Still with leaden foot we chase Waning pinion, fainting face; Still with grey hair we stumble on, Till, behold, the vision gone! Where hath fleeting beauty led? To the doorway of the dead. Life is over, life was gay: We have come the primrose way.
EVEN in the bluest noonday of July eath of wind
But all the quarter sounded like a wood; And in the chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song.
A patter and a chatter and a chirp
And a long dying hiss-it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain. Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks Of the near autumn, how the smitten ash Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long In these inconstant latitudes delay,
O not too late from the unbeloved north
Trim your escape! For soon shall this low roof Resound indeed with rain, soon shall your eyes Search the foul garden, search the darkened rooms, Nor find one jewel but the blazing log.
(Written during a dangerous sickness)
SIT and wait a pair of oars
On cis-Elysian river-shores.
Where the immortal dead have sate, 'T is mine to sit and meditate; To re-ascend life's rivulet,
Without remorse, without regret; And sing my Alma Genetix Among the willows of the Styx.
And lo, as my serener soul Did these unhappy shores patrol, And wait with an attentive ear The coming of the gondolier, Your fire-surviving roll I took, Your spirited and happy book;
Whereon, despite my frowning fate,
It did my soul so recreate
That all my fancies fled away
On a Venetian holiday.
1 Life on the Lagoons, by H. F. Brown, originally burned in the fire at Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.'s.
Now, thanks to your triumphant care, Your pages clear as April air,
The sails, the bells, the birds, I know, And the far-off Friulan snow;
The land and sea, the sun and shade, And the blue even lamp-inlaid.
For this, for these, for all, O friend, For your whole book from end to end- For Paron Piero's muttonham
I your defaulting debtor am.
Perchance, reviving, yet may I To your sea-paven city hie, And in a felze, some day yet Light at your pipe my cigarette.
EAR Andrew, with the brindled hair,
Who glory to have thrown in air,
High over arm, the trembling reed, By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed: An equal craft of hand you show The pen to guide, the fly to throw: I count you happy starred; for God, When He with inkpot and with rod Endowed you, bade your fortune lead Forever by the crooks of Tweed, Forever by the woods of song And lands that to the Muse belong; Or if in peopled streets, or in The abhorred pedantic sanhedrim, It should be yours to wander, still Airs of the morn, airs of the hill, The plovery Forest and the seas That break about the Hebrides, Should follow over field and plain And find you at the window pane; And you again see hill and peel, And the bright springs gush at your heel. So went the fiat forth, and so Garrulous like a brook you go,
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