Yet, your Chrysostom, you praised him, Do you mind that deed of Até Reading "De Virginitate," From the first line to the last? How I said at ending, solemn, As I turned and looked at you, That St. Simeon on the column Had had somewhat less to do? For we sometimes gently wrangled ; Ay, and sometimes thought your Porsons For the rest-a mystic moaning With wild eyes the vision shone in- WINE OF CYPRUS. And Medea we saw burning At her nature's planted stake; And proud Edipus fate-scorning While the cloud came on to breakWhile the cloud came on slow-slower, Till he stood discrowned, resigned!But the reader's voice dropped lower When the poet called him BLIND! Ah, my gossip! you were older, And I turned from hill and lea, Now Christ bless you with the one light All your kindness, friend of mine, So, to come back to the drinking And whoever be the speaker, None can murmur with a sighThat, in drinking from that beaker, I am sipping like a fly. THREE fishers went sailing down to the west, Each thought of the woman who loved him the best, Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower, And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down ; And they looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, While the night rack came rolling up, ragged and brown; But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbour bar be moaning. Three corpses lie out on the shining sands, In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are weeping and wringing their hands, THE SANDS OF DEE. For those who will never come home to the town. THE SANDS OF DEE. "On, Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands o' Dee;" The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, And all alone went she. The creeping tide came up along the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see; The blinding mist came down and hid the land- "Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair- O' drowned maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair, They rowed her in across the rolling foam. The cruel, crawling foam, The cruel, hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea : But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home. Across the sands o' Dee. THE DAY OF THE LORD. THE Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand! A nation sleeps starving on heaps of gold; The night is darkest before the dawn- Gather you, gather you, angels of God- Come! for the Earth is grown coward and old— Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell— Idleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule, Gather, and fall in the snare! Hirelings and Mammonites, Pedants and Knaves, Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold, True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God, Each age of gold was an iron age too, And the meekest of saints may find stern work to do, In the Day of the Lord at hand. |