Who were those forgotten sleepers ?
Herdsmen strong, fleet forest-keepers,
Aged men, or widow'd weepers
For their foray-fallen ones?

Babes cut off 'mid childhood's prattle,
Men who lived with herds and cattle,
Clansmen from Culloden battle,

Camerons, or Clandonald's sons?

Blow ye winds, and rains effacing!
Blur the words of love's fond tracing!
Nature to herself embracing

All that human hearts would keep :
What they knew of good or evil
Faded, like the dim primaeval
Day that saw the vast upheaval
Of these hills that hold their sleep.

J. C. Shairp

CXX

THE TWO DESERTS

Not greatly moved with awe am I

To learn that we may spy

Five thousand firmaments beyond our own.
The best that's known

Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small.
View'd close, the Moon's fair ball

Is of ill objects worst,

A corpse in Night's highway, naked, fire-scarr'd,

accurst;

And now they tell

That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst
Too horribly for hell.

So, judging from these two,

As we must do,

The Universe, outside our living Earth,
Was all conceived in the Creator's mirth,
Forecasting at the time Man's spirit deep,
To make dirt cheap.

Put by the Telescope!

Better without it man may see,

Stretch'd awful in the hush'd midnight,
The ghost of his eternity.

Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye
The things which near us lie,
Till Science rapturously hails,
In the minutest water-drop,
A torment of innumerable tails.
These at the least do live.
But rather give

A mind not much to pry

Beyond our royal-fair estate

Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great.

Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are,

Pressing to catch our gaze,

And out of obvious ways
Ne'er wandering far.

CXXI

PHILOMELA

C. Patmore

Hark! ah, the nightingale

The tawny-throated!

Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst !

What triumph! hark !—what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,

Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain

That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain—
Say, will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn

With its cool trees, and night,

And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame?

Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound

With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?

Listen, Eugenia—

How thick the bursts come crowding through the

leaves !

Again-thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!

M. Arnold

CXXII

EVENING MELODY

O that the pines which crown yon steep
Their fires might ne'er surrender !
O that yon fervid knoll might keep,
While lasts the world, its splendour !

Pale poplars on the breeze that lean,
And in the sunset shiver,

O that your golden stems might screen
For aye yon glassy river!

That yon white bird on homeward wing
Soft-sliding without motion,
And now in blue air vanishing

Like snow-flake lost in ocean,

Beyond our sight might never flee,
Yet forward still be flying;

And all the dying day might be
Immortal in its dying!

Pellucid thus in saintly trance,
Thus mute in expectation,

What waits the earth? Deliverance?
Ah no! Transfiguration !

She dreams of that 'New Earth' divine,
Conceived of seed immortal;

She sings 'Not mine the holier shrine,
Yet mine the steps and portal!'

A. de Vere

CXXIII

A FAREWELL

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver :

No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:

No where by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine aspen shiver ;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

A. Lord Tennyson

CXXIV

A DIRGE

Naiad, hid beneath the bank
By the willowy river-side,
Where Narcissus gently sank,
Where unmarried Echo died,
Unto thy serene repose

Waft the stricken Anterôs.

Where the tranquil swan is borne,
Imaged in a watery glass,

Where the sprays of fresh pink thorn
Stoop to catch the boats that pass,
Where the earliest orchis grows,
Bury thou fair Anterôs.

Glide we by, with prow and oar:
Ripple shadows off the wave,
And reflected on the shore

Haply play about his grave.
Folds of summer-light enclose
All that once was Anterôs.

On a flickering wave we gaze,
Not upon his answering eyes:
Flower and bird we scarce can praise,
Having lost his sweet replies:

Cold and mute the river flows

With our tears for Anterôs.

W. Johnson-Cory

CXXV

TO A FRIEND

Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind?—
He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul'd of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.