 
 Like her may be forgiven. 
 
 Not his the song whose thunderous chime 
 
 Eternal echoes render; 
 The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme. 
 
 And Milton's starry splendor! 
 
 But who his human heart has laid 
 
 To Nature's bosom nearer? 
 Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 
 
 To love a tribute dearer? 
 117 
 
Through all his tuneful art, how strong 
 
 The human feeling gushes! 
 The very moonlight of his song 
 
 Is warm with smiles and blushes! 
 
 Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 
 
 So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; 
 Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, 
 
 But spare his Highland Mary! 
 
 — ^JoHN Gkeenleaf Whittier 
 
 FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 His birthday. — ^Nay, we need not speak 
 The name each heart is beating, — 
 
 Each glistening eye and flushing cheek 
 In light and fiame repeating! 
 
 We come in one tumultuous tide, — 
 
 One surge of wild emotion, — 
 As crowding through the Frith of Clyde 
 
 Rolls in the Western Ocean; 
 
 As when yon cloudless, quartered moon 
 
 Hangs o'er each storied river, 
 The swelling breasts of Ayr and Dono 
 
 With sea-green wavelets quiver. 
 
 The century shrivels like a scroll, — 
 The past becomes the present, — 
 And face to face, and soul to soul. 
 We greet the monarch-peasant. 
 
 While Shenstone strained in feeble flights 
 
 With Corydon and Phillis, — 
 While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights 
 
 To snatch the Bourbon lilies, — 
 118 
 
Who heard the wailing infant's cry, 
 The babe beneath the sheeUng, 
 
 Whose song to-night in every sky 
 Will shake earth's starry ceiling,— 
 
 Whose passion-breathing voice ascends 
 
 And floats like incense o'er us. 
 Whose ringing lay of friendship blends 
 
 With labors anvil chorus? 
 
 We love him, not for sweetest song, 
 
 Though never tone so tender; 
 We love him, even in his wrong, — 
 
 His wasteful self-surrender. 
 
 We praise him, not for gifts divine, — 
 His Muse was born of woman, — 
 
 His manhood breathes in every line, — 
 Was ever heart more human? 
 
 We love him, praise him, just for this: 
 
 In every form and feature. 
 Through wealth and want, through woe and 
 bliss. 
 
 He saw his fellow-creature! 
 
 No soul could sink beneath his love, — 
 
 Not even angel blasted; 
 No mortal power could soar above 
 
 The pride that all outlasted! 
 
 Ay! Heaven had set one living man 
 
 Beyond the pedant's tether, — 
 His virtues, frailties. He may scan. 
 
 Who weighs them all together! 
 
 I fling my pebble on the cairn 
 Of him, iJiough dead, undying; 
 119 
 
Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn 
 Beneath her daisies lying. 
 
 The waning suns, the wasting globe. 
 Shall spare the minstrel's story, — 
 
 The centuries weave his purple robe. 
 The mountain-mist of glory! 
 
 — Outer Wendell Holmes 
 
 TO BURNS'S 'HIGHLAND MARY' 
 
 O loved by him whom Scotland loves. 
 
 Long loved, and honoured duly 
 By all who love the bard who sang 
 
 So sweetly and so truly! 
 In cultured dales his song prevails; 
 
 Thrills o'er the eagle's aeiy — 
 Has any caught that strain, nor sighed 
 
 For Bums's 'Highland Mary'? 
 
 I wandered on from hill to hill, 
 
 I feared nor wind nor weather. 
 For Burns beside me trode the moor. 
 
 Beside me pressed the heather. 
 I read his verse: his life — alas! 
 
 O'er that dark shades extended: — 
 With thee at last, and him in thee. 
 
 My thoughts their wanderings ended. 
 
 His golden hours of youth were thine; 
 
 Those hours whose flight is fleetest 
 Of all his songs to thee he gave 
 
 The freshest and the sweetest. 
 Ere ripe the fruit one branch he brake, 
 
 AU rich with bloom and blossom; 
 120 
 
And shook its dews, its incense shook, 
 Above thy brow and bosom. 
 
 And when his Spring, alas, how soon! 
 
 Had vanished, self-subverted. 
 His Summer, like a god repulsed. 
 
 Had from his gates departed; 
 Beneath that evening star, once more. 
 
 Star of his mom and even! 
 To thee his suppUant hands he spread. 
 
 And hailed his love 'in heaven.' 
 
 And if his spirit in 'a waste 
 
 Of shame' too oft was squandered. 
 And if too oft his feet ill-starred 
 
 In ways erroneous wandered; 
 Yet still his spirit's spirit bathed 
 
 In purity eternal; 
 And all fair things through thee retained 
 
 For him their aspect vernal. 
 Nor less that tenderness remained 
 
 Thy favouring love impla&ted; 
 Compunctious pity, yearnings vague 
 
 For love to eartii not granted; 
 Reserve with freedom, female grace 
 
 Well matched with manly vigor. 
 In songs where fancy twined her wreaths 
 
 Round judgment's stalwart rigour. 
 
 A mute but strong appeal was made 
 
 To him by feeblest creatures: 
 In his large heart had each ^ part 
 
 That part had found in Natoire's. 
 The wildered sheep, sagacious dog. 
 
 Old horse reduced and crazy; 
 The field-mouse by the plough upturned. 
 
 And violated daisy. 
 121 
 
In him there burned that passionate glow 
 
 All Nature's soul and savour. 
 Which gives its hue to every flower. 
 
 To every fruit its flavour: 
 Nor less the kindred power he felt; 
 
 That love of all things human 
 Whereof the fiery centre is 
 
 That love man bears to woman. 
 
 He sang the dignity of man. 
 
 Sang woman's grace and goodness; 
 Passed by the world's half-truths; her lies 
 
 Pierced through with lance-like shrewdness: 
 Upon life's broad highways he stood. 
 
 And aped nor Greek nor Roman; 
 But snatched from heaven Promethean fire 
 
 To glorify things common. 
 
 He sang of youth, he sang of age. 
 
 Their joys, their griefs, their labours 
 Felt with, not for, the people; hailed 
 
 All Scotland's sons his neighbors: 
 And therefore all repeat his verse. 
 
 Hot youth, or greybeard steady, 
 The boatman on Loch Etive's wave. 
 
 The shepherd on Ben Ledi. 
 
 He sang from love of song; his name 
 
 Dunedin's cliff resoimded: 
 He left her, faithful to a fame 
 
 On truth and nature founded: 
 He sought true fame, not loud acclaim; 
 
 Himself and Time he trusted: 
 For laurels crackling in the flame 
 
 His fine ear never lusted. 
 
 He loved, and reason had to love 
 The illustrious land that bore him: 
 122 
 
Where'er he went, like heaven's broad tent 
 A star-bright Past hung o'er him: 
 
 Each isle had fenced a saint recluse. 
 Each tower a hero dying; 
 
 Down every mountain-gorge had rolled 
 The flood of foemen flying. 
 
 From age to age that land had paid 
 
 No alien throne submission; 
 For feudal faith had been her Law, 
 
 And freedom her Tradition. 
 Where frowned the rocks had Freedom smiled, 
 
 Sung 'mid the shrill wind's whistle — 
 So England prized her garden Rose, 
 
 But Scotland loved her Thistle. 
 
 Fair field alone the brave demand, 
 
 And Scotland ne'er had lost it; 
 And honest prove the hate and love 
 
 To objects meet adjusted: 
 Her will and way had ne'er been crossed 
 
 In fatal contradiction; 
 Nor loyalty to treason soured. 
 
 Nor faith abused with fiction. 
 
 Can song be false where hearts are sound? 
 
 Weak doubts, away we fling them! 
 The land that breeds great men, great deeds. 
 
 Shall ne'er lack bards to sing them: 
 That vigour, sense, and mutual truth 
 
 Which baffied each invader. 
 Shall flU her marts, and feed her arts. 
 
 While peaceful olives shade her. 
 
 Honour to Scotland and to Bums! 
 
 In him she stands collected: 
 A thousand streams one river make — 
 
 Thus Genius, heaven-directed, 
 123 
 
Conjoins all separate veins of power 
 
 In one great soul-creation; 
 Thus blends a million men to make 
 
 The poet of the nation. 
 
 Be green for aye, green bank and brae 
 
 Around Montgomery's Castle! 
 Blow there, ye earliest flowers ! and there, 
 
 Ye sweetest song-birds, nestle ! 
 For there was ta'en that last farewell 
 
 In hope, indulged how blindly; 
 And there was given that long last gaze 
 
 'That dwelt' on him 'sae kindly.' 
 
 No word of thine recorded stands; 
 
 Few words that hour were spoken: 
 Two Bibles there were interchanged; 
 
 And some slight love-gift broken: 
 And there thy cold faint hands he pressed. 
 
 Thy head by dew-drops misted; 
 And kisses, ill-resisted first. 
 
 At last were unresisted. 
 
 Ah cease! — she died. He too is dead. 
 
 Of all her girlish graces 
 Perhaps one nameless lock remains: 
 
 The rest stem Time effaces — 
 Dust lost in dust. Not so: a bloom 
 
 Is hers that ne'er can wither; 
 And in that lay which lives for aye 
 
 The twain live on together. 
 
 — ^AuBEEY De Veee 
 
 IM 
 
BURNS: AN ODE 
 
 A fire of fierce and laughing light 
 That clove the shuddering heart of night 
 Leapt earthward, and the thunder's might 
 
 That pants and yearns 
 Made fitful music round its flight: 
 
 And earth saw Burns. 
 
 The joyous lightning found its voice 
 And bade the heart of wrath rejoice 
 And scorn uphft a song to voice 
 
 The imperial hate 
 That smote the God of base men's choice 
 
 At God's own gate. 
 
 Before the shrine of dawn, where through 
 The lark rang rapture as she flew, 
 It flashed and fired the darkling dew : 
 
 And all that heard 
 With love or loathing hailed anew 
 
 A new day's word. 
 
 The servants of the lord of hell, 
 
 As though their lord had blessed them, fell 
 
 Foaming at mouth for fear, so well 
 
 They knew the lie 
 Wherewith they sought to scan and spell 
 
 The unsounded sky. 
 
 And Calvin, night's prophetic bird. 
 Out of his home in hell was heard 
 Shrieking; and all the fens were stirred 
 
 Whence plague is bred; 
 Can God endure the scoffer's word? 
 
 But God was dead. 
 
 The God they made them in despite 
 Of man and woman, love and light, 
 125 
 
Strong sundawn and the starry night, 
 
 The lie supreme. 
 Shot through with song, stood forth to sight 
 
 A devil's dream. 
 
 And he that bent the lyric bow 
 And laid the lord of darkness low 
 And bade the fire of laughter glow 
 
 Across his grave. 
 And bade the tides above it flow. 
 
 Wave hurtling wave. 
 
 Shall he not win from latter days 
 
 More than his own could yield of praise? 
 
 Ay, could the soveriegn singer's bays 
 
 Forsake his brow, 
 The warrior's, won on stormier ways. 
 
 Still clasp it now. 
 
 He loved, and sang of love: he laughed, 
 And bade the cup whereout he quaffed 
 Shine as a planet, fore and aft. 
 
 And left and right. 
 And keen as shoots the sun's fiirst shaft 
 
 Against the night. 
 
 But love and wine were moon and sun 
 For many a fame long since undone. 
 And sorrow and joy have lost and won 
 
 By stormy turns 
 As many a singer's soul, if none 
 
 More bright than Burns. 
 
 And sweeter far in grief or mirth 
 Have songs as glad and sad of birth 
 Found voice to speak of wealth or dearth 
 
 In joy of life: 
 But never song took fire from earth 
 
 More strong for strife. 
 126 
 
The daisy by his ploughshare cleft. 
 The lips of women loved and left. 
 The griefs and joys that weave the weft 
 
 Of human time. 
 With craftsman's cunning, keen and deft. 
 
 He carved in rhyme. 
 
 But Chaucer's daisy shines a star 
 Above his ploughshare's reach to mar, 
 And mightier vision gave Dunbar 
 
 More sitiienuous wing 
 To hear around all sins that are 
 
 Hell dance and sing. 
 
 And when such pride and power of trust 
 In song's high gift to arouse from dust 
 Death, and transfigure love or lust 
 
 Through smiles or tears 
 In golden speech that takes no rust 
 
 From cankering years. 
 
 As never spake but once in one 
 
 Strong star-crossed child of earth and sun, 
 
 Villon, made music such as none 
 
 May praise or blame, 
 A crown of starrier flower was won 
 
 Than Burns may claim. 
 
 But never, since bright earth was born 
 In rapture of the enkindling morn. 
 Might godlike wrath and sunlike scorn 
 
 That was and is 
 And shall be while false weeds are worn 
 
 Find word like his. 
 
 Above the rude and radiant earth 
 That heaves and glows from firth to firth 
 In vale and mountain, bright in dearth 
 And warm in wealth, 
 127 
 
Which gave his fiery glory birth 
 By chance and stealth, 
 
 Above the storms of praise and blame 
 That blur with mist his lustrous name, 
 His thundrous laughter went and came, 
 
 And lives and flies; 
 The roar that follows on the flame 
 
 When lightning dies. 
 
 Earth, and the snow-dimmed heights of air, 
 
 And water winding soft and fair 
 
 Through still sweet places, bright and bare. 
 
 By bent and byre. 
 Taught him what hearts within them were: 
 
 But his was fire. 
 
 — ^Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 
 128 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 1771—1832 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
TO SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 ON ACCIDENTALLY MEETING AND PARTING WITH SIB 
 WALTER SCOTT IN LONDON, MAT, 1828 
 
 Since last I saw that countenance so mild 
 Slow-stealing age, and a faint line of care. 
 Had gently toudied, methought, some features there; 
 
 Yet looked the man as placid as a child, 
 
 And the same voice, — ^whilst mingled with the throng, 
 Unknowing, and unknown, we passed along, — 
 
 That voice, a share of the brief time beguiled! 
 
 That voice I ne'er may hear again, I sighed 
 
 At parting, — ^whereso'er our various way. 
 
 In this great world, — ^but from the banks of Tweed, 
 
 As slowly sink the shades of eventide. 
 Oh! I shall hear the music of his reed, 
 
 Far off, and thinking of that voice, shall say, 
 
 A blessing rest upon thy locks of grey! 
 
 — ^William Lisle Bowles 
 
 (From) 
 
 THE QUEEN'S WAKE 
 
 (conclusion) 
 
 The day arrived — ^blest be the day, 
 Walter the Abbot came that way! — 
 The sacred reUc met his view — 
 Ah! well the pledge of Heaven he knew! 
 He screwed the chords, he tried a strain; 
 'Twas wild — ^he tuned and tried again, 
 Then poured the numbers bold and free. 
 The ancient magic melody. 
 
 The land was charmed to list his lays; 
 It knew the harp of ancient days. 
 The Border chiefs, that long had been 
 In sepulchres unhearsed and green, 
 131 
 
Passed from their mouldy vaults away. 
 In armour red and stern array. 
 And by their moonlight halls were seen, 
 In visor, helm, and habergeon. 
 Even fairies sought our land again. 
 So powerful was the magic strain. 
 
 — ^James Hogg 
 
 ON THE DEPARTURE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 FROM ABBOTSFORD FOR NAPLES 
 
 A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain. 
 Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 
 Engendered, hangs o'er EUdon's triple height: 
 Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain 
 For kindred Power departing from their sight; 
 While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain. 
 Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 
 Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might 
 Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes; 
 Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue 
 Than sceptered king or laurelled conqueror knows. 
 Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true. 
 Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea. 
 Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope! 
 
 — William Wobdswobth 
 
 {From) 
 
 YARROW REVISITED 
 
 For Thou, upon a hundred streams. 
 
 By tales of love and sorrow. 
 Of faithful love, undaunted truth. 
 
 Hath shed the power of Yarrow; 
 And streams unknown, hills yet unseen. 
 
 Wherever they invite Thee, 
 At parent Nature's grateful call. 
 
 With gladness must requite Thee. 
 132 
 
A gracious welcome shall be thine, 
 
 Such looks of love and honor 
 As thy own Yarrow gave to me 
 
 When first I gazed upon her; 
 Beheld what I had feared to see. 
 
 Unwilling to surrender 
 Dreams treasured up from early days. 
 
 The holy and the tender. 
 
 — William Wokdsworth 
 
 (From) 
 
 ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS 
 
 Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan, 
 The golden-crested haughty Marmion, 
 Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight, 
 Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight. 
 The gibbet or the field prepared to grace; 
 A mighty mixture of the great and base. 
 And think'st thou, Scott 1 by vain conceit perchance. 
 On public taste to foist thy stale romance. 
 Though Murray with his Miller may combine 
 To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? 
 No! when the sons of song descend to trade. 
 Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade. 
 Let such forego the poet's sacred name. 
 Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame: 
 StiU for stem Mammon may they toil in vain! 
 And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain! 
 Such be their meed, such still the just reward 
 Of prostituted muse and hireling bard! 
 For this we spurn Apollo's vernal son. 
 And bid a long "good night to Marmion." 
 
 These are the themes that claim our plaudits now; 
 These are the Bards to whom the muse must bow; 
 While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot. 
 Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott. 
 
 — Lord Btbon 
 133 
 
INTRODUCTION TO LAYS AND LEGENDS 
 OF ANCIENT GREECE 
 
 Like a fair country stretching wide 
 With woods on woods in leafy pride 
 
 And fields of golden grain, 
 And moors with purple heather glowing. 
 And healthful breezes bravely blowing. 
 
 Spreads Scott his vast domain. 
 
 — ^JoHN Stuabt Blackie 
 
 THE SCOTT MONUMENT, PRINCESS 
 STREET, EDINBURGH 
 
 Here sits he throned, where men and gods behold 
 His domelike brow — a good man simply great; 
 Here in this highway proud, that arrow-straight 
 Cleaves at one stroke iJie new world from the old. 
 On this side. Commerce, Fashion, Progress, Gold; 
 On that, the Castle Hill, the Canongate, 
 A thousand years of war and love and hate 
 There palpably upstanding fierce and bold. 
 Here sits he throned; beneath him, full and fast. 
 The tides of Modem Life impetuous run. 
 O Scotland, was it well and meetly done? 
 For see! he sits with back turned on the Past- 
 He whose imperial edict bade it last 
 While yon grey ramparts kindle to the sun. 
 
 — William Watson 
 
 1S4 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 1770-1850 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
TO A GENTLEMAN 
 
 (wnxJAM wohdswohth) 
 
 COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER THE RECITATION OF 
 A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND. 
 
 Friend of the wise ! and Teacher of the Good! 
 Into my heart have I received that Lay 
 More than historic, that prophetic Lay 
 Wherein (high theme by thee first simg aright) 
 Of the foundations and the building up 
 Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to teU 
 What may be told, to the imderstaoiding mind 
 Revealable; and what withih the mind 
 By vital breathings secret as the soul 
 Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart 
 Thoughts all too deep for words !-^ 
 
 Theme hard as high! 
 Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears 
 (The first-bom they of Reason and twin-birth). 
 Of tides obedient to external force. 
 And currents self-determined, as might seem. 
 Or by some inner Power; of moments awful. 
 Now in thy inner life, and now abroad. 
 When power streamed from thee, and thy soul 
 
 received 
 The light refiected, as a light bestowed — 
 Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth, 
 Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought 
 Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens 
 Native or outland, lakes and famous lulls! 
 Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars 
 Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams, 
 The guides and the companions of thy way! 
 Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense 
 Distending wide, and man beloved as man,. 
 Where France in all her towns lay vibrating 
 Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst 
 Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud 
 
 137 
 
Is visible, or shadow on the main. 
 
 For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded. 
 
 Amid the tremor of a realm aglow. 
 
 Amid a mighty nation jubilant. 
 
 When from the general heart of human kind 
 
 Hope sprang forth like a full-bom Deity! 
 
 — Of that dear Hope aflBicted and struck down, 
 
 So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm 
 
 and sure 
 From the dread watch-tower of man's abso- 
 lute self, 
 With light unwaning on her eyes, to look 
 Far on — ^herself a glory to behold. 
 The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain) 
 Of Duty, chosen Laws controlling choice. 
 Action and joy! — An orphic song indeed, 
 A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
 To their own music chaunted! 
 
 O great Bard! 
 Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air. 
 With stedfast eye I viewed thee in the choir 
 Of ever-enduring men. The truly great 
 Have all one age, and from one visible space 
 Shed influence ! They, both in power and act. 
 Are permanent, and Time is not with them. 
 Save as it worketh for them, they in it. 
 Nor less a sacred Roll, than those of old. 
 And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame 
 Among the archives of mankind, thy work 
 Makes audible a hnked lay of Truth, 
 Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay. 
 Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes ! 
 Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn. 
 The pulses of my being beat anew: 
 And even as life returns upon the drowned, 
 Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains — 
 Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe 
 Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; 
 138 
 
And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye 
 
 of hope; 
 And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; 
 Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain. 
 And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; 
 And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild. 
 And all which patient toil had reared, and all, 
 Commime with thee had opened out — ^but flowers 
 Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier. 
 In the same coffin, for the self -same grave! 
 
 That way no more ! and ill beseems it me. 
 Who came a welcomer in herald's guise. 
 Singing of glory, and futurity. 
 To wander back on such unhealthful road, 
 Plucking the poisons of self -harm! And ill 
 Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths 
 Strew'd before thy advancing! 
 
 Nor do thou, 
 Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour 
 Of thy communion with my nobler mind 
 By pity or grief, already felt too long! 
 Nor let my words import more blame than 
 
 needs. 
 The tumult rose and ceased: for Peace isnigh 
 Where wisdom's voice has found a listening 
 
 heart. 
 Amid the howl of more than wintry storms. 
 The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours 
 Already on the wing. 
 
 Eve following eve. 
 Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home 
 Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed 
 And more desired, more precious, for thy 
 
 song. 
 In silence listening, like a devout child. 
 My soul lay passive, by thy various strain 
 139 
 
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars, 
 With momentary stars of my own birth, 
 Fair constellated foam, still darting off 
 Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea. 
 Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the 
 moon. 
 
 And when — O Friend ! my comforter and guide ! 
 Strong in thyself, and powerful to give 
 
 strength! — 
 Thy long sustained Song finally closed. 
 And thy deep voice had ceased — yet thou 
 
 thyself 
 Wert still before my eyes, and round us both 
 That happy vision of beloved faces- — 
 Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its 
 
 close 
 I sate, my being blended in one thought 
 (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?) 
 Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound — 
 And when I rose, I found myself in prayer. 
 
 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 
 TO WORDSWORTH 
 
 Those who have laid the harp aside 
 And turn'd to idler things. 
 From very restlessness have tried 
 
 The loose and dusty strings. 
 And, catching back some favourite strain. 
 Run with it o'er the chords again. 
 
 But Memory is not a Muse, 
 O Wordsworth! though 'tis said 
 
 They all descend from her, and use 
 To haunt her fountain-head: 
 
 That other men should work for me 
 
 In the rich mines of Poesie, 
 140 
 
Pleases me better than the toil 
 Of smoothing under hardened hand. 
 
 With attic emery and oil, 
 
 The shining point for Wisdom's wand, 
 
 Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills 
 
 Descending from thy native hills. 
 
 Without his governance, in vain 
 Manhood is strong, and youth is bold. 
 
 If oftentimes the o'erpiled strain 
 Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold 
 
 Beneath his pinions deep and frore. 
 
 And swells and melts and flows no more. 
 
 That is because the heat beneath 
 Pants in its cavern poorly fed. 
 
 Life springs not from the couch of Death, 
 Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead; 
 
 Unturn'd then let the mass remain, 
 
 Intractable to sun or rain. 
 
 A marsh where only flat leaves lie. 
 And showing but the broken sky. 
 Too surely is the sweetest lay 
 That wins the ear and wastes the day. 
 Where youthful Fancy pouts alone 
 And lets not Wisdom touch her zone. 
 
 He who would build his fame up high. 
 The rule and plummet must apply. 
 Nor say, "I'll do what I have plann'd," 
 Before he try if loam or sand 
 Be still remaining in the place 
 Delved for each polished pillar's base. 
 With skilful eye and fit device 
 Thou raisest every edifice. 
 Whether in sheltered vale it stand, 
 141 
 
Or overlook the Dardan strand. 
 Amid the cypresses that mourn 
 Laodameia's love forlorn. 
 
 We both have run o'er half the space, 
 Listed for mortal's earthly race; 
 We both have crost life's fervid line. 
 And other stars before us shine: 
 May they be bright and prosperous 
 As those that have been stars for us! 
 Our course by Milton's hght was sped. 
 And Shakespeare shining overhead: 
 Chattijig on deck was Dryden too. 
 The Bacon of the rhyming crew; 
 None ever crossed our mystic sea 
 More richly stored with thought than he; 
 Tho' never tender nor sublime. 
 He wrestles with and conquers Time. 
 To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee, 
 I left much prouder company; 
 Thee gentle Spencer fondly led. 
 But me he mostly sent to bed. 
 
 I wish them every joy above 
 
 That highly blessed spirits prove. 
 
 Save one: and that too shall be theirs. 
 
 But after many rolling years. 
 
 When 'mid their Hght thy light appears. 
 
 — ^Walteb Savage Landob 
 
 142 
 
THE LAST FRUIT OFF AN OLD TREE 
 
 XLVII 
 
 We know a poet rich in thought, profuse 
 In bounty; but his grain wtots winnowing; 
 There hangs much chaff about it, barndoor dust. 
 Cobwebs, small insects: it might make a loaf, 
 A good large loaf, of household bread; but flour 
 Must be well bolted for a dainty roll. 
 
 — ^Walter Savage Landok 
 
 {From) 
 ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS 
 
 Next comes the dull desciple of thy school. 
 That mild apostate from poetic rule. 
 The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay 
 As soft as evening in his favourite May, 
 Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble. 
 And quit his books, for fear of growing double;" 
 Who, both by precept and example, shows 
 That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose; 
 Convincing all, by demonstration plain, 
 Poetic souls delight in prose insane; 
 And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme 
 Contain the essence of the true sublime. 
 Thus, when he tells ihe tale of Betty Foy, 
 The idiot mother of "an idiot boy;" 
 A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way, 
 And, like his bard, confounded night with day; 
 So close on each pathetic part he dwells. 
 And each adventure so sublimely tells, 
 That all who view the "idiot in his glory" 
 Conceive the bard the hero of the story. 
 
 — ^LoRD Btbon 
 
 143 
 
TO WORDSWORTH 
 
 Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know 
 That things depart which never may return: 
 Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first 
 
 glow. 
 Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. 
 These common woes I feel. One loss is mine 
 Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. 
 Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine 
 On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: 
 Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood 
 Above the blind and battling multitude: 
 In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 
 Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, — 
 Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, 
 Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 
 
 — ^Pebcy Btsshe Sheuuet 
 
 TO WORDSWORTH 
 
 Thine is a strain to read among the hills. 
 The old and full of voices, — ^by the source 
 
 Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence fills 
 The solitude with sound; for in its course 
 
 Even such as thy deep song, that seems a part 
 
 Of those high scenes, a fountain from their heart. 
 
 Or its calm spirit fitly may be taken 
 To the still breast in sunny garden bowers, 
 
 Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken. 
 And bud and bell with changes mark the hours. 
 
 There let thy thoughts be with me, while the day 
 
 Sinks with a golden and serene decay. 
 
 Or by some hearth where happy faces meet, 
 When night hath hushed the woods, with all 
 their birds. 
 There, from some gentle voice, that lay were sweet 
 144 
 
As antique music, linked with household words; 
 While in pleased murmurs woman's lip might move, 
 And the raised eye of childhood shine in love. 
 
 Or where the shadows of dark solemn yews 
 Brood silently o'er some lone burial-ground. 
 
 Thy verse hath power that brightly might diffuse 
 A breath, a kindling, as of spring, around; 
 
 From its own glow of hope and courage high. 
 And steadfast faith's victorious constancy. 
 
 True bard and holy! — thou art e'en as one 
 Who, by some secret gift of soul or eye. 
 
 In every spot beneath the smiling sun. 
 Sees where the springs of living waters lie: 
 
 Unseen awhile they sleep — ^till, touched by thee. 
 
 Bright healthful waves flow forth, to each glad 
 wanderer free. 
 
 — ^Felicu Dorothea Hemans 
 
 TO WORDSWORTH 
 
 There have been poets that in verse display 
 The elemental forms of human passions: 
 Poets have been, to whom the fickle fashions 
 And all the wilful humours of the day , 
 Have furnished matter for a polished lay: 
 And many are the smooth elaborate tribe 
 Who, emulous of thee, the shape describe. 
 And fain would every shifting hue pourtray 
 Of restless Nature. But, thou mighty Seer! 
 'Tis thine to celebrate the thoughts that make 
 The life of souls, the truths for whose sweet sake 
 We to ourselves and to our God are dear. 
 Of Nature's inner shrine thou art jthe priest, 
 Where most she works when we perceive her least. 
 
 — ^Hartley Colebiqge 
 146 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 (WBITTEN ON A BLANK LEAP OF HIS MEMOIBS) 
 
 Dear friends, who read the world aright. 
 And in its common forms discern 
 
 A beauty and a harmony 
 The many never leam! 
 
 Kindred in soul of him who found 
 In simple flower and leaf and stone 
 
 The impulse of the sweetest lays 
 Our Saxon tongue has known, — 
 
 Accept this record of a life 
 
 As sweet and pure, as calm and good, 
 As a long day of blandest June, 
 
 In green field and in wood. 
 
 How welcome to our ears, long pained 
 By strife of sect and party noise. 
 
 The brook-like murmur of his song 
 Of nature's simple joys! 
 
 The violet by its mossy stone. 
 The primrose by the river's brim. 
 
 And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
 Immortal life through him. 
 
 The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
 
 The rosy tints his sunset brought. 
 
 World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
 And mountain-peaks of thought. 
 
 Art builds on sand; the works of pride 
 
 And human passion change and fall; 
 But that which shares the life of God 
 With Him surviveth all. 
 
 — ^JoHN Grbenleaf Whittieh 
 146 
 
ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH 
 BY B. R. HAYDON 
 
 Wordsworth upon Helvellyn ! Let the cloud 
 Ebb audibly along the mountain wind, 
 Then break against the rock, and show be- 
 hind 
 The lowland valleys floating up to crowd 
 The sense with beauty. He with forehead 
 
 bowed 
 And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined 
 Before the sovran thought of his own mind. 
 And very meek with inspirations proud. 
 Takes here his rightfvd place as poet-priest 
 By the high altar, singing prayer and prayer 
 To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free 
 Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist : 
 No portrait this, with academic air! 
 This is the poet and his poetry. 
 
 — ^Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
 
 AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH 
 
 Come, spread your wings, as I spread mine. 
 And leave the crowded hall 
 
 For where the eyes of twiUght shine 
 O'er evening's western wall. 
 
 These are the pleasant Berkshire hills. 
 
 Each with its leafy crown; 
 Hark! from their sides a thousand rills 
 
 Come singing sweetly down. 
 
 A thousand riUs; they leap and shine, 
 Strained through the shadowy nooks, 
 
 Till, clasped in many a gathering twine. 
 They swell a hundred brooks. 
 147 
 
A hundred brooks, and still they run 
 With ripple, shade, and gleam. 
 
 Till, clustering all their braids in one. 
 They flow a single stream. 
 
 A bracelet spun from mountain mist, 
 
 A silvery sash unwound, 
 With ox-bow curve and sinous twist 
 
 It writhes to reach the Sound. 
 
 This is my bark, — a pygmy's ship: 
 
 Beneath a child it rolls; 
 Fear not, — one body makes it dip. 
 
 But not a thousand souls. 
 
 Float we the grassy banks between; 
 
 Without an oar we ghde; 
 The meadows, drest in living green. 
 
 Unroll on either side. 
 
 — Come, take the book we love so well. 
 
 And let us read and dream 
 We see whate'er ife pages tell, 
 
 And sail an English stream. 
 
 Up to the clouds the lark has sprung. 
 
 Still trilling as he flies; 
 The linnet sings as there he sung; 
 
 The unseen cuckoo cries. 
 
 And daisies strew the banks along. 
 
 And yellow kingcups shine. 
 With cowshps, and a primrose throng. 
 
 And humble celandine. 
 
 Ah foohsh dream! when Nature nursed 
 
 Her daughter in the west, 
 The fount was drained that opened first; 
 
 She bared the other breast. 
 148 
 
On the young planet's orient shore 
 
 Her morning hand she tried; 
 Then turned the broad medallion o'er 
 
 And stamped the sunset side. 
 
 Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem 
 Her elm with hanging spray; 
 
 She wears her mountain diadem 
 StiU in her own proud way. 
 
 Look on the forest's ancient kings, 
 The hemlock's towering pride: 
 
 Yon trunk had thrice a hundred rings. 
 And fell before it died. 
 
 Nor think that Nature saves her bloom 
 And sUghts our grassy plain; 
 
 For us she wears her court costume, — 
 Look on its broidered train; 
 
 The lily with the sprinkled dots. 
 Brands of the noontide beam; 
 
 The cardinal, and the blood-red spots. 
 Its double in the stream, 
 
 As if some wounded eagle's breast. 
 Slow throbbing o'er the plain. 
 
 Had left its airy path impressed 
 In drops of scarlet rain. 
 
 And hark! and hark! the woodland rings; 
 
 There thrilled the thrush's soul; 
 And look ! that flash of flamy wings, — 
 
 The fire-plumed oriole! 
 
 Above, the hen-hawk swims and swoops. 
 Flung from the bright, blue sky; 
 
 Below, the robin hops, and whoops 
 His piercing, Indian cry. 
 149 
 
Beauty runs virgin in the woods 
 
 Robed in her rustic green, 
 And oft a longing thought intrudes, 
 
 As if we might have seen 
 
 Her every finger's every joint 
 
 Ringed with some golden line. 
 Poet whom Nature did anoint! 
 
 Had our wild home been thine. 
 
 Yet think not so; Old England's blood 
 
 Runs warm in English veins; 
 But wafted o'er the icy flood 
 
 Its better life remains: 
 
 Our children know each wUdwood smell. 
 
 The bayberry and the fern, 
 The man who does not know them well 
 
 Is all too old to learn. 
 
 Be patient! On the breathing page 
 Still pants our hurried past; 
 
 Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, — 
 The poet comes the last! 
 
 Though still the lark- voiced matins ring 
 The world has known so long; 
 
 The wood-thrush of the West shall sing 
 Earth's last sweet even-song! 
 
 — Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 150 
 
{Frrnn) 
 
 MEMORIAL VERSES 
 
 WOHDSWOKTH 
 
 ******** Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice! 
 For never has such soothing voice 
 Been to your shadowy world convey'd, 
 Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade 
 Heard the clear song of Orpheus come 
 Through Hades, and the mournful gloom. 
 Wordsworth has gone from us — and ye, 
 Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! 
 He too upon a wintry chme 
 Had fallen — on this iron time 
 Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. 
 He found us when the age had bound 
 Our souls in its benumbing round; 
 He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. 
 He laid us as we lay at birth 
 On the cool flowery lap of earth. 
 Smiles broke from us and we had ease; 
 The hills were round us, and the breeze 
 Went o'er the sun-ht fields again; 
 Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. 
 Our youth retum'd; for there was shed 
 On spirits that had long been dead. 
 Spirits dried up and closely furl'd. 
 The freshness of the early world. 
 Ah! since dark days still bring to light 
 Man's prudence and man's fiery might. 
 Time may restore us in his course 
 Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; 
 But where will Europe's latter hour 
 Again find Wordsworth's healing power? 
 Others will teach us how to dare. 
 And against fear our breast to steel; 
 Others will strengthen us to bear — 
 151 
 
But who, ah.! who, will make us feel 
 The cloud of mortal destiny. 
 Others will front it fearlessly — 
 But who, like him, will put it by? 
 
 Keep fresh the grass upon his grave, 
 O Rotha, with thy living wave! 
 Sing him thy best! for few or none 
 Hears thy voice right, now he is gone. 
 
 — Matthew Arnold 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 1845 
 
 Gentle and grave, in simple dress. 
 And features by keen mountain air 
 Moulded to solemn ruggedness, 
 The man we came to see sat there: 
 Not apt for speech, nor quickly stirr'd 
 Unless when heart to heart replied; 
 A bearing equally remov'd 
 Prom vain display or sullen pride. 
 
 The sinewy frame yet spoke of one 
 Known to the hillsides: on his head 
 Some five-and-seventy winters gone 
 Their crown of perfect white had shed: — 
 As snow-tipp'd summits toward the sun 
 In calm of lonely radiance press, 
 Touch'd by the broadening light of death 
 With a serener pensiveness. 
 
 O crown of venerable age! 
 O brighter crown of well-spent years! 
 The bard, the patriot, and the sage. 
 The heart that never bow'd to fears! 
 That was an age of soaring souls; 
 153 
 
Yet none with a more liberal scope 
 Survey'd the sphere of human things; 
 None with such manliness of hope. 
 
 Others, perchance, as keenly felt. 
 
 As musically sang as he; 
 
 To Nature as devoutly knelt. 
 
 Or toil'd to serve humanity: 
 
 But none with those ethereal notes. 
 
 That star-like sweep of self-control; 
 
 The insight into worlds unseen. 
 
 The lucid sanity of soul. 
 
 The fever of our fretful life. 
 
 The autumn poison of the air, 
 
 The soul with its own self at strife. 
 
 He saw and felt, but could not share: 
 
 With eye made clear by pureness, pierced 
 
 The life of Man and Nature through; 
 
 And read the heart of conmion things. 
 
 Till new seem'd old, and old was new. 
 
 To his own self not always just. 
 Bound in the bonds that all men share, — 
 Confess the failings as we must. 
 The lion's mark is always there! 
 Nor any song so pure, so great 
 Since his, who closed the sightless eyes. 
 Our Homer of the war in Heaven, 
 To wake in his own Paradise. 
 
 O blaring trumpets of the world! 
 O glories, in their budding sere! 
 O flaunting roll of Fame unfurl'd! 
 Here was the king — ^the hero here! 
 It was a strength and joy for life 
 In that great presence once to be; 
 That on the boy he gently smU'd, 
 That those white hands were laid on me. 
 
 — ^Fkancis Turner Palgravb 
 153 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 A breath of the mountains, fresh bom in the 
 
 regions majestic, 
 That look with their eye-daring summits deep 
 
 into the sky. 
 The voice of great Nature; sublime with her 
 lofty conceptions. 
 Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the 
 green lowly vale. 
 
 — George Meredith 
 
 TO WORDSWORTH 
 
 Thro' clouds and darkness to meridian height 
 Of glory, thou hast upward chmbed, and now 
 In empyrean blue, with cloudless brow 
 Look'st o'er a prospect clear and infinite — 
 Rejoicing, by rejoicing in, thy light! 
 The vapours, which at first would not allow 
 Full view of thee, are gone, we know not how; 
 Absorbed into thy splendor, and thy might! 
 And now, great spirit, thou unto thy close 
 Art hastening, and trails of glory make 
 The heavens gorgeous for thy repose — 
 Thou hast made day for all men to partake. 
 And having thought of others and their woes, 
 Shalt be remembered now for thy own sake. 
 
 — ^Henrt Ellison 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE 
 
 I 
 
 The old rude church, with bare, bald towers is here; 
 
 Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows; 
 Rotha, remembering weU who slumbers near, 
 
 And with cool murmur lulling his repose. 
 154 
 
Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near. 
 
 His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet. 
 Surely the heart that read her own heart clear 
 
 Nature forgets not soon: 'tis we forget. 
 
 We that with vagrant soul his fixity 
 Have slighted; faithless, done his deep faith 
 wrong; 
 
 Left him for poorer loves, and bowed the knee 
 To misbegotten strange new gods of song. 
 
 Yet, led by hollow ghost or beckotiing elf 
 Far from her homestead to the desert bourn. 
 
 The vagrant soul returning to herself 
 
 Weanly wise, must needs to him return. 
 
 To him and to the powers that with him dwell: — 
 Inflowings that divulged not whence they came; 
 
 And that secluded spirit unknowable, 
 
 The mysiery we make darker with a name; 
 
 The Somewhat which we name but cannot know, 
 Ev'n as we name a star and only see 
 
 His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show 
 And ever hide him, and which are not he. 
 
 II 
 
 Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave! 
 
 When thou wast bom, what birth-gift hadst 
 thou then? 
 To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave. 
 
 The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men? 
 
 Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine; 
 
 Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless 
 
 human view; 
 
 Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine; 
 
 Nor yet ihe wizard twiUght Coleridge knew. 
 
 155 
 
What hadst thou that could make so large amends 
 For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, 
 
 Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends? — 
 Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. 
 
 From Shelley's dazzUng glow or thunderous haze. 
 From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth. 
 
 Men turned to thee and found — not blast and 
 blaze. 
 Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace pn earth. 
 
 Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower. 
 There in white languors to decline and cease; 
 
 But peace whose names are also rapture, power. 
 Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of 
 peace. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I hear it vouched the Muse is with us still; — 
 If less divinely frenzied than of yore. 
 
 In lieu of feelings she has wondrous skill 
 To simulate emotion felt no more. 
 
 Not such the authentic Presence pure, that made 
 This valley vocal in the great days gone! — 
 
 In his great days, while yet the spring-time played 
 About him, and the mighty morning shone. 
 
 No word-mosaic artificer, he sang 
 A lofty song of lowly weal and dole. 
 
 Right from the heart, right to the heart it sprang, 
 Or from the soul leapt instant to the soul. 
 
 He felt the charm of childhood, grace of youth. 
 Grandeur of age, insisting to be sung. 
 
 The impassioned argument was simple truth 
 
 Half-wondering at its own melodious tongue. 
 
 156 
 
Impassioned? ay, to the song's ecstatic core! 
 
 But far removed were clangour, storm and feud; 
 For plenteous health was his, exceeding store 
 
 Of joy, and an impassioned qiuetude. 
 
 IV 
 
 A hundred years ere he to manhood came. 
 Song from celestial heights had wandered down. 
 
 Put oflF her robe of simlight, dew and flame. 
 And donned a modish dress to charm the Town. 
 
 Thenceforth she but festooned the porch of things; 
 
 Apt at life's lore, incurious what life meant. 
 Dextrous of hand, she struck her lute's few 
 strings; 
 
 Ignobly perfect, barrenly content. 
 
 Unflushed with ardour and unblanched with awe. 
 Her lips in profitless derision curled. 
 
 She saw with dull emotion — ^if she saW' — 
 The vision of the glory of the world. 
 
 The human masque she watched, with dreamless 
 eyes 
 
 la whose clear shallows lurked no trembling shade : 
 The stars, unkenned by her, might set and rise. 
 
 Unmarked by her, the daisies bloom and fade. 
 
 The age grew sated with her sterile wit. 
 
 Herself waxed weary on her loveless throne. 
 Men felt life's tide, tiie sweep and siu-ge of k. 
 
 And craved a Uving voice, a natural tone. 
 
 For none the less, though song was but half true. 
 The world lay common, one abounding theme. 
 
 Man joyed and wept, and fate was ever new. 
 And love was sweet, life real, death no dream. 
 157 
 
In sad stem verse the rugged scholar-sage 
 Bemoaned his toil unvalued, youth uncheered. 
 
 His numbers wore the vesture of the age, 
 But, 'neath it beating, the great heart was 
 heard. 
 
 From dewy pastures, uplands sweet with thyme, 
 A virgin breeze freshened the jaded day. 
 
 It wafted Collins' lonely vesper-chime. 
 It breathed abroad the frugal note of Gray. 
 
 It fluttered here and there, nor swept in vain 
 The dusty haunts where futile echoes dwell, — 
 
 Then, in a cadence soft as summer rain. 
 
 And sad from Auburn voiceless, drooped and fell. 
 
 It drooped and fell, and one 'neath northern skies. 
 With southern heart, who tilled his father's 
 field. 
 Found poesy a-dying, bade her rise 
 
 And touch quick nature's hem and go forth 
 healed. 
 
 On life's broad plain the ploughman's conquering 
 share 
 
 Upturned the fallow lands of truth anew. 
 And o'er the formal garden's trim parterre 
 
 The peasant's team a ruthless furrow drew. 
 
 Bright was his going forth, but dpuds ere long 
 Whelmed him; in gloom his radiance set, and 
 those 
 
 Twin morning stars of the new century's song. 
 Those morning stars that sang together, rose. 
 
 In elvish speech the Dreamer told his tale 
 Of marvellous oceans swept by fateful wings. — 
 
 The Seer strayed not from earth's human pale, 
 
 But the mysterious face of common things. 
 
 158 
 
He mirrored as the moon in Rydal Mere 
 Is mirrored, when the breathless night hangs 
 blue: 
 
 Strangely remote she seems and wondrous near, 
 And by some nameless difference born anew. 
 
 Peace— Peace — ^and rest! Ah, how the lyre is 
 loth. 
 
 Or powerless now, to give what all men seek! 
 Either it deadens with ignoble sloth 
 
 Or deafens with shrill tumult, loudly weak. 
 
 Where is the singer whose large notes and clear 
 Can heal and arm and plenish and sustain? 
 
 Lo, one with empty music floods the ear. 
 And one, the heart refreshing, tires the brain. 
 
 And idly timeful, the loquacious throng 
 Flutter and twitter, prodigal of time. 
 
 And little masters make a toy of song 
 
 Till grave men weary of the sound of rhyme. 
 
 And some go prankt in faded antique dress. 
 Abhorring to be hale and glad and free; 
 
 And some parade a conscious naturalness. 
 The scholar's not the child's simplicity. 
 
 Enough; — and wisest who from words forbear. 
 
 The kindly river rails not as it glides; 
 And suave and charitable, the winning air 
 
 Chides not at all, or only him who chides. 
 
 VI 
 
 Nature! we storm thine ear with choric notes. 
 Thou answerest through the calm great nights 
 and days, 
 
 159 
 
"Laud me who will: not tuneless are your throats; 
 Yet if ye paused I should not miss the praise." 
 
 We falter, half rebuked, and sing again. 
 
 We chant thy desertness and haggard gloom. 
 Or with thy splendid wrath inflate the strain, 
 
 Or touch it with thy colour and perfume. 
 
 One, his melodious blood aflame for thee. 
 Wooed with fierce lust, his hot heart world-de- 
 filed. 
 One, with the upward eye of infancy. 
 Looked in thy face, and felt himself thy 
 child. 
 
 Thee he approached without distrust or dread- 
 Beheld thee throned, an awful queen, above — 
 
 Climbed to thy lap and merely laid his head 
 Against iJiy warm wild heart of mother-love. 
 
 He heard that vast heart beating — "thou didst press 
 Thy child so close, and lov'dst him unaware. 
 
 Thy beauty gladdened him; yet he scarce less 
 Had loved thee, had he never found thee fair! 
 
 For thou wast not as legendary lands 
 
 To which with curious eyes and ears we roam. 
 
 Nor wast thou as a fane 'mid solemn sands. 
 Where palmers halt at evening. Thou wast 
 home. 
 
 And here, at home, still bides he; but he sleeps; 
 
 Not to he wakened even at thy word; 
 Though we, vague dreaniers, dream he somewhwe 
 keeps 
 An ear still open to thy voice still heard, — 
 1«0 
 
Thy voice, as hexetofore, about bka blown, 
 For ever blown about his silence now; 
 
 Thy voice, though deeper, yet so like his own 
 That almost, when he sang, we deemed 'twas 
 thou! 
 
 VII 
 
 Behind Helm Crag and Silver Howe the sheen 
 Of the retreating day is less and less. 
 
 Soon will the lordlier summits, here unseen. 
 Gather the night about their nakedness. 
 
 The half-heard bleat of sheep comes from the hill. 
 Faint sounds of childish play are in the air. 
 
 The river murmurs past. All else is still. 
 The very graves seem stiller than they were. 
 
 Afar though nation be on nation hurled. 
 And life with toil and ancient pain depressed. 
 
 Here one may scarce believe the whole wide world 
 Is not at peace, and all man's heart at rest. 
 
 Rest! 'twas the gift he gave; and peace! the 
 shade 
 He spread, for spirits fevered with the sun. 
 To him his bounties are come back — ^here laid 
 In rest, in peace, his labor nobly done. 
 
 — ^William Watson 
 
 TO JAMES BROMLEY 
 
 WITH "wOBDSWOBTH's GBAVB" 
 
 Ere vandal Icnrds with lust of gold accurst 
 Deface each hallowed hillside we revere — 
 
 Eie cities in their million-throated thirst 
 Menace each sacred mere — 
 161 
 
Let us give thanks because one nook hath been 
 
 Unflooded yet by desecration's wave. 
 The httle churchyard in the valley green 
 
 That holds our Wordsworth's grave. 
 'Twas there I plucked these elegiac blooms. 
 
 There where he rests 'mid comrades fit and 
 few. 
 And thence I bring this growth of classic tombs. 
 
 An offering, friend, to you — 
 You who have loved like me his simple themes. 
 
 Loved his sincere large accent nobly plain. 
 And loved the land whose mountains 
 and whose streams 
 
 Are loveUer for his strain. 
 
 It may be that his manly chant, beside 
 
 More dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune; 
 It may be, thought has broadened since he died 
 
 Upon the century's noon; 
 It may be that we can no longer sheire 
 
 The faith which from his fathers he 
 received; 
 It may be that our doom is to despair 
 
 Where he with joy believed; — 
 
 Enough that there is none since risen who sings 
 
 A song so gotten of the immediate soul. 
 So instant from the vital fount of things 
 
 Which is our source and goal; 
 And though at touch of later hands there 
 float 
 
 More artful tones than from his lyre he drew. 
 Ages may pass ere trills another note 
 
 So sweet, so great, so true. 
 
 — ^William Watson 
 
 162 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 177^—1834 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
FROM THE PRELUDE 
 
 XIV-277-301 
 
 * * * * O capacious Soul! 
 
 Placed on this earth to love and understand. 
 
 And from thy presence shed the light of love, 
 
 Shall I be mute, ere thou be spoken of? 
 
 Thy kindred influence to my heart of hearts 
 
 Did also find its way. Thus fear relaxed 
 
 Her overweening grasp; thus thoughts and things 
 
 In the self-haunting spirit learned to take 
 
 More rational proportions; mystery, 
 
 The incumbent mystery of sense and soul, 
 
 Of life and death, time and eternity. 
 
 Admitted more habitually a mild 
 
 Interposition — ^a serene delight 
 
 In closelier gathering cares, such as become 
 
 A human creature, howso'er endowed. 
 
 Poet, or destined for a humbler name; 
 
 And so the deep enthusiastic joy. 
 
 The rapture of the hallelujah sent 
 
 From all that breathes and is, was chastened, 
 
 stemmed 
 And balanced by pathetic truth, by trust 
 In hopeful reason, leaning on the stay 
 Of Providence; and in reverence for duty. 
 Here, if need be, struggling with storms, and there 
 Strewing in peace life's humblest ground with herbs. 
 At every season green, sweet at aU hours. 
 
 — ^William Wobdswobth 
 
 165 
 
(From) 
 ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS 
 
 Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here, 
 To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear? 
 Though themes of innocence amuse him best, 
 Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest. 
 If Inspiration should her aid refuse 
 To him who takes a pixy for a muse. 
 Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass 
 The bard who soars to elegise an ass; 
 So well the subject suits his noble mind. 
 He brays the laureate of the long-eared kind. 
 
 — ^LoBD Btbon 
 
 ON READING COLERIDGE'S EPITAPH 
 WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 
 
 Spirit! so oft in radiant freedom soaring 
 High through seraphic mysteries unconfined. 
 And oft, a diver llirough the deep of mind. 
 Its caverns, far below its waves, exploring; 
 And oft such strains of breezy music pouring. 
 As, with the floating sweetness of their sighs. 
 Could still all fevers of the heart, restoring 
 Awhile that freshness left in Paradise; 
 Say, of those glorious wanderings what the goal? 
 What the rich fruitage to man's kindred soul 
 From wealth of thine bequeathed? O strong, and 
 
 high. 
 And sceptered intellect! thy goal confest 
 Was the Redeemer's cross — ^thy last bequest 
 One lesson breathing thence profound humility! 
 
 — ^Felicia Dorothea Hemans 
 
 166 
 
COLERIDGE 
 
 His eye saw all things in the symmetry 
 Of true and just proportion; and his ear 
 
 That inner tone could hear 
 Which flows beneath the outer: therefore he 
 Was as a mighty shell, fashioning all 
 The winds to one rich sound, ample and musical. 
 
 Yet dim that eye with gazing upon heaven; 
 Wearied with vigils, and the frequent birth 
 
 Of tears when turned to earth: 
 Therefore, though farthest ken to him was given. 
 Near things escaped him: through them — as a gem 
 Diaphonous — he saw; and therefore saw not them. 
 
 Moreover, men whom sovereign wisdom teaches 
 That God not less in humblest forms abides 
 
 Than those the great veil hides. 
 Such men a tremor of bright reverence reaches; 
 And thus, confronted ever with high things. 
 Like cherubim they hide their eyes between their 
 wings. 
 
 No loftier, purer soul than his hath ever 
 With awe revolved the planetary page. 
 
 From infancy to age. 
 Of Knowledge; sedulous and proud to give her 
 The whole of his great heart for her own sake; 
 For what she is; not what she does, or what can 
 make. 
 
 And mighty Voices from afar came to him: 
 Converse of trumpets held by cloudy forms. 
 
 And speech of choral storms: 
 Spirits of night and noontide bent to woo him: 
 He stood the while, lonely and desolate 
 As Adam, when he ruled a world, yet found no mate. 
 167 
 
His loftiest thoughts were but like palms 
 
 uplifted, 
 Aspiring, yet in supplicating guise; 
 
 His sweetest songs were sighs: 
 Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted. 
 Under Elysian shades from poppied bank 
 With Amaranths massed in dark luxuriance dank. 
 Coleridge, farewell! That great and grave 
 
 transition 
 Which may not Priest, or King, or Conqueror spare, 
 
 Nor yet a Babe can bear. 
 Has come to thee. Through life a goodly vision 
 Was thine; and time it was thy rest to take. 
 Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break — 
 When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's 
 
 sake! 
 
 — ^Aubrey De Veke 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove 
 The father-songster plies the hoiu'-long quest,) 
 To feed his soul-brood himgering in Qie nest; 
 
 But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above 
 
 Their callow fledgling progeny still hove 
 
 With tented roof of wings and fostering breast 
 Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest 
 
 From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human 
 Love. 
 
 Yet ah! Like desert pools that show the stars 
 Once in long leagues, — even such the scarce- 
 snatched hours 
 Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers: — 
 Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars. 
 Six years, from sixty saved! Yet kindling skies 
 Own them, a beacon to our centuries. 
 
 — ^Dante Gabbibl Rossexti 
 168 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 
 
 A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, 
 exulting. 
 And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed^ — 
 Renewed thro' all dianges of Heaven, unceasing 
 in sunlight, 
 Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams 
 of the holier orb. 
 
 — Geokge Meredith 
 
 COLERIDGE AT CHAMOUNY 
 
 I would I knew what ever happy stone 
 Of all these dateless records, gray and vast. 
 Keeps silent memory of that stmrise lone 
 When, lost to earth, the soul of Coleridge passed 
 From earthly time to one immortal hour; 
 There thought's faint stir woke echoes of the mind 
 That broke to thunder tones of mightier power 
 From depths and heights mysterious, undefined; 
 As when the soft snows, drifting from the rock. 
 Rouse the wild clamor of the avalanche shock. 
 
 Who may not envy him that awful morn 
 When marvelling at his risen self he trod, 
 And thoughts intense as pain were fiercely born. 
 Till rose his soul in one great psalm to God. 
 A man to-morrow weak as are the worst, 
 A man to whom all depths, all heights belong. 
 Now with too bitter hours of weakness cursed. 
 Now winged with vigor, as a ^nt strong 
 To take our groping hearts with tender hand. 
 And set them surely where God's angels stand. 
 
 On peaks of lofty contemplation raised. 
 Such as shall never see earth's common son. 
 
High as the snowy altar which he praised. 
 An hour's creative ecstasy he won. 
 Yet, in this frenzy of the lifted soul 
 Mocked him the nothingness of human speech. 
 When through his being visions past control 
 Swept, strong as mountain streams. — ^Alas! To 
 
 reach 
 Words equal-winged as thought to none is given, 
 To none of earth to speak the tongue of heaven. 
 
 The eagle-flight of genius gladness hath, 
 And joy is ever with its victor swoop 
 Through sun and storm. Companionless its path 
 In earthly realms, and, when its pinions droop, 
 Faint memories only of the heavenly sun, 
 Dim records of ethereal space it brings 
 To show how haughty was the height it won. 
 To prove what freedom had its airy wings. 
 This is the curse of genius, that earth's night 
 Dims the proud glory of its heavenward flight. 
 
 — S. Weih Mitchell 
 
 COLERIDGE 
 
 I see thee pine like her in golden story 
 Who, in her prison, woke and saw, one day. 
 The gates thrown open — saw the sunbeam's play. 
 With only a web 'tween her and summer's glory; 
 Who, when that web — so frail, so transitory 
 It broke before her breath — ^had fallen away. 
 Saw other webs and others rise for aye 
 Which kept her prison'd tiU her hair was hoary. 
 Those songs half-sung that yet were all-divine — 
 That woke Romance, the queen, to reign afresh — 
 Had been but preludes from that lyre of thine. 
 Could thy rare spirit's wings have pierced the mesh 
 170 
 
Spun by the wizard who compels the flesh. 
 But lets the poet see how heav'n can shine. 
 
 — ^Theodobe Watts 
 
 LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF "CHRISTABEL" 
 
 Inhospitably hast thou entertained, 
 O Poet, us the bidden to thy board. 
 Whom in mid-feast, and while our thousand mouths 
 Are one laudation of the festal cheer, 
 Thou from thy table dost dismiss, unfilled. 
 Yet loudUer thee than many a lavish host 
 We praise, and oftener thy repast half-served 
 Than many a stintless banquet, prodigally 
 Through satiate hours prolonged; nor praise less 
 
 well 
 Because with tongues thou hast not cloyed, and lips 
 That mourn the parsimony of affluent souls. 
 And mix the lamentation with the laud. 
 
 — ^William Watson 
 
 171 
 
ROBERT SOUTHEY 
 
 1774—1843 
 
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 ROBERT SOUTHEY 
 
INSCRIPTION 
 
 FOR A MONTJMENT IN CR08THWAITE 
 CHTJKCH, IN THE VALE OF KESWICK 
 
 Ye vales and hills whose beauty hither drew 
 The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you 
 His eyes have closed! And ye, lov,d books, no more 
 Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore. 
 To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown. 
 Adding immortal labours of his own — 
 Whether he traced historic truth, with zeal 
 For the State's guidance, or the Church's weal. 
 Or Fancy, disciplined by studious art, 
 Inform'd his pen, or wisdom of the heart. 
 Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind 
 By reverence for the rights of all mankind. 
 Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast 
 Could private feelings meet for holier rest. 
 His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud 
 From Skiddaw's top ; but he to heaven was vowed 
 Through his industrious life, and Christian faith 
 Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death. 
 — ^William Wordsworth 
 
 ON SOUTHEY'S BIRTHDAY, Nov. 4 
 CXXI 
 
 No angel borne on whiter wing 
 
 Hath visited the sons of men. 
 Teaching the song they ought to sing 
 
 And guiding right the unsteady pen. 
 Recorded not on earth alone, 
 
 O Southey! is thy natal day. 
 But there where stands the choral throne 
 
 Show us thy light and point the way. 
 
 — ^Walter Savage Landob 
 175 
 
TO SOUTHEY 
 
 Indweller of a peaceful vale, 
 Ravaged erewhile by white-hair'd Dane; 
 Rare architect of many a wondrous tale. 
 Which, till Helvellyn's head lie prostrate, 
 shall remain! 
 
 From Armo's side I hear thy Derwent flow. 
 And see methinks the lake below 
 Reflect thy graceful progeny, more fair 
 And radiant than the purest waters are. 
 Even when gurgling in their joy among 
 The bright and blessed throng, 
 Whom on her arm recline 
 The beauteous Proserpine 
 With tenderest regretful gaze. 
 Thinking of Enna's yellow field, surveys. 
 
 Alas! that snows are shed 
 
 Upon thy laurel'd head. 
 Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs! 
 
 Malignity lets none 
 
 Approach the Delphic throne; 
 A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's 
 
 hundred tongues. 
 But this is in the night, when men are slow 
 
 To raise their eyes, when high and low. 
 The scarlet and the colourless, are one: 
 
 Soon sleep unbars his noiseless prison. 
 
 And active minds again are risen; 
 Where are the curs? dream-bound, and whimpering 
 in the sun. 
 
 At fife's or lyre's or tabor's sound 
 The dance of youth, O Southey, runs not round 
 But closes at the bottom of the room 
 Amid the falling dust and deepening gloom, 
 176 
 
Where the weaiy sit them down. 
 And Beauty too unbraids, and waits a lovelier 
 crown. 
 
 We huny to the river we must cross, 
 And swifter downward every footstep 
 wends; 
 Happy, who reach it ere they count the loss 
 Of half their faculties and half their 
 friends! 
 When we are come to it, the stream 
 Is not so dreary as they deem 
 Who look on it from haunts too dear; 
 The weak from Pleasure's baths feel most its chil- 
 ling air. 
 No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven 
 
 To poet sage or hero given: 
 No heart more tender, none more just 
 
 To that He largely placed in trust: 
 Therefore shalt thou, whatever date 
 Of years be thine, with soul elate 
 Rise up before the eternal throne. 
 And hear in God's own voice "Well done." 
 
 Not, were that submarine 
 
 Gem-lighted city mine. 
 Wherein my name, engraven by thy hand, 
 Above the royal gleam of blazonry shall 
 stand; 
 
 Not, were all Syracuse 
 
 Poxff'd forth before my muse, 
 With Hiero's cars and steeds, and Pindar's 
 
 lyre 
 Brightening the path with more than solar fire. 
 Could I, as would beseem, requite the praise 
 Showered upon my low head from thy most 
 
 lofty lays. 
 
 — VfAJJlER SaVAGB LaNDOB 
 
 177 
 
{Frrnn) 
 ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS 
 
 The time has been, when yet the muse was young, 
 When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung. 
 An Epic scarce ten centuries could claim. 
 While awe-struck nations hailed the magic name: 
 The work of each immortal bard appears 
 The single wonder of a thousand years. 
 Empires have mouldered from the face of earth. 
 Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth. 
 Without the glory such a strain can give. 
 As even in ruin bids the language live. 
 Not so with us, though minor bards, content. 
 On one great work a life of labour spent: 
 With eagle pinion soaring to the skies, 
 Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise! 
 To him let Camoens, Milton, Tasso yield, 
 Whose annual strains, Hke armies, take the field. 
 First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance, 
 The scourge of England and the boast of France! 
 Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch. 
 Behold her statue placed in glory's niche; 
 Her fetters burst, and just released from prison, 
 Afvirgin phoenix from her ashes risen. 
 Next see tremendous Thalaba come on, 
 Arabia's monstrous, wUd and wondrous son; 
 Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew 
 More mad magicians than the world e'er knew. 
 Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome. 
 For ever reign — ^the rival of Tom Thumb! 
 Since startled metre fled before thy face. 
 Well wert thou doomed the last of all thy race! 
 Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence. 
 Illustrious conqueror of conmion sense! 
 Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails. 
 Cacique in Mexico, and Prince in Wales; 
 TeUs us strange tales, as other travellers do, 
 
 178 
 
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true. 
 Oh! Southey! South ey! cease thy varied song! 
 A bard may chaunt too often and too long: 
 As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare! 
 A fourth, alas ! were more than we could bear. 
 But if, in spite of all the world can say. 
 Thou stiU -mlt verseward plod thy weary way; 
 If still in Berkeley ballads most uncivil. 
 Thou wilt devote old women to the devil. 
 The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue: 
 "God help thee," Southey, and thy readers too. 
 
 — ^LoBD Btron 
 
 TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 
 
 NEITHER THE ESQXTIBE, THE LAT7BEATE, THE LL. D., BUT THE 
 GOOD MAN, THE MEBBT MAN, THE POET, AND THE DOCTOR 
 
 He was not born beneath the Cambrian hills; 
 
 No moimtain breezes lull'd his infant slumbers; 
 Loud rattling cars, and penny-dropping tills. 
 
 And blended murmurs of conglomerate numbers. 
 Were the chief sounds that baby Robert heard; 
 The pecking sparrow, his sole household bird. 
 
 Great Bristol was his nest and natal town. 
 And not till he had cast his baby frock 
 
 He felt the Uberal air of Durdum Down, 
 Or look'd on Avon from St. Vincent's rock. 
 
 Whence many a bark was seen in trim array. 
 
 Bound on bad quest to hapless Africa. 
 
 'Tis hard to say what might have been his lot. 
 If born with Nature from the first to dwell; 
 
 Yet am I prone to guess that he would not 
 Have conn'd or known, or loved her half so well. 
 
 She was a stranger to his opening eyes. 
 
 Clad with the (£arm of stiU renew'd surprise. 
 
 179 
 
And finding little in the daily round 
 
 To fashion fancy from the things of sense, 
 
 His love of kin was all the more profound; 
 Not wide in surface, but in act intense, 
 
 AflFection still a dutiful reality. 
 
 The ground and law, and soul of all morality. 
 
 Yet keeping still his little heart at home. 
 
 He wander'd with his mind in realms remote. 
 
 Made playmates of the Fairy, Sylph, and Gnome, 
 And knew each Giant, Knight, and Wight of note 
 
 Whate'er of wonderful the East and North, 
 
 Darkly comminghng, gender'd and brought forth. 
 
 Sweet thought he found, and noble, in the story 
 Of the Wehr-Wolf and sweet Bed Bidinghood, 
 
 Shudder'd at feast of Ogre, raw and gory. 
 And watched the Sleeping Beauty in the wood. 
 
 — ^Hartley Colebdige 
 
 THE POETBY OF SOUTHEY 
 
 Keen as an eagle whose flight toward the dim 
 
 empyrean 
 Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends! 
 Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of tJie balm- 
 breathing Orient 
 Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest 
 truth. 
 
 — Geobge Mbbedith 
 
 180 
 
LORD BYRON 
 
 1788—1824 
 
LOED BYRON 
 
SONNET TO BYRON 
 
 [I am afraid these verses will not please you, but] 
 
 If I esteemed you less. Envy would kill 
 
 Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair 
 
 The ministration of the thoughts that fill 
 
 The mind which, like a worm whose life may share 
 
 A portion of the unapproachable, 
 
 Marks your creations rise as fast and fair 
 
 As perfect worlds at the Creator's will. 
 
 But such is my regard that nor your power 
 
 To soar above the heights where others [chmb]. 
 
 Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour 
 
 Cast from the envious future on the time. 
 
 Move one regret for his unhonored name 
 
 Who dares these words: — ^the worm beneath the sod 
 
 May lift itself in homage of the God. 
 
 — ^Pehcy Btsshe Shelley 
 
 FRAGMENT: TO BYRON 
 
 O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age 
 
 Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm, 
 
 Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage? 
 
 — ^Pebcy Bysshe Shelley 
 
 BYRON 
 
 Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody! 
 Attuning still the soul to tenderness. 
 As if soft Pity, with unusual stress. 
 Had touch'd her plaintive lute, and thou being by, 
 Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer'd them to die, 
 O'ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less 
 Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress 
 With a bright halo, shining beamily. 
 As when a cloud the golden moon doth veil, 
 Its sides are tinged with a resplendent glow, 
 183 
 
Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail. 
 And like fair veins in sable marble flow. 
 
 Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale. 
 
 The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe. 
 
 — ^JoHN Kbaxs 
 
 STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF LORD BYRON 
 
 " — / am not now 
 That which I have been. " — Childe Habold 
 
 He was, and is not! Graecia's trembling shore. 
 Sighing through all her palmy groves, shall tell 
 That Harold's pUgrimage at last is o'er — 
 Mute the impassioned tongue, and tuneful shell. 
 That erst was wont in noblest strains to swell — 
 Hush'd the proud shouts that rode Aegaea's wave! 
 For lo! the great Deliv'rer breathes farewell! 
 Gives to the world his mem'ry and a grave — 
 Expiring in the land he only lived to save! 
 
 Mourn, HeUas, mourn! and o'er thy widowed brow. 
 For aye, the cypress wreath of sorrow twine; 
 And in thy new-formed beauty, desolate, throw 
 The fresh-cull'd flowers on his sepulchral shrine. 
 Yes ! let that heart whose fervor was all thine. 
 In consecrated urn lamented be! 
 That generous heart where genius thrill'd divine. 
 Hath spent its last most glorious throb for thee — 
 Then sank amid the storm that made thy children free! 
 
 Britannia's Poet! Graecia's hero, sleeps! 
 And freedom, bending o'er the breathless clay. 
 Lifts up her voice, and in her anguish weeps! 
 For us a night hath clouded o'er our day. 
 And hushed the lips that breath'd our fairest lay. 
 Alas! and must the British lyre resound 
 A requiem, while the spirit wings away 
 184 
 
Of him who on its strings such music found, 
 And taught its startling chords to give so sweet a sound! 
 
 The theme grows sadder — ^but my soul shall find 
 A language in these tears! No more — ^no more! 
 Soon, midst the shriekings of the tossing wind. 
 The "dark blue depths" he sang of, shall have bore 
 Our all of Byron to his native shore! 
 His grave is thick with voices — ^to the ear 
 Murm'ring an awful tale of greatness o'er; 
 But Memory strives with Death, and lingering near. 
 Shall consecrate the dust of Harold's lonely bier! 
 —Elizabeth Babbett Browning 
 
 LORD BYRON AND THE ARMENIAN 
 CONVENT 
 
 And lived he here? And could this sweet green isle 
 
 Volcanic stuflF to his hot heart afford. 
 That he might nurse his wrath, and vent his bile 
 
 On gods and men, this proud, mistempered lord? 
 Alas! poor lord, to this soft leafy nest 
 
 Where only pure and heavenly thoughts should dwell. 
 He brought, and bore and cherished in his breast, 
 
 A home-bred devil, and a native hell. 
 Unhappy lord! If this be genius, then 
 
 Grant me, O God, a muse with sober sweep. 
 That I may eat and drink with common men, 
 
 Joy with their joys, and with their weeping weep: 
 Better to chirp mild loves in lowly bower, 
 Than soar through stormy skies, with hatred for my 
 dower. 
 
 — ^JoHN Stewart Blackie 
 
 185 
 
MEMORIAL VERSES 
 
 APRIL, 1850 
 
 When Byron's eyes were shut in death. 
 We bow'd our head and held our breath. 
 He taught us little; but our soul 
 Had felt him like the thunder's roll. 
 With shivering heart the strife we saw 
 Of passion with eternal law 
 And yet with reverential awe 
 We watched the font of fiery life 
 Which served for that Titanic strife. 
 
 — Matthew Arnold 
 
 BYRON 
 
 A hundred years, 't is writ, — O presage vain! — 
 Earth wiUs her offspring life, ere one complete 
 
 His term, and rest from travail, and be fain 
 To lay him down in natural death and sweet. 
 
 What of her child whose swift divining soul 
 With triple fervor burns the torch apace, 
 
 And in one radiant third compacts the whole 
 Ethereal Same that lights him on his race? 
 
 Ay, what of him who to the winds upheld 
 
 A star-like brand, with pride and joy and tears. 
 
 And lived in that fleet course from youth to eld. 
 Count them who will, his century of years? 
 
 The Power that arches heaven's orbway round 
 Gave to this planet's brood its soul of fire, 
 
 Its heart of passion, — and for life unbound 
 By chain or creed the measureless desire; 
 
 Gave to one poet these, and manifold 
 High thoughts, beyond our lesser mortal share, — 
 186 
 
Gave dreams of beauty, yes, and with a mould 
 The antique world had worshipped made him fair; 
 
 Then touched his lips with music, — lit his brow. 
 Even as a fane upon the sunward hill, 
 
 For strength, gave scorn, the pride that would not bow, 
 The glorious weapon of a dauntless will. 
 
 But that the surcharged spirit — a vapor pent 
 In beetling crags — a torrent barriered long — 
 
 A wind 'gainst heaven's four winds imminent — 
 Might memorably vent its noble song. 
 
 Each soaring gift was fretted with a band 
 That deadlier clung which way he fain would press : 
 
 His were an adverse age, a sordid land. 
 Gauging his heart by their own littleness; 
 
 Blind guides! the fiery spirit scorned their curb. 
 And Byron's love and gladness, — ^such the wise 
 
 Of ministrants whom evil times perturb, — 
 To wrath and melancholy changed their guise. 
 
 Yet this was he whose swift imaginings 
 
 Engirt fair Liberty from clime to cUme, — 
 
 From Alp to ocean with an eagle's wings 
 Pursued her flight, in Harold's lofty rime. 
 
 Where the mind's freedom was not, could not be. 
 That bigot soil he rendered to disdain, 
 
 And sought, like Omar in his revelry, 
 At least the semblance of a joy to gain. 
 
 Laughter was at his beck, and wisdom's ruth 
 Sore-learned from fierce experiences that test 
 
 Life's masquerade, the carnival of youth. 
 The world of man. Then Folly lost her zest, 
 187 
 
Yet left undimmed (her valediction sung 
 With Juan's smiles and tears) his natal ray 
 
 Of genius inextinguishably young, — 
 
 Ad Eos tiirough those mists proclaiming day. 
 
 How then, when to his ear came Hellas' cry. 
 He shred the garlands of the wild night's feast, 
 
 And rose a chief, to lead — alas, to die 
 
 And leave men mourning for that music ceased! 
 
 America! When nations for thy knell 
 
 Listened, one prophet oracled thy part: 
 
 Now, in thy morn of strength, remember well 
 The bard whose chant foretold thee as thou art. 
 
 Sky, mount, and forest, and high-sounding main, 
 Tlie storm-cloud's vortex, splendor of the day. 
 
 Gloom of the night, — ^with these abide his strain, — 
 And these are thine, though he has passed away; 
 
 Their elemental force had roused to might 
 
 Great Nature's chUd in this her realm supreme, — 
 
 From their commingling he had guessed aright 
 The plentitude of all we know or dream. 
 
 Read thou aright his vision and his song. 
 That this ^ranchised spirit of the spheres 
 
 May know his name henceforth shall take no wrong, 
 Outbroadening still yon ocean and these years! 
 
 — ^Edmund Clarence Stedman 
 
 BYRON'S GRAVE 
 
 Nay! Byron, nay! not under where we tread. 
 Dumb weight of stone, lies thine imperial head! 
 Into no vault lethargic, dark and dank. 
 The splendid strength of thy swift spirit sank: 
 No narrow church in precincts cold and grey 
 
 188 
 
Confines the plume, that loved to breast the day: 
 
 Thy self-consuming, scathing heart of flame 
 
 Was quenched to feed no silent coffin's shame! 
 
 A fierce, glad fire in buoyant hearts art thou, 
 
 A radiance in auroral spirits now; 
 
 A stormy wind, an ever-sounding ocean, 
 
 A life, a power, a never- wearying motion! 
 
 Or deadly gloom, or terrible despair. 
 
 An earthquake mockery of strong Creeds that were 
 
 Assured possessions of calm earth and sky. 
 
 Where doom-distraught pale souls took sanctuary. 
 
 As in strong temples. The same blocks shall build. 
 
 Iconoclast! the edifice you spilled. 
 
 More durable, more fair: O scourge of God, 
 
 It was Himself who urged thee on thy road; 
 
 And thou, Don Juan, Harold, Manfred, Cain, 
 
 Song-crowned within the world's young heart shall reign! 
 
 Where'er we hear embroiled lashed ocean roar. 
 
 Or thunder echoing among heights all hoar. 
 
 Brother! thy mighty measure heightens theirs. 
 
 While Freedom on her rent red banner bears 
 
 The deathless names of many a victory won. 
 
 Inspired by thy death-shattering clarion! 
 
 In Love's immortal firmament are set 
 
 Twin stars of Romeo and Juhet, 
 
 And their companions young eyes discover 
 
 In Cycladean Haidee with her lover. 
 
 May all the devastating force be spent? 
 Or all thy godlike energies lie shent? 
 Nay! thou art founded in the strength Divine: 
 The soul's immense eternity is thine! 
 Profound Beneficence absorbs thy power. 
 While ages tend the long-maturing flower: 
 Our Sun himself, one tempest of wild flame. 
 For source of joy, and very life men "claim 
 In mellowing corn, in bird, and bloom of spring. 
 In leaping lambs, and lovers dallying. 
 Byron! the whirlwinds rended not in vain; 
 
 189' 
 
Aloof behold they nourish and sustain! 
 In the far end we shall account them gain. 
 
 — ^RoDEN Noel 
 
 TO LORD BYRON 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 (Do you remember how Leigh Hunt 
 Enraged you once by writing My dear Byron?) 
 
 Books have their fates, — as mortals have who punt. 
 And yours have entered on an age of iron. 
 
 Critics there be who think your satin blunt. 
 Your pathos, fudge: such perils must environ 
 Poets who in their time were quite the rage. 
 Though now there's not a soul to turn their page. 
 
 Yes, there is much dispute about your worth. 
 And much is said which you might like to know 
 
 By modern poets here upon the earth, 
 
 Where poets live, and love each other so; 
 
 And, in Elysium, it may move your mirth 
 To hear of bards that pitch your praises low. 
 
 Though there be some that for your credit stickle. 
 
 As — Glorious Mat, — and not inglorious Nichol. 
 
 This kind of writing is my pet aversion. 
 
 I hate the slang, I hate the personalities, 
 I loathe the aimless, reckless, loose dispersion, 
 
 Of every rhyme that in the singer's wallet is, 
 I hate it as you hated the Excursion, 
 
 But, while no man a hero to his valet is. 
 The hero's still the model; I indite 
 The kind of rhymes that Byron oft would write. 
 
 There's a Swiss critic whom I cannot rhyme to, 
 One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim. 
 
 Of him there's much to say, if I had time to 
 Concern myself in any wise with him. 
 190 
 
He seems to hate the heights he caimot climb to. 
 He thinks your poetry a coxcomb's whim, 
 
 A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on 
 
 Shakespeare, and Moliere, and you, and Milton. 
 
 Ay, much his temper is like Vivien's mood. 
 Which found not Galahad pure, nor Lancelot brave; 
 
 Cold as a hailstorm on an April wood. 
 He buries poets in an icy grave. 
 
 His Essays — ^he of the Genevan hood! 
 
 Nothing so good but better doth he crave. 
 
 So stupid and so solemn in his spite 
 
 He dares to print that Moliere could not write! 
 
 Enough of these excursions; I was saying 
 That haU our English Bards are turned Reviewers, 
 
 And Arnold was discussing and assaying 
 
 The weight and value of that work of yours. 
 
 Examining and testing it and weighing. 
 
 And proved, the gems are pure, the gold endures. 
 
 While Swinburne cries with an exceeding joy. 
 
 The stones are paste, and half the gold, aUoy. 
 
 In Byron, Arnold finds the greatest force. 
 
 Poetic, in this later age of ours 
 His song, a torrent from a mountain source. 
 
 Clear as the crystal, singing with the showers. 
 Sweeps to the sea in unrestricted coiu-se 
 
 Through banks o'erhung with rocks and sweet with 
 flowers; 
 None of your brooks that modestly meander. 
 But swift as Awe along the Pass of Brander. 
 
 And when our century has clomb its crest. 
 And backward gazes o'er the plains of Time, 
 
 And counts its harvest, yours is still the best. 
 The richest garner in the field of rhyme 
 
 (The metaphoric mixture, 't is confest, 
 191 
 
Is all my own, and is not quite sublime). 
 But fame's not yours alone; you must divide all 
 The plums and pudding with the Bard of Kydal! 
 
 Wordsworth and Byron, these the lordly names 
 And these the gods to whom most incense burns. 
 
 'Absurd!' cries Swinburne, and in anger flames. 
 And in an Aeschylean fury spurns 
 
 With impious foot your altar, and exclaims 
 And wreathes his laurels on the golden urns 
 
 Where Coleridge's and Shelley's ashes lie. 
 
 Deaf to the din and heedless of Hie cry. 
 
 For Byron (Swinburne shouts) has never woven 
 One honest thread of life within his song; 
 
 As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven 
 So Byron is to Shelley {This is strong!). 
 
 And on Parnassus' peak, divinely cloven. 
 He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; 
 
 For Byron's rank (the Examiner has reckoned) 
 
 Is in the third class or a feeble second. 
 
 'A Bernesque poet' at the very most, 
 And never earnest save in politics — 
 
 The Pegasus that he was wont to boast 
 A blundering, floundering hackney, full of tricks, 
 
 A beast that must be driven to the post 
 
 By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and sticks, 
 
 A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute. 
 
 That any judge of Pegasi would shoot; 
 
 In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone 
 In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. 
 
 And Byron's style is 'jolter-headed jargon;' 
 His verse is 'only bearable in prose.' 
 
 So living poets write of those that are gone. 
 And o'er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows: 
 
 And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began. 
 
 By owning you 'a very clever laasa..' 
 192 
 
Or rather does not end; he atill imst utter 
 A quantity of the unkindest tilings. 
 
 Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter 
 O'er such a foe the tempest of your wings? 
 
 'Tis 'rant and cant and glare and splaish and splutter' 
 That rend the modest air when Byron sings. 
 
 There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery. 
 
 Animis caelestibus tantaene. iraef 
 
 But whether he or Arnold in the right is. 
 
 Long is the argument, the quarrel koig; 
 Nan nobis est to settle tantas l-Ues; 
 
 No poet I, to judge of right or wrong: 
 But of all things I always think a fight is 
 The most unpleasant in the Usts.of song; 
 When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo 
 Set an example which we need not follow. 
 The fashion changes! Maidens do not wear. 
 
 As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets 
 A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron's hair; 
 
 'Don Juan' is not always in our pockets- 
 Nay, a New Writer's readers do not care 
 
 Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its 
 Manners and morals. Ay, and most young ladies 
 To yours prefer the 'Epic' called 'of Hades!' 
 
 I do not blame them; I'm inclined to think 
 That with the reigning taste t is vain to quarrel. 
 
 And Bums might teach his votaries to drink. 
 And Byron never meant to make them moral. 
 
 You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink 
 From lauding you and giving you the laurel; 
 
 The Germans too, those men of blood and iron, 
 
 Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron. 
 
 Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the gods! 
 
 Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit. 
 Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds. 
 
 Ids 
 
Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit; 
 Chased, like Orestes, by the furies' rods. 
 
 Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit; 
 Beholding whom, men think how fairer far 
 Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star!* 
 
 — ^Andrew Lang 
 
 TO BYRON 
 
 He with a strenuous voice of vibrant tone, 
 AeoUan in its sweep and majesty, 
 Untrammeled as the heavens, and as free, 
 In passionate throbbings from his bosom's throne 
 
 Flung Song from the Aegeans classic zone 
 Sublime in its impetuosity, — 
 Like to the voice of the eternal sea 
 Filled with a wild unfathomable moan. 
 
 O Dust! far from the Minster by the Thames, 
 Reft of the oriel and the organ roll, 
 Unniched among thy land's illustrious names. 
 
 Where is he, living, who can touch thy goal? 
 Whose words, as thine, within the file of Fames' 
 Resplendent troop, so melt, so move the soul! 
 
 — ^Llotd Mifflin 
 
 *Mr. Swinburne's and Mr. Arnold's diverse views of Byron will 
 be found in the Selectiona by Mr. Araold and in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 194 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 1792—1822 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY 
 
 One broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay; 
 
 On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware! 
 The cloud has clasped her; lo! it melts away; 
 
 The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there. 
 
 Morning: a woman looking on the sea; 
 
 Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns; 
 Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee! 
 
 Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns. 
 
 And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands. 
 And torches flaring in the weedy caves, 
 
 Where'er the waters lay with icy hands 
 
 The shapes uplifted from their coral graves. 
 
 Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er; 
 
 The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks. 
 And lean, wild children gather from the shore 
 
 To the black hovels bedded in the rocks. 
 
 But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail, 
 "One, one last look, ye heaving waters, yield!" 
 
 Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail. 
 Raised the pale burden On his level shield. 
 
 Slow from the shore the sullen waves retire; 
 
 His form a nobler element shall claim; 
 Nature baptized him in ethereal fire. 
 
 And Death shall crown him with a wreath of flame. 
 
 Fade, mortal semblance, never to return; 
 
 Swift is the change with thy crimson shroud; 
 Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn; 
 
 All else has risen in yon silvery cloud. 
 
 Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies. 
 Whose open page lay on thy dying heart, 
 197 
 
Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, 
 Earth's fairest dome of all divinest art. 
 
 Breathe for his wandering soul one passing sigh, 
 O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim, — 
 
 In all the mansions of the house on high. 
 Say not that Mercy has not one for him! 
 
 — Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 {From) 
 
 PAULINE 
 
 Sim-treader, life and light be thine forever! 
 Thou art gone from us; years go by and spring 
 Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful. 
 Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise. 
 But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties. 
 Like mighty works which tell some spirit there 
 Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn. 
 Till, its long task completed, it hath risen 
 And left us, never to return, and all 
 Rush in to peer and praise when aU in vain. 
 The air seems bright Avith thy past presence yet. 
 But thou art still for me as thou hast been 
 When I have stood with thee as on a throne 
 With all thy dim creations gathered round 
 Like mountains, and I felt of mould Uke them. 
 And with them creatures of my own were mixed. 
 Like tilings half-hved, catching and giving life. 
 But thou art still for me who have adored 
 Though single, panting but to hear thy name 
 Which I beUeved a spell to me alone. 
 Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men! 
 As one should worship long a sacred spring 
 Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross. 
 And one small tree embowers droopLngly — 
 Joying to see some wandering insect won 
 To live in its few rushes, or some locust 
 
 198 
 
To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird 
 Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air: 
 And then should find it but the fountain-head. 
 Long lost, of some great river washing towns 
 And towers, and seeing old woods which will live 
 But by its banks untrod of human foot. 
 Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering 
 In light as some thmg lieth half of life 
 Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change; 
 Then girt with rocks whid^ seek to turn or stay 
 Its course in vain, for it does ever spread 
 Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on. 
 Being the pulse of some great country — ^so 
 Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world! 
 And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret 
 That I am not what I have been to thee: 
 Like a girl one has silently loved long 
 In her first loneliness in some retreat. 
 When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view 
 Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom 
 Like a moimtain berry: doubtless it is sweet 
 To see her thus adored, but there have been 
 Moments when all the world was in our praise, 
 Sweeter than any pride of after hours. 
 Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart 
 I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams, 
 I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust 
 The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me, 
 To see thee for a moment as thou art. 
 And if thou Uvest, if thou lovest, spirit! 
 Bemember me who set this final seal 
 To wandering thought — ^that one so pure as thou 
 Could never die. Remember me who fiung 
 All honor from my soul, yet paused and said, 
 "There is one spark of love remaining yet. 
 For I have naught in common with him, shapes 
 Which followed him avoid me, and foul forms 
 Seek me, which ne'er could fasten on his mind; 
 
 199 
 
And though I feel how low I am to him, 
 
 Yet I aim not even to catch a tone 
 
 Of harmonies he called profusely up; 
 
 So, one gleam stiU remains, although the last." 
 
 Remember me who praise thee e'en with tears. 
 
 For never more shall I walk calm with thee; 
 
 Thy sweet imaginings are as an air, 
 
 A melody some wondrous singer sings. 
 
 Which, though it haunt men oft in the still eve. 
 
 They dream not to essay; yet it no less 
 
 But more is honored. I was thine in shame. 
 
 And now when all thy proud renown is out, 
 
 I am a watcher whose eyes have grown dim 
 
 With looking for some star which breaks on him 
 
 Altered and worn and weak and full of tears. 
 
 — ^ROBEET BbOWNINQ 
 
 ODE TO SHELLEY 
 
 Why art thou dead.? Upon the hills once more 
 
 The golden mist of waning Autumn Ues; 
 The slow-pulsed billows wash along the shore. 
 
 And phantom isles are floating in the skies. 
 They wait for thee : a spirit in the sand 
 
 Hushes, expectant for thy coming tread; 
 The Hght wind pants to lift thy trembUng hair; 
 Inward, the silent land 
 
 Lies with its mournful wood; — ^why art thou dead, 
 When Earth demands that thou shalt call her fair? 
 
 II 
 
 Why art thou dead? I too demand thy song. 
 To speak the language yet denied to mine, 
 200 
 
Twin-doomed with thee, to feel the scorn of Wrong, 
 To worship Beauty as a thing divine! 
 
 Thou art afar: wilt thou not soon return 
 To tell me that which thou hast never told? 
 
 To clasp my throbbing hand, and, by the shore 
 Or dewy moimtain-fern. 
 Pour out thy heart as to a friend of old. 
 
 Touched with a twiUght sadness? Nevermore. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I could have told thee all the sylvan joy 
 
 Of trackless woods; the meadows far apart. 
 Within whose fragrant grass, a lonely boy, 
 
 I thought of God; the trumpet at my heart. 
 When on bleak mountains roared the midnight storm. 
 
 And I was bathed in lightning, broad and grand: 
 Oh, more than all, with soft and reverent breath 
 And forehead flushing warm, 
 
 I would have led thee through the summer land 
 Of early Love, and past my dreams of Death! 
 
 IV 
 
 In thee, Immortal Brother! had I found 
 
 That Voice of Earth, that fails my feebler lines: 
 The awful speech of Rome's sepulchral ground; 
 
 The dusky hymn of Vallombrossa's pines! 
 From thee the noise of Ocean would have taken 
 
 A grand defiance round the moveless shores. 
 And vocal grown the Mountain's silent head: 
 Canst thou not yet awaken 
 
 Beneath the funeral cypress? Earth implores 
 Thy presence for her son; — ^why art thou dead? 
 
 V 
 
 I do but rave: for it is better thus. 
 
 Were once thy starry nature given to mine. 
 In the one life which would encircle us 
 
 My voice would melt, my soul be lost in thine. 
 
 aoi 
 
Better to bear the far sublimer pain 
 
 Of Thought that has not ripened into speech. 
 To hear in silence Truth and Beauty sing 
 Divinely to the brain; 
 For thus the Poet at the last shall reach 
 His own soul's voice, nor crave a brother's string. 
 
 — Bayard Taylor 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY 
 
 (inscription for the couch, still preserved, 
 
 ON WHICH HE PASSED THE LAST NIGHT OF HIS LIFE) 
 
 'Twixt those twin worlds, — the world of Sleep, which 
 gave 
 No dream to warm, — the tidal world of Death, 
 Which the earth's sea, as the earth, replenisheth, — 
 
 Shelley, Song's orient sun, to breast the wave, 
 
 Rose from this couch that morn. Ah! did he brave 
 Only the sea? — or did man's deed of hell 
 Engulph his bark 'mid mists impenetrable? * * * 
 
 No eye discerned, nor any power might save. 
 
 When that mist cleared, O Shelley! what dread veil 
 
 Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth 
 
 Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless 
 
 youth? 
 
 Was the Truth thy Truth, Shelley ?— Hush ! All-Hail, 
 
 Past doubt, thou gav'st it; and in Truth's bright 
 
 sphere 
 Art first of praisers, being most praised here. 
 
 — Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
 
 202 
 
THE POETRY OF SHELLEY 
 
 See'st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets 
 
 ascending 
 Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn? 
 Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it 
 flutters — 
 Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings 
 down at eve. 
 
 — Geobge Meredith 
 
 SHELLEY 
 
 The odor of a rose: light of a star: 
 
 The essence of a flame blown on by wind. 
 
 That Ughts and warms all near it, bland and kind. 
 
 But aye consumes itself, as though at war 
 
 With what supports and feeds it; — ^from afar 
 
 It draws its life, but evermore incHn'd 
 
 To leap into the flame that makes men blind 
 
 Who seek the secret of all things that are. 
 
 Such wert thou, Shelley, bound for airiest goal: 
 
 Interpreter of quintessential things: 
 
 Who mounted ever up on eagle-wings 
 
 Of phantasy: had aim'd at heaven and stole 
 
 Promethean fire for men to be as gods. 
 
 And dwell in free, aerial abodes. 
 
 — ^AXEXANDER HaY JaPP 
 
 SHELLEY 
 
 Shelley, the ceaseless music of thy soul 
 Breathes in the Cloud and in the Skylark's song. 
 That float as an embodied dream along 
 The dewy lids of morning. In the dole 
 That haunts the West Wind, in the joyous roll 
 Of Arethusan foimtains, or among 
 The wastes where Ozymandias the strong 
 203 
 
Lies in colossal ruin, thy control 
 
 Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave 
 
 A fragrance to all nature, and a tone 
 To inexpressive silence. Each apart — 
 
 Earth, Air, and Ocean— claims thee as its own; 
 The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave 
 That clasped thee, like an overflowing heart. 
 
 — ^JoHN B. Tabb 
 
 TO SHELLEY 
 
 At Shelley's birth. 
 The Lark, dawn spirit, with an anthem loud 
 
 Rose from the dusky earth 
 
 To tell it to the Cloud, 
 That, like a flower night-folded in the gloom. 
 
 Burst into morning bloom. 
 
 At Shelly's death, 
 The Sea, that deemed him an immortal, saw 
 
 A god's extinguished breath, 
 
 and landward, as in awe. 
 Upbore him to the altar whence he came. 
 
 And the enkindling flame. 
 
 — John B. Tabb 
 
 SHELLEY'S CENTENARY 
 
 (4th August, 1892) 
 
 Within a narrow span of time. 
 Three princes of the realm of rhyme. 
 At height of youth or manhood's prime. 
 
 From earth took wing. 
 To join the fellowship sublime 
 
 Who, dead, yet sing. 
 
 He, first, his earliest wreath who wove 
 Of laurel grown in Latmian grove, 
 204 
 
Conquered by pain and hapless love 
 
 Found calmer home, 
 Roofed by the heaven that glows above 
 
 Eternal Rome. 
 
 A fierier soul, its own fierce prey. 
 And cumbered with more mortal clay. 
 At Missolonghi flamed away, 
 
 And left the air 
 Reverberating to this day 
 
 Its loud despair. 
 
 Alike remote from Byron's scorn. 
 And Keats' magic as of mom 
 Bursting for ever newly-bom 
 
 On forests old. 
 Waking a hoary world forlorn 
 
 With touch of gold, 
 
 Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grew 
 Nourished on air and sun and dew. 
 Into that Essence whence he drew 
 
 His life and lyre 
 Was fittingly resolved anew 
 
 Through wave and fire. 
 
 'Twas like his rapid soul! 'Twas meet 
 That he, who brooked not Tune's slow feet. 
 With passage thus abrupt and fleet 
 
 Should hurry hence. 
 Eager the Great Perhaps to greet 
 
 With Why? and Whence? 
 
 Impatient of the world's flxed way. 
 He ne'er could suffer God's delay, 
 But all the future in a day 
 
 Would build divine. 
 And the whole past in ruins lay. 
 
 An emptied shrine. 
 205 
 
Vain vision! but the glow, the fire. 
 
 The passion of beni^ desire. 
 
 The glorious yearning, lift him higher 
 
 Than many a soul 
 That mounts a million paces nigher 
 
 Its meaner goal. 
 
 And power is his, if naught besides. 
 In that thin ether where he rides. 
 Above the roar of human tides 
 
 To ascend afar. 
 Lost in a storm of light that hides 
 
 His dizzy car. 
 
 Below, the unhastening world toils on. 
 And here and there are victories won, 
 Some dragon slain, some justice done. 
 
 While, through the skies, 
 A meteor rushing on the sun, 
 
 He flares and dies. 
 
 But, as he cleaves yon ether clear 
 Notes from the unattempted Sphere 
 He scatters to the enchanted ear 
 
 Of earth's dim throng. 
 Whose dissonance doth more endear 
 
 The showering song. 
 
 In other shapes than he forecast 
 
 The world is moulded: his fierce blast, — 
 
 His wild assault upon the Past, — 
 
 These things are vain; 
 Revolt is transient: what must last 
 
 Is that pure strain. 
 
 Which seems the wandering voices blent, 
 
 Of every virgin element, — 
 
 A sound from ocean caverns sent,'*^ 
 
An airy call 
 From the pavillioned firmament 
 O'erdoming all. 
 
 And in this world of worldlings, where 
 Souls rust in apathy, and ne'er 
 A great emotion shakes the air. 
 
 And life flags tame. 
 And rare is noble impulse, rare 
 
 The impassioned aim, 
 
 'Tis no mean fortune to have heard 
 A singer who, if errors blurred 
 His sight, had yet a spirit stirred 
 
 By vast desire. 
 And ardour fledging the swift word 
 
 With plumes of fire. 
 
 A creature of impetuous breath. 
 Our torpor deadlier than death 
 He knew not; whatso'er he saith 
 
 Flashes with I'fe: 
 He spurreth men, he quickeneth 
 
 To splendid stnfe. 
 
 And in his gusts of song he brings 
 
 Wild odours shaken from strange wings. 
 
 And unfamiliar whisperings 
 
 From far lips blown. 
 While all the rapturous heart of things 
 
 Throbs through his own, — 
 
 His own that from the burning pyre 
 One who had loved his wind swept lyre 
 Out of the sharp teeth of the fire 
 
 Umnolten drew. 
 Beside the sea that in her ire 
 Smote him and slew. 
 
 — WiLUAM Watson 
 207 
 
JOHN KEATS 
 1795-1821 
 
JOHN KEATS 
 
FRAGMENT ON KEATS 
 
 Who desibed that on his tomb should be inscbibed — 
 
 'Here lieth One whose name was writ on water/ 
 
 But, ere the breath that could erase it blew. 
 Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter. 
 Death, the immortalizing winter, flew 
 Athwart the stream, — and time's printless torrent 
 grew 
 A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name 
 Of Adonais! 
 
 — Pebct Btsshe Shbllet 
 (From) 
 
 ADONAIS — AN elect on the death of john keats. 
 
 XL 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
 
 Envy and calumny and hate and pain. 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 
 Can touch him not and torture not again; 
 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 He is secure, and now can never mourn 
 
 A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain — 
 Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to bum. 
 With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 
 
 XLII 
 
 He is made one with. Nature; there is heard 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 
 Of thunder^ to the so»g of night's sweet bird; 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 Which has withdrawn \m being to it$ own; 
 
 Which wields the world with never-wearied love. 
 
 Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 
 
 2Ul 
 
XLIII 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 
 Whidi once he made more lovely; he doth bear 
 His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress 
 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling 
 there, 
 
 All new successions to the forms they wear; 
 Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 From trees and beasts and men into the heaven's light. 
 
 XLIV 
 
 The splendours of the firmament of time 
 
 May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; 
 
 lake stars to their appointed height Uiey climb. 
 And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
 The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
 
 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair. 
 And love and life contend in it, for what 
 
 Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 
 
 And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 
 
 XLV 
 
 The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
 
 Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
 Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
 
 Rose pale, — ^his solemn agony had not 
 
 Yet faded from him; Si(hiey, as he fought 
 And as he fell and as he Uved and loved 
 
 Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot. 
 Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved: 
 Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 
 
 212 
 
XLVI 
 
 And many more, whose names on Earth are dark. 
 
 But whose transmitted eflBuence cannot die 
 So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
 
 Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
 
 'Thou art become as one of us', they cry, 
 'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
 
 Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
 Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. 
 Assume thy winged throne, thou vesper of our throng.' 
 
 XLVII 
 
 Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth. 
 Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. 
 
 Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; 
 As from a centre, dart thy spirit's Ught 
 Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
 
 Satiate the void circumference; then shrink 
 Even to a point within our day and night; 
 
 And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink 
 
 When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. 
 
 xLvm 
 
 Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre. 
 Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought 
 
 That ages, empires, and religions there 
 Lie buried in the ravage Qiey have wrought; 
 For such as he can lend, — ^they borrow not 
 
 Glory from those who made the world their prey; 
 And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
 Who waged contention with their time's decay. 
 
 And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 
 
 21S 
 
XLIX 
 
 Go thou to Rome,^ — at once the paradise. 
 The grave, the city, and the wilderness; 
 
 And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise. 
 And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 
 The bones of Desolations' nakedness 
 
 Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access 
 
 Where, hke an infant's smile, over the dead 
 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.; 
 
 And gray walls moulder roimd, on which dull Time 
 Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; 
 
 And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
 PaviKoning the dust of him who plaimed 
 This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
 
 Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, 
 A field is spread, on which a newer band 
 
 Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
 
 Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished 
 breath. 
 
 LI 
 
 Here pause; these graves are all too young as yet 
 To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
 
 Its change to each; and if the seal is set, 
 
 Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, 
 Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find 
 
 Thine own well full, if thou returnfest home. 
 Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
 
 Seek shjslter in the shadow of the tomb. 
 
 Wtat Adonais is, why fear we to become? 
 
 214 
 
Ln 
 
 The One remains, the many change and pass; 
 
 Heaven's light for ever slunes, earth's shadows fly; 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity, 
 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments. — ^Die, 
 If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! 
 
 Follow where all is fled! — ^Rome's azure sky. 
 Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak 
 The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 
 
 LIII 
 
 Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart? 
 
 Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here 
 They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! 
 
 A light is past from the revolving year. 
 
 And man, and woman; and what still is dear 
 Attracts to crush, repek to make thee wither. 
 
 The soft sky smiles, — ^the low wind whispers near: 
 'Tis Adonais calls! Oh, hasten thither, 
 No more let Life divide what Death can join together. 
 
 LIV 
 
 That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
 That Beauty in which all things work and move. 
 
 That Benediction which the ecUpsing Curse 
 
 Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
 Which through the web of being blindly wove 
 
 By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
 Bums bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
 
 The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me. 
 
 Consuming the last clouds of cold mortaUty. 
 
 215 
 
The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
 
 Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven. 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given; 
 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; 
 
 Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star. 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 
 
 — Percy Bysshe Shelley 
 
 SONNET 
 
 Written in Kbats's 'Endymion' 
 
 I saw pale Dian, sitting by the brink 
 
 Of sUver falls, the overflow of fountains 
 From cloudy steeps; and I grew sad to think 
 
 Endymion's foot was silent on those mountains. 
 And he but a hush'd name, that Silence keeps 
 
 In dear remembrance, — ^lonely, and forlorn. 
 Singing it to herself until she weeps 
 
 Tears that perchance still glisten in the mom; — 
 And as I mused, in dull imaginings, 
 
 There came a flash of garments, and I knew 
 The awful Muse by her harmonious wings 
 
 Charming the air to music as she flew — 
 Anon there rose an echo through the vale. 
 Gave back Endymion in a dream-like tale. 
 
 — ^Thomas Hood 
 KEATS* 
 
 The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; 
 The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! 
 The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold 
 To the red rising moon, and loud and deep 
 The nightingale is singing from the steep; 
 
 It is midsummer, but the air is cold; 
 ♦Copyright 1875 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 1903 by Ernest 
 W. Longfellow. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
 
 216 
 
Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold 
 
 A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. 
 
 Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white, 
 On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name 
 Was writ in water." And was this the meed 
 
 Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write: 
 "The smoking flax before it burst to flame 
 
 Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed." 
 — ^Henky Wadsworth Longfellow 
 
 AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS 
 
 "PURPUBEOS SPARGAM FLOREs" 
 
 The wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave 
 Is lying on thy Roman grave. 
 Yet on its turf young April sets 
 Her store of slender violets; 
 Though all the Gods their garlands shower, 
 I too may bring one purple flower 
 — ^Alas! what blossom shall I bring. 
 That opens in my Northern spring? 
 The garden beds have all run wild. 
 So trim when I was yet a child; 
 Flat plantains and unseemly stalks 
 Have crept across the gravel walks; 
 The vines are dead, long, long ago. 
 The almond buds no longer blow. 
 No more upon its mouild I see 
 The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-hs; 
 Where once the tulips used to show, 
 In straggling tufts the pansies grow; 
 The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem, 
 The flowering "Star of Bethlehem," 
 Though its long blade of glossy green 
 And pallid stripe may still be seen. 
 Natiure, who treads her nobles down. 
 And gives their birthright to the clown, 
 Has sown her base-born weedy things 
 Above the garden's queens and kings. 
 217 
 
— ^Yet one sweet flower of ancient race 
 
 Springs in the old familiar place. 
 
 When snows were melting down the vale. 
 
 And Earth unlaced her icy mail. 
 
 And March his stormy trumpet blew. 
 
 And tender green came peeping through, 
 
 I loved the earKest one to seek 
 
 That broke the soil with emerald beak. 
 
 And watch the trembling bells so blue 
 
 Spread on the column as it grew. 
 
 Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame 
 
 The sweet, dead poet's holy name; 
 
 The God of music gave thee birth, 
 
 CaUed from the crimson-spotted earth, 
 
 Where, sobbing his young life away. 
 
 His own fair Hyacinthus lay. 
 
 — ^The hyacinth my garden gave 
 
 Shall lie upon that Roman grave! 
 
 — Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 {Frmn) 
 
 AURORA LEIGH 
 
 By Keats's soul, the man who never stepped 
 In gradual progress like another man, 
 But, turning grandly on his central self. 
 Ensphered himself in twenty perfept yfears. 
 And died, not young (the life of a long life 
 Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear 
 Upon the world's cold cheek to make it burn 
 Forever). 
 
 — ^EUZJABETH BaBBETT BkOWNING 
 
 218 
 
TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS 
 
 Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, 
 Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes. 
 On whose full orbs, with kindly lustre, lies 
 The twilight warmth of ruddy ember-gloom: 
 Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sudden bloom 
 Of hope secure, to him who lonely cries, 
 Wrestling with the young poet's agonies. 
 Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain doom: 
 Yes ! the few words which, like great thunder-drops. 
 Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully. 
 Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might. 
 Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light, 
 Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny, 
 After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops. 
 
 — ^James Russell Lowell 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF KEATS 
 
 (on coming into possession of his copy 
 OF "the hogue: ok guzman db al- 
 
 FABACHE. " LONDON, 1634)'' 
 
 Great Father mine, deceased ere I was born. 
 
 And in a classic land renowned of old; 
 
 Thy life was happy, but thy death forlorn. 
 
 Buried in violets and Roman mold. 
 
 Thou hast the Laurel, Master of my soul! 
 
 Thy name, thou saidst, was writ in water — ^No, 
 
 For while clouds float on high, and biUows roll. 
 
 Thy name shall worshipped be. Will mine be so? 
 
 I kiss thy w^ords as I would kiss thy face, 
 
 And put thy book most reverently away. 
 
 Girt by thy peers, thou hast an honored place, 
 
 Among the kiiagliest — ^Byron, Wordsworth, Gray. 
 
 If tears will fiU mine eyes, am I to blame? 
 
 "O smile away the shades, for this is fame!" 
 
 — ^Richard Henkt Stoddard 
 219 
 
JOHN KEATS 
 
 The weltering London ways where children weep 
 And girls whom none call maidens laugh, — 
 
 strange road 
 Miring his outward steps, who inly trode 
 
 The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep: — 
 
 Even such his life's cross-paths; till deathly deep 
 He toiled through sands of lethe; and long pain, 
 Weary with labor spurned and love found vain, 
 
 In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep. 
 
 O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips 
 And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's ecHpse, — 
 
 Thdu whom the daisies glory in growing o'er, — 
 Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ 
 But rumor'd in water, while the fame of it 
 
 Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore. 
 
 — ^Dante Gabriel Rossexti 
 
 THE POETRY OF KEATS 
 
 The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley, 
 Low-hdded with twiUght, and tranced with the 
 
 dolorous sound. 
 Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearn- 
 ing of passion 
 That wins immortality even while panting delirious 
 with death. 
 
 — George Mebedith 
 
 no 
 
AN INSCRIPTION IN ROME* 
 
 (piazza di spagna) 
 
 Something there is in Death not all unkind, 
 He hath a gentler aspect, looking back; 
 For flowers may bloom in the dread thmider's track. 
 And even the doud that struck with light was lined. 
 
 Thus, when the heart is silent, speaks the mind; 
 
 But there are moments when comes rushing, black 
 
 And fierce upon usi, the old, awful lack. 
 
 And Death once more is cruel, senseless, blind. 
 
 So when I saw beside a Roman portal 
 
 "In this house died John Keats" — ^for tears that sprung 
 I could no further read. O bard immortal ! 
 
 Not for thy fame's sake — ^but so young, so young; 
 Such beauty vanished, spilled such heavenly wine. 
 All quenched that power of deathless song divine! 
 
 — ^RicHABD Watson Gildeb 
 
 KEATS* 
 
 Touch not with dark regret his perfect fame. 
 Sighing, "Had he but lived he had done so;" 
 Or, "Were his heart not eaten out with woe 
 John Keats had won a prouder, mightier name!" 
 Take Vn'in for what he was and did — ^nor blame 
 Blind fate for all he suffered. Thou shouldst know 
 Souls such as his escape no mortal blow — 
 No agony of joy, or sorrow, or shame! 
 "Whose name was writ in water!" What large 
 laughter 
 Among the immortals when that word was brought! 
 Then when his fiery spirit rose flaming after 
 High toward the topmost heaven of heavens up-caught ! 
 "All hail! our younger brother!" Shakespeare said. 
 And Dante nodded his imperial head. 
 
 — ^Richard Watson Gildbb 
 *By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
 221 
 
KEATS 
 
 Rare voice, the last from vernal Hellas sent. 
 And fresh Arcadian hills, why mute so soon? 
 Did the Gods grudge their unexpected boon, 
 Anjd Phoebus qnvy back the lute he lent? 
 
 So sudd^ came tliy song, so sudden went! 
 O well for thee — ^free of life's fiery noon. 
 Free as a fairy underneath the moon. 
 But ill for lis bereft of ravishment. 
 
 Not for our skies, piper of Grecian breed. 
 Nor suits our autumn melody with spring's; 
 So hast thou fled on bright ethereal steed 
 
 With all thy young and rich imaginings 
 To be great-hearted Homer's Ganymede, 
 Nor dropped one feather of thy shining wings. 
 — Erasmtts Henrt Bbooie 
 
 222 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 
 1809—1892 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
TO ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 Long have I known thee as thou art in song. 
 And long enjoy'd the perfume that exhales 
 From thy pure soul, and odour sweet entails 
 And permanence, on thoughts that float along 
 The stream of life, to join the passive throng 
 Of shades and echoes that are memory's being 
 Hearing we hear not, and we see not seeing. 
 If passion, fancy, faith move not among 
 The never-present moments of reflection. 
 Long have I view'd thee in the crystal sphere 
 Of verse,' that, like the beryl, makes appear 
 Visions of hope, begot of recollection. 
 Knowing thee now, a real earth-treading man, 
 Not less I love thee, and no more I can. 
 
 ^HaBTLEY CotEBIOGB 
 
 WAPENTAKE 
 
 TO ALFRED TENNYSON* 
 
 Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine; 
 
 Not as a knight, who on the listed field 
 
 Of tourney touched his adversary's shield 
 
 In token of defiance, but in sign 
 Of homage to the mastery, which is thine. 
 
 In English song; nor will I keep concealed, 
 • And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed. 
 
 My admiration for thy verse divine. 
 Not of the howling dervishes of song. 
 
 Who craze the brain with their delirious dance. 
 
 Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart! 
 Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong. 
 
 To thee our love and our allegiance. 
 
 For thy allegiance to the poet's art. 
 
 — ^Henry Wadswobth Longfellow 
 
 *Copyright 1878 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 1906 by Ernest 
 W. Longfellow. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 
 
 235 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON 
 I 
 
 THE land's vigil 
 
 How many a face throughout the Imperial Isle, 
 From Kentish shores to Scottish hill or hall, 
 From Cambrian vales to Windsor's royal pile, 
 
 Turned sadly towards one House more sad than all, — 
 
 Turned day by day, fear-blanched ! When evening's 
 pall 
 Slu:ouded a day that scarce had heart to smile. 
 How oft sad eyes, spelled by one thought the 
 while. 
 
 Not seeing, seemed to see a taper small. 
 
 Night after night, flashed from one casement high! 
 
 Let these men sing his praise! Others there are 
 
 Who fitlier might have sung them in old time, 
 Since they loved best who loved him in his prime. 
 
 Their youth, and his, expired long since and far. 
 
 Now he is gone, it seems "again to die." 
 
 II 
 
 WESTUINSTBB ABBBT 
 
 'Tis well! Not always nations are ingrate! 
 
 He gave his country "of his best;" and she 
 
 Gave to her bard in glorious rivalry 
 Her whole great heart. A People and a State 
 Had met, trough love a tomb to consecrate. 
 
 In the Abbey old each order and degree 
 
 Low knelt, and upward gazing seemed to see. 
 
 Not that dark vault, but Heaven's expanding gate. 
 
 2«6 
 
O'er him the death-song he had made they sung:^ 
 Thus, when in Rome Qie Prince of Painters died. 
 His Art's last marvel o'er his bier was hung, 
 
 At once in heavenly hope and honest pride: 
 Thus England honoured him she loved that day; 
 Thus many prayed — as England's Saints will pray. 
 
 in 
 
 THE POET 
 
 None sang of Love more nobly; few so well; 
 
 Of Friendship none with pathos so profound; 
 
 Of Duty sternliest-proved when myrtle-crowned; 
 Of Engli^ grove and rivulet, mead and dell; 
 Great Arthur's Legend he alone dared tell; 
 
 Milton and Diyden feared to tread that ground; 
 
 For him alone o'er Camelot's faery bound 
 The "horns of Elf -land" blew their magic spell. 
 
 Since Shakespeare and since Wordsworth none hath 
 sung 
 
 So weU his England's greatness; none hath given 
 
 Reproof more fearless or advice more sage. 
 None inlier taught how near to earth is Heaven; 
 
 With what vast concords Nature's harp is strung; 
 
 How base false pride; faction's fanatic rage. 
 
 IV 
 
 THE HEWAKD 
 
 The land, whose loveliness in verse of thine 
 Shows lovelier yet than prank'd on Nature's page. 
 Shall prove thy poet, ia some future age 
 
 Sing thee, her Poet not in measured line 
 & metric stave, but music more benign; 
 Shall point to British Galahads who wage 
 227 
 
Battle on Wrong; to British maids who gage. 
 Like Agnes, heart and hope to Love divine. 
 
 Worn men, like thy Ulysses, scorning fear. 
 
 Shall tempt strange seas beneath an alien star; 
 Old men, from cherished hamits and households 
 dear 
 Summoned by death to realms unknown and far. 
 Thy "Silent Voices" from on high shall hear, — 
 With happier auspice cross thy "harbour bar." 
 
 — ^AuBKBT De Verb 
 
 TENNYSON 
 
 The larks of song that high o'erhead 
 Sung joyous in my boyhood's sky. 
 
 Save one, are with the silent dead. 
 Those larks that knew to soar so high. 
 
 But still with ever surer flight. 
 
 One singer of unfailing trust 
 Chants at the gates of morn and night 
 
 Great songs that lift us from the dust. 
 
 And heavenward call tired hearts that grieve. 
 
 Beneath the vast horizon given 
 With larger breadth of morn and eve, 
 
 To this one lark alone in heaven. 
 
 — S. Weir Mitchell 
 
 TO LORD TENNYSON 
 
 ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY 
 AUGUST 6, 1889 
 
 Master and seer! too swift on noiseless feet 
 
 Thy hurrying decades fleet with stealthy pace; 
 Yet not the less thy voice is clear and sweet, 
 
 £28 
 
And still thy genius mingles strength with grace. 
 
 On thy broad brow alone and reverend face 
 Thy fourscore winters show, not on thy mind. 
 
 Stay, Time, a little while thy head-long chase! 
 Or passing, one Immortal leave behind; 
 For we are weak, and changeful as the wind. 
 
 For him long since the dying swan would sing. 
 
 The dead soul pine in splendid misery. 
 He winged the legend of the blameless IQng, 
 
 And crossed to Lotusland the enchanted sea; 
 
 Heard the twin voices strive for mastery. 
 Faithful and faithless; and with prescient thought 
 
 Saw Woman rising in the days to be 
 To heights of knowledge in the past unsought; 
 These his eye marked, and those his wisdom taught. 
 
 And he it was whose musing ear o'erheard 
 
 The love-tale sweet in death and madness end; 
 Who sang the deathless dirge, whose every word 
 
 Fashions a golden statue for his friend. 
 
 May all good things his waning years attend 
 Who told of RizpaJi mourning for her dead! 
 
 Or in verse sweet as pitying ruth could lend 
 The childish sufferer on her hopeless bed; 
 Thoughts, pure and high, of precious fancy bred. 
 
 His it is to scan with patient eye 
 The book of Nature, writ with herb and tree; 
 
 The buds of March unfold, the lush flowers die, 
 When sighs of Autumn wail o'er land and sea. 
 
 And those great orbs which wheel from age to age. 
 Cold, unregarding fires that seem to blight 
 
 All yearning hope and chill all noble rage; 
 And yet were dead, and void, maybe, of light. 
 Till first they swam upon a mortal's sight. 
 
 229 
 
Master and friend, stay yet, for there is none 
 Worthy to take thy place to-day, or wear 
 
 Thy laurel when thy singing-days are done. 
 As yet the halls of song are mute and bare. 
 Nor voice melodious wakes the tuneless air, , 
 
 Save. some weak faltering accents faintly heard. 
 Stay with us; 'neath thy spell the world grows 
 fair. 
 
 Our hearts revive, our inmost souls are stirred. 
 
 And all our English race awaits thy latest word! 
 
 — Sib Lewis Morris 
 
 TENNYSON* 
 
 I 
 
 Shakespeare and Milton — ^what third blazoned 
 name 
 Shall lips of after-ages link to these? 
 His who, beside the wild encircling seas, 
 Was England's voice with one acclaim, 
 For threescore years; whose word of praise was 
 fame. 
 Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities. 
 
 II 
 
 What strain was his in that Crimean war? 
 A bugle-call in battle; a low breath. 
 Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of 
 death! 
 So year by year the music rolled afar. 
 From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar, 
 Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Others shall have their Kttle space of time. 
 Their proper niche and bust, then fade away 
 Into the darkness, poets of a day; 
 ♦Copyright 1890 by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. By penuission of 
 Houghton MifiBin Company. 
 
 230 
 
But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme. 
 Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime 
 On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway. 
 
 IV 
 
 Waft me this verse across the winter sea, 
 Through light and dark, through mist and blind- 
 ing sleet, 
 O winter winds, and lay it at his feet; 
 Though the poor gift betray my poverty. 
 At his feet lay it: it may chance tihat he 
 Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet. 
 
 — ^Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 
 
 IN MEMOBIAM, 1892 
 
 No more our Nightingale shall sing his lay; 
 
 The groves are mute, for he has taken fiight; 
 
 He whose mellifluous voice was our delight 
 
 Has, by his death, brought sorrow and dismay. 
 There is a beauty gone from out the day; 
 
 There is a planet fallen from the night; 
 
 A splendor is withdrawn from out our sight, 
 
 A glory now for ever passed away. 
 A thousand hearts unused to bleed have bled, 
 
 And drops of pity dim the hard world's eye; 
 
 And oh, what memories of the day-spring fled ! 
 What vanished hopes, — ^what first love's ecstasy! 
 
 Ah, we have lost what time can ne'er supply. 
 
 For now the Poet of our Youth is dead! 
 
 — Lloyd Mifflin 
 
 9S\ 
 
TO ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 They told me in their shadowy phrase, 
 
 Caught from a tale gone by. 
 That Arthur, King of Cornish praise, 
 
 Died not, and would not die. 
 
 Dreams had they, that in fairy bowers 
 
 Their living warrior lies. 
 Or wears a garland of the flowers 
 
 That grow in Paradise. 
 
 I read the rune with deeper ken. 
 
 And thus the myth I trace: — 
 A bard should rise, mid future men. 
 
 The mightiest of his race. 
 
 He would great Arthur's deeds rehearse 
 
 On gray Dundagel's shore; 
 And so the King in laurell'd verse 
 
 Shall live, and die no more! 
 
 — Robert Stephen Hawkek 
 
 TENNYSON 
 
 IN LtrCEM TBANSITUS 
 OCTOBER, 1892 
 
 From the misty shores of midnight, touched 
 
 with splendours of the moon. 
 To the singing tides of heaven, and the light 
 
 more clear than noon, 
 Passed a soul that grew to music till it was with 
 
 God in tune. 
 
 Brother of the greatest poets, true to nature, 
 
 true to art; 
 Lover of Immortal Love, uplifter of the human 
 
 heart; 
 
Who shall cheer us with high music, who shall 
 
 sing, if thou depart? 
 Silence here — ^for love is silent, gazing on the 
 
 lessening sail; 
 Silence here — ^for grief is voiceless when the 
 
 mighty minstrels fail; 
 Silence here — ^but far beyond us, many voices 
 
 crying. Hail! 
 
 — ^Henby Van Dyke 
 
 IN MEMORIAM— ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 
 
 Last left of the mortal Immortals, art thou too taken at 
 
 last, 
 Loved part so long of the present, must thou too pass to 
 
 the past? 
 Thou hast lain in the moonlight and lapsed in a glory from 
 
 rest into rest. 
 And still is the teeming brain, and the warm heart cold 
 
 in the breast. 
 And frozen the exquisite fancy, and mute the magical 
 
 tongue. 
 Prom our century's tuneful mom to its hushing eve that 
 
 had sung. 
 Crowned poet and crown of poets, whose wealth and whose 
 
 wit could combine 
 Great echoes of old-world Homer, the grandeur of Milton's 
 
 line, 
 The sad sweet glamour of Virgil, the touch of Horace 
 
 divine, 
 Theocritus' musical sigh, and Catullus daintily fine! 
 Poet of Art and of Nature, of sympathies old and new. 
 Who read in the earth and the heavens, the fair and the 
 
 good and the true. 
 And who wrote no line and no word that the world will 
 
 ever rue! 
 Singer of God and of men, the stars were touched by thy 
 
 brow, 
 
 2S8 
 
But thy feet were on English meadows, true singer of 
 
 England thou! 
 We lose thee from sight, but thy brothers with, honour 
 
 receive thee now. 
 From earUest Chaucer and Spenser to those who were 
 
 nearer allied. 
 The rainbow radiance of Shelley, and Bjrron's furious 
 
 pride. 
 Rich Keats and austere Wordsworth, and Browning who 
 
 yesterday died 
 By sunny channels of Venice, and Arnold from Thames' 
 
 green side. 
 Knells be rung, and wreaths be strung, and dirges be simg 
 
 for the laurelled hearse. 
 Our tears and our flowers fade scarce more fast than our 
 
 transient verse, 
 For even as the refluent crowds from the ^orious Abbey 
 
 disperse. 
 They are all forgotten, and we go back to our fleeting 
 
 But we are the dying, and thou the living, whose work 
 
 survives. 
 The sum and the brief of our time, to report to the after 
 
 years 
 Its thoughts and its loves and its hopes and its doubts 
 
 and its faiths and its fears; 
 They hve in thy lines forever, and well may our era rejoice 
 To speak to the ages to come with so sweet and so noble 
 
 a voice. 
 
 — ^T. Herbert Warren 
 
 234 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 (WESTMINSTER ABBEY: OCTOBEB 12, 1892) 
 GIB DIESEN TODTEN MIH HERAUS!* 
 
 {The Minster speaks) 
 
 Bring me my dead! 
 
 To me that have grown. 
 
 Stone laid upon stone, 
 
 As the stormy brood 
 
 Of English blood 
 
 Has wax'd and spread 
 
 And fill'd the world. 
 
 With sails unfurl'd; 
 
 With men that may not lie; 
 
 With thoughts that cannot die. 
 
 Bring me my dead! 
 
 Into the storied hall, 
 
 Where I have gamer'd all 
 
 My harvest without weed; 
 
 My chosen fruits of goodly seed, 
 
 And lay him gently down among 
 
 The men of state, the men of song: 
 
 The men that would not suffer wrong: 
 
 The thought-worn chieftains of the mind: 
 
 Head-servants of the human kind. 
 
 Bring me my dead! 
 
 The autumn sun shall shed 
 
 Its beams athwart the bier's 
 
 Heap'd blooms: a many tears 
 
 Shall flow; his words, in cadence sweet and strong, 
 
 Shall voice the full hearts of the silent throng. 
 
 Bring me my dead! 
 
 *Don Carlos. 
 235 
 
And oh! sad wedded mourner, seeking still 
 For vanish'd hand clasp: drinking in thy fill 
 Of holy grief; forgive, that pious theft 
 Bobs thee of all, save memories, left: 
 Not thine to kneel beside the grassy mound 
 While dies the western glow; and all around 
 Is silence; and the shadows closer creep 
 And whisper softly: All must fall asleep. 
 
 — ^Thomas Henky Hurley 
 
 TO LORD TENNYSON 
 (with a volitmb of verse) 
 
 Master and mage, our prince of song, whom Time, 
 In this your autumn mellow and serene. 
 Crowns ever with fresh laurels, nor less green 
 
 Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime; 
 
 Heir of the riches of the whole world's rhyme, 
 Dow'r'd with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien. 
 With Amo's depth and Avon's golden sheen; 
 
 Singer to whom the singing ages climb, 
 
 Convergent; — ^if the youngest of the choir 
 
 May snatch a flying splendour from your name 
 
 Making his page illustrious, and aspire 
 For one rich moment your regard to claim, 
 
 Suflfer him at your feet to lay his lyre 
 And touch the skirts and fringes of your fame. 
 
 — William Watson 
 
 LACHRYMAE MUSARUM 
 
 Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head: 
 The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er: 
 Carry the last great bard to his last bed. 
 Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. 
 Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore 
 Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore. 
 Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, 
 2S6 
 
Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread. 
 The master's feet shall tread. 
 Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute: 
 The singer of undying songs is dead. 
 
 Ix), in this season pensive-hued and grave. 
 While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leaf 
 From withered Earth's fantastic coronal, 
 With wandering sighs of forest and of wave 
 Mingles the murmur of a people's grief 
 For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall. 
 He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers. 
 Fpr us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame, 
 And soon the winter silence shall be ours: 
 Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame 
 Crowns with no mortal flowers. 
 
 Rapt though he be from us, 
 Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus; 
 Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each 
 Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach; 
 Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach; 
 Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home; 
 Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech; 
 Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam. 
 Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave. 
 His equal friendship crave: 
 And godlike spirits hail him guest^ in speech 
 Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome. 
 
 What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears. 
 To save from visitation of decay? 
 Not in this temporal sunlight, now, that bay 
 Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears 
 Sings he with lips of transitory clay; 
 For he hath joined the chorus of his peers 
 In habitations of the perfect day: 
 His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears, 
 237 
 
And more melodious are henceforth the spheres. 
 Enriched with music stol'n from earth away. 
 
 He hath returned to regions whence he came. 
 Him doth the spirit divine 
 Of universal loveliness reclaim. 
 All nature is his shrine. 
 Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea, 
 In earth's and air's emotion or repose, 
 In every star's august serenity. 
 And in the rapture of the flaming rose. 
 There seek him if ye would not seek in vain. 
 There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole; 
 Yea, and for ever in the human soul 
 Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain. 
 
 For lo! creation's self is one great choir, 
 And what is nature's order but the rhyme 
 Whereto the worlds keep time. 
 
 And all things move with all things from their prime? 
 Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? 
 In far retreats of elemental mind 
 Obscurely comes and goes 
 The imperative breath of song, that as the wind 
 Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. 
 
 Demand of lillies wherefore they are white. 
 Extort her crimson secret from the rose, 
 But ask not of the Muse that she disclose 
 The meaning of the riddle of her might: 
 Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite. 
 Save the enigma of herself, she knows. 
 The master could not tell, with all his lore. 
 Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped: 
 Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said; — 
 Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale. 
 That held in trance the ancient Attic shore. 
 And charms the ages with the notes that o'er 
 238 
 
All woodland chants immortally prevail! 
 And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled. 
 He with diviner silence dwells instead, 
 And on no earthly sea with transient roar, 
 Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail. 
 But far beyond our vision and our hail 
 Is heard for ever and is seen no more. 
 
 No more, O never now. 
 Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow 
 Whereon nor snows of time 
 Have fall'n, nor wintry rime. 
 Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime. 
 Once, in his youth obscure. 
 The maker of this verse, which shall endure 
 By splendour of its theme that cannot die. 
 Beheld thee eye to eye, 
 And touched through thee the hand 
 Of every hero of thy race divine, 
 Ev'n to the sire of all the laurelled line, 
 The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand, 
 With soul as healthful as the poignant brine. 
 Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas. 
 Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine. 
 Glorious Maeonides. 
 Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet : 
 Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget? 
 The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue. 
 Are they not ever goldenly impressed 
 On memory's palimpsest? 
 I see the wizard locks like night that hung, 
 I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod; 
 I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung, 
 The eyes thtA looked through life and gazed on God. 
 
 The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer; 
 The grass of yesteryear 
 Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: 
 SS9 
 
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear: 
 
 Song passes not away. 
 
 Captains and conquerors leave a little dust. 
 
 And kings a dubious legend of their reign; 
 
 The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust: 
 
 The poet doth remain. 
 
 Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive; 
 
 And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime, 
 
 Like Virgil shalt thy race and tongue survive. 
 
 Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time, 
 
 Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, 
 
 And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive; 
 
 While to the measure of the cosmic rune 
 
 For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, 
 
 And heed no more the hum of idle praise 
 
 In that great calm our tumults cannot reach. 
 
 Master who crowd'st our immelodious days 
 
 With flower of perfect speech. 
 
 — William Watson 
 
 240 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 1812-1889 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
BOBERT BROWNING 
 
 There is delight in singing, though none hear 
 
 Beside the singer; and there is delight 
 
 In praising, though the praiser sit alone 
 
 And see the prais'd far off him, far above. 
 
 Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, 
 
 Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee. 
 
 Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale. 
 
 No man hath walk'd along our roads with step 
 
 So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
 
 So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 
 
 Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze 
 
 Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on 
 
 Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 
 
 The Siren waits thee, singing song for song. 
 
 — ^Walter Savage Lansor 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Gone from us! that strong singer of late days — 
 Sweet singer should be strong — ^who, tarrying here. 
 Chose still rough music for his themes austere, 
 Hard-headed, aye but tender-hearted lays. 
 Carefully careless, garden half, half maze. 
 His thoughts he sang, deep thoughts to thinkers dear. 
 Now flashing under gleam of snule or tear. 
 Now veiled in language like a breezy haze 
 Chance-pierced by sunbeams from the lake it covers. 
 He sang man's ways — ^not heights of sage or saint. 
 Not highways broad, not haunts endeared to lovers; 
 He sang life's byways, sang its angles quaint. 
 Its Runic lore inscribed on stave or stone; 
 Song's short-hand strain — its key oft his alone. 
 
 — ^AtJBHET De Verb 
 
 MS 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Gone from our eyes, a loss for evermore. 
 Gone to pursue within an ampler sphere 
 The aims that wing'd thy soaring spirit here ! 
 Gone where she waits thee, who when hving bore 
 A heart, like thine, vein'd with love's purest ore! 
 Gone to behold with eyes serene and clear 
 The world, that to thy life was ever near 
 In gleams, now perfect dawn, of heavenly lore ! 
 Gone from our eyes that noble gracious head, 
 The quick, keen glance, the welcoming frank smile, 
 Hush'd, too, the voice with its strong manly ring. 
 But not the strains in which our souls are fed 
 With thoughts that life of half its pain beguile. 
 And hopes of what the great Beyond shall bring! 
 
 — Sib Theodobe Maetin 
 
 A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS 
 ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 I 
 
 The clearest eyes in all the world they read 
 
 With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true 
 Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew 
 Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed. 
 As they the light of ages quick and dead, 
 Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew 
 Can slay not one of all the works we knew. 
 Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head. 
 
 The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought. 
 
 And moulded of unconquerable thought. 
 And quickened with imperishable flame. 
 
 Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought 
 May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame. 
 Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name. 
 
 244 
 
II 
 
 Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom 
 
 Time is not lord, but servant? What least part 
 
 Of all the fire that fed his living heart. 
 Of all the light more keen than sundawn's bloom 
 That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom 
 
 And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart 
 
 Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou 
 art, 
 A shadow born of terror's barren womb. 
 That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou. 
 To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow. 
 
 That power on him is given thee, — that thy breath 
 Cain make him less than love acclaims him now. 
 
 And hears all time sound back the word it saith? 
 
 What part hast thou then in his glory. Death? 
 
 Ill 
 
 A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: 
 Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand, 
 Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand 
 
 And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve. 
 
 A graceless guerdon we that loved receive 
 For all our love, from that the dearest land 
 Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland. 
 
 Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave. 
 
 Shone on our dreams and memories evermore 
 
 The domes, the towers, the moimtains and the shore 
 That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black 
 
 Seems now the face we loved as he of yore. 
 
 We have given thee love — ^no stint, no stay, no lack: 
 What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back? 
 
 IV 
 
 But he — ^to him, who knows what gift is thine. 
 Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we 
 Pass likewise thither where to-night is he, 
 
 245 
 
Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine 
 And darken round such dreams as half divine 
 Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea 
 Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee, 
 To read with him the secret of thy shrine. 
 
 There too, as here, may song, deUght, and love. 
 The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove, 
 
 Fulfil with joylJie splendour of the sky 
 Till all beneath wax bright as all above: 
 
 But none of all that search the heavens, and try 
 The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye. 
 
 Among the wondrous ways of men and time 
 He went as one that ever found and sought 
 And bore in hand the lamplikfe spirit of thought 
 To illume with instance of its fire sublime 
 The duisk of mapy^a cloudlil^ age and clime. 
 
 No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought. 
 No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought 
 That blooms in wisdom, nought that bums in crime. 
 No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light. 
 No love more lovely than the snows are white. 
 
 No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb. 
 No song-bird singing from some live soul's height. 
 But he might hear, interpret, or illume 
 With sense invasive as the dawn of doom. 
 
 What secret thing of splendour or of shade 
 Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein 
 Man, led of love and life and death and sin, 
 Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid. 
 Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade 
 Of that full soul that had for aim to win 
 Light, silent over time's dark toil and din, 
 S46 
 
Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade? 
 O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee 
 That he might know not of in spirit, and see 
 
 The heart within the heart that seems to strive, 
 The life within the life that seems to be. 
 
 And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive, 
 
 The living sound of all men's souls alive? 
 
 VII 
 
 He held no dream worth waking: so he said. 
 
 He who stands now on death's triumphal steep. 
 Awakened out of life wherein we sleep 
 
 And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. 
 
 But never death for him was dark or dread : 
 
 'Look forth' he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep, 
 All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep 
 
 Vain memory's vision of a vanished head 
 
 As all that lives of all that once was he 
 
 Save that which lightens from his word: but we. 
 Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll. 
 
 Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea, 
 
 Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole. 
 And life and death but shadows of the soul. 
 
 — ^Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 
 December 15. 
 
 {From) 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING: CHIEF POET OF THE 
 AGE 
 
 O strong-souled singer of high themes and wide — 
 Thrice noble in thy work and life alike — 
 Thy genius glides upon a sea whose tide 
 Heaves with a pain arid passion infinite! 
 Men's hearts laid bare beneath thy pitying touch; 
 Strong words that comfort all o'er-wearied much; 
 
 S47 
 
Thoughts whose cahn cadence moulds our spirit-life, 
 Gives strength to bravely bear amid world-strife; 
 And one large Hope, full orb'd as summer sun. 
 That souls shall surely meet when LIFE is won ! 
 So round thy heart our grateful thanks entwine; 
 Men are the better for these songs of thine ! 
 At eve thy muse doth o'er us mellower swell. 
 Strong with the strength of life lived long and well. 
 
 — William G. Kingsland 
 
 THE BURIAL OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Upon St. Michael's Isle 
 They laid him for awhile 
 That he might feel the Ocean's full embrace. 
 And wedded be 
 To that wide sea — 
 The subject and the passion of his race. 
 As Thetis, from some lovely underground 
 Springing, she girds him round 
 With lapping sound 
 And silent space: 
 Then, on more honor bent. 
 She sues the firmament. 
 And bids the hovering, western clouds combine 
 To spread their sabled amber on her lustrous brine. 
 
 It might not be 
 
 He should lie free 
 Forever in the soft light of the sea. 
 
 For lo ! one came, 
 
 Of step more slow than fame, 
 Stooped over him — we heard her breathe his name — 
 
 And, as the light drew back. 
 
 Bore him across the track 
 Of the subservient waves that dare not foil 
 That veiled, maternal figure of its spoil. 
 S48 
 
Ah ! where will she put by 
 
 Her journeying majesty 
 She hath left the lands of the air and sun; 
 She will take no rest till her course be run. 
 
 Follow her far, follow her fast, 
 Until at last, 
 
 Within a narrow transept led, 
 Lo ! she unwraps her face to pall her dead. 
 
 'Tis Englajgd who has travelled far, 
 England who brings 
 Fresh splendor to her galaxy of Kings. 
 We kiss her feet, her hands 
 Where eloquence she stands; 
 Nor dare to lead 
 A wailful choir about the poet dumb 
 Who is become 
 Part of the glory that her sons would bleed 
 To save from scar; 
 Yea, hers in very deed 
 As Runnymede, 
 Or Trafalgar. 
 
 — Michael Field 
 
 ^9 
 
THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER 
 
 On this day Browning died? 
 Say, rather: On the tide 
 That throbs against those glorious palace walls; 
 That rises-pauses-faJls 
 
 With melody and myriad-tinted gleams; 
 
 On that enchanted tide. 
 Half real, and half poured from lovely dreams, 
 A soul of beauty, — a white rhythmic flame, — 
 Passed singing fourth into the Eternal 
 Beauty whence it came. 
 
 — RicHABD Watson Gilder 
 
 250 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 16, 25, 61, 71, 72. 
 Akenside, Mark, 16, 39. 
 Aldrich, Thomas BaUey, 231. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 43, 152, 186. 
 
 Blackie, John Stuart, 134, 185. 
 
 Blackmore, Sir Richard, 71. 
 
 Bowles, William Lisle, 41, 63, 64, 96, 131. 
 
 Brodie, Erasmus Henry, 222. 
 
 Bronte, Anne, 101. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 100, 147, 185, 218. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 43, 200. 
 
 Biuns, Robert, 105. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 133, 143, 166, 179. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 18. 
 
 Churchill, Charles, 56. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 28, 42, 75, 90, 145, 180, 225. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 140. 
 
 Cowper, William, 81. 
 
 De Vere, Aubrey, 20, 124, 168, 228, 243. 
 Drayton, Michael, 15, 25, 33, 53. 
 Dryden, John, 59. 
 
 Ellison, Henry, 154. 
 
 Field, Michael, 249. 
 
 Garrick, David, 38, 89. 
 
 Gay, John, 79. 
 
 Gilder, Richard Watson, 221, 250. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 37, 62. 
 
Harte, Walter, 82. 
 
 Hawker, Robert Stephen, 232. 
 
 Hayley, WDIiam, 95. 
 
 Hemans, Felida Dorothea, 145, 166. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 53, 54. 
 
 Hogg, James, 132. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 120, 150, 198, 218. 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 216. 
 
 Hnrdis, James, 74. 
 
 Hurley, Thomas Henry, 236. 
 
 Japp, Alexander Hay, 203. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 36, 55. 
 Jonson, Ben, 35. 
 
 Keats, John, 19, 27, 66, 112, 184. 
 Eingsland, William G., 248. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 18, 90, 96, 142, 143, 175, 177, 243. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 86, 194. 
 
 Lewis, David, 80. 
 
 Lloyd, Robert, 17. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 19, 42, 66, 114, 217, 225. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 219. 
 
 Martin, Sir Theodore, 244. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 60. 
 
 Mathias, Thomas James, 95. 
 
 Meredith, George, 21, 29, 48, 67, 154, 169, 180, 203, 220. 
 
 Mifflin, Lloyd, 68, 194, 231. 
 
 Milton, John, 36. 
 
 Mitchell, S. Weir, 170, 228. 
 
 Montgomery, James, 112. 
 
 Morris, Sir Lewis, 230. 
 
 Noel, Roden, 190. 
 
Palgrave, Francis Turner, 153. 
 Phillips, Stephen, 68. 
 Piozzi, Hester Lynch, 90. 
 Pope, Alexander, 73. 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, 79. 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 168, 202, 220. 
 
 Savage, Richard, 80. 
 
 Scott, Walter, 73. 
 
 SheUey, Percy Bysshe, 64, 144, 183, 211, 216. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 27. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 33. 
 
 Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 91. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 188. 
 
 Stoddard, Richard Henry, 47, 219. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 21, 49, 56, 128, 247. 
 
 Tabb, John B., 204. 
 Taylor, Bayard, 202. 
 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 20, 67. 
 Thomson, James, 62. 
 
 Van Dyke, Henry, 233. 
 
 Waller, Edmund, 15, 55. 
 
 Warren, T. Herbert, 234. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 26. 
 
 Watson, William, 134, 161, 162, 171, 207, 236, 240. 
 
 Watts, Theodore, 171. 
 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 118, 146. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 26, 64, 108, 110, 132, 133, 165, I'^S.