A FOREST IN BOSNIA

Spirit of Trajan! What a world is here.
What remnant of old Europe in this wood
Of life primæval rude as in the year
When thy first legions by the Danube stood.
These are the very Dacians they subdued,
Swineherds and shepherds clad in skins of deer
And fox and marten still, a bestial brood,
Than their own swine begotten swinelier.
The fair oak-forest, their first heritage,
Pastures them still, and still the hollow oak
Receives them in its bosom. Still o'erhead
Upon the stag-head tops, grown hoar with age,
Calm buzzards sit and ancient ravens croak,
And all with solemn life is tenanted.

LILAC AND GOLD AND GREEN

Lilac and gold and green!

Those are the colours I love the best,

Spring's own raiment untouched and clean,

When the world is awake and yet hardly dressed,

And the stranger sun, her bridegroom shy,
Looks at her bosom and wonders why

She is so beautiful, he so blest.

Those were the colours you wore to-day. Robed you were in them fold on fold,

Clothed in the light of your love's delay. And I held you thus in my arms, once only, And wondered still, as you left me lonely, How the world's beauty was changed to grey.

I would die for the truth of those colours true :

Lilac for loyalty, gold for my queen,

And green the faith of my love for you.

Here is a posy of all the three.

My heart is with it. So think of me,

And our weeping skies shall once more be blue.

FROM "IN VINCULIS"

Behold the Court of Penance. Four gaunt walls Shutting out all things but the upper heaven. Stone flags for floor, where daily from their stalls The human cattle in a circle driven

Tread down their pathway to a mire uneven, Pale-faced, sad-eyed, and mute as funerals. Woe to the wretch whose weakness unforgiven Falters a moment in the track or falls.

Yet is there consolation. Overhead

The pigeons build and the loud jackdaws talk, And once in the wind's eye, like a ship moored, A sea-gull flew and I was comforted.

Even here the heavens declare thy glory, Lord,
And the free firmament thy handiwork.

My prison has its pleasures. Every day
At breakfast-time, spare meal of milk and bread,
Sparrows come trooping in familiar way
With head aside beseeching to be fed.
A spider too for me has spun her thread

Across the prison rules, and a brave mouse Watches in sympathy the warder's tread, These two my fellow prisoners in the house.

But about dusk in the rooms opposite

I see lamps lighted, and upon the blind A shadow passes all the evening through. It is the gaoler's daughter fair and kind And full of pity-so I image it— Till the stars rise, and night begins anew.

AUSTIN DOBSON

Born 1840

A DEAD LETTER

"A cœur blessé-l'ombre et le silence"

H. DE BALZAC

I

I drew it from its china tomb;

It came out feebly scented

With some thin ghost of past perfume
That dust and days had lent it.

An old, old letter,-folded still!
To read with due composure,
I sought the sun-lit window-sill
Above the grey enclosure,

That glimmering in the sultry haze,
Faint-flowered, dimly shaded,

Slumbered like Goldsmith's Madam Blaize,
Bedizened and brocaded.