Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Or Dardan Brutus gave our isle a name,

A prince of Albion's lineage graced the wood,
The scene of wars, and stained with lover's blood.

Thomas Tickell.

IN

LINES

WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

this lone open glade I lie,

Screened by deep boughs on either hand; And at its head, to stay the eye,

Those black-crowned, red-boled pine-trees stand.

Birds here make song, each bird has his,

Across the girdling city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretched out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,

Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world which roars hard by
Be others happy, if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurled,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace forever new!
When I, who watch them, am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass;
The flowers close, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make and cannot mar!

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Matthew Arnold.

HOLLAND HOUSE.

THOU

HOU hill, whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race,
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears!
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks and unpolluted air!

How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees,
Thy noontide shadow and the evening breeze!
His image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thy evening breezes, and thy noonday shade.
From other ills, however fortune frowned,
Some refuge in the Muse's art I found;
Reluctant now I touch the trembling string,
Bereft of him who taught me how to sing;
And these sad accents, murmured o'er his urn,
Betray that absence they attempt to mourn.

Thomas Tickell.

SONNET

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1802.

ARTH has not anything to show more fair:

EARTH

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep,
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER.

[ORTALITY, behold and fear,

M What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within this heap of stones;
Here they lie, had realins and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands
Where from their pulpits, soiled with dust,
They preach, in greatness is no trust.
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royal'st seed
That the earth did e'er suck in

Since the first man died for sin;

Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they died;

Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropped from the ruined sides of kings.

Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

Francis Beaumont.

IN

TWO QUEENS IN WESTMINSTER.

N the Chapel of Henry the Seventh,
Where the sculptured ceilings rare
Show the conquered stone-work, hanging
Like cobweb films in air,

There are held two shrines in keeping,
Whose memories closely press:

The tomb of the Rose of Scotland,
And that of stout Queen Bess.

Each side of the sleeping Tudor
They rest; and over their dust
The canopies mould and darken
And the gilding gathers rust;
While low on the marble tablet,
Each effigied in stone,

They lie, as they went to judgment,
Uncrowned, and cold, and alone.

Beside them pass the thousands
Each day; and hundreds strive
To read the whole of the lesson
That knoweth no man alive,
Of which was more to be pitied,

And which was more to be feared,

[ocr errors]

The strong queen, with the nerve of manhood, Or the woman too close endeared.

One weakened her land with faction,
One strengthened with bands of steel;

« AnteriorContinuar »