Nor stands the seer who raised him less august
 Before us, nor in judgment frail and rathe,
 Less constant or less loving or less just,
 But fruitful-ripe and full of tender faith,
 Holding all high and gentle names in trust
 Of time for honour; so his quickening breath
 Called from the darkness of their martyred dust
 Our sweet Saints Alice and Elizabeth,
 Revived and reinspired
 With speech from heavenward fired
 By love to say what Love the Archangel saith
 Only, nor may such word
 Save by such ears be heard
 As hear the tongues of angels after death
 Descending on them like a dove
 Has taken all earthly sense of thought away but love.
34.
All sweet, all sacred, all heroic things,
 All generous names and loyal, and all wise,
 With all his heart in all its wayfarings
 He sought, and worshipped, seeing them with his eyes
 In very present glory, clothed with wings
 Of words and deeds and dreams immortal, rise
 Visible more than living slaves and kings,
 Audible more than actual vows and lies:
 These, with scorn's fieriest rod,
 These and the Lord their God,
 The Lord their likeness, tyrant of the skies
As they Lord Gods of earth,
 These with a rage of mirth
 He mocked and scourged and spat on, in such wise
 That none might stand before his rod,
 And these being slain the Spirit alone be lord or God.
35.
For of all souls for all time glorious none
 Loved Freedom better, of all who have loved her best,
 Than he who wrote that scripture of the sun
 Writ as with fire and light on heaven's own crest,
 Of all words heard on earth the noblest one
 That ever spake for souls and left them blest:
 Gladly we should rest ever, had we won
 Freedom: we have lost, and very gladly rest.
O poet hero, lord
 And father, we record
 Deep in the burning tablets of the breast
 Thankfully those divine
 And living words of thine
 For faith and comfort in our hearts imprest
 With strokes engraven past hurt of years
 And lines inured with fire of immemorial tears.
36.
But who being less than thou shall sing of thee
 Words worthy of more than pity or less than scorn?
 Who sing the golden garland woven of three,
 Thy daughters, Graces mightier than the morn,
 More godlike than the graven gods men see
 Made all but all immortal, human born
And heavenly natured? With the first came He,
 Led by the living hand, who left forlorn
 Life by his death, and time
 More by his life sublime
 Than by the lives of all whom all men mourn,
 And even for mourning praise
 Heaven, as for all those days
 These dead men's lives clothed round with glories worn
 By memory till all time lie dead,
 And higher than all behold the bay round Shakespeare's head.
37.
Then, fairer than the fairest Grace of ours,
 Came girt with Grecian gold the second Grace,
And verier daughter of his most perfect hours
 Than any of latter time or alien place
 Named, or with hair inwoven of English flowers
 Only, nor wearing on her statelier face
 The lordlier light of Athens. All the Powers
 That graced and guarded round that holiest race,
 That heavenliest and most high
 Time hath seen live and die,
 Poured all their power upon him to retrace
 The erased immortal roll
 Of Love's most sovereign scroll
 And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace,
 The scroll that on Aspasia's knees
 Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.
38.
Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air,
 Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third,
 With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair
 Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird
 Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair
 As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird
 The walls engirdling with a circling stair
 My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word
 Fell from her flowerlike mouth
 Not sweet with all the south;
 As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred
 And spake, as o'er it shone
 That bright Pentameron,
 And his own vines again and chestnuts heard
 Boccaccio: nor swift Elsa's chime
 Mixed not her golden babble with Petrarca's rhyme.
39.
No lovelier laughed the garden which receives
 Yet, and yet hides not from our following eyes
 With soft rose-laurels and low strawberry-leaves,
 Ternissa, sweet as April-coloured skies,
 Bowed like a flowering reed when May's wind heaves
 The reed-bed that the stream kisses and sighs,
 In love that shrinks and murmurs and believes
 What yet the wisest of the starriest wise
 Whom Greece might ever hear
 Speaks in the gentlest ear
 That ever heard love's lips philosophize
 With such deep-reasoning words
 As blossoms use and birds,
 Nor heeds Leontion lingering till they rise
Far off, in no wise over far,
 Beneath a heaven all amorous of its first-born star.
40.
What sound, what storm and splendour of what fire,
 Darkening the light of heaven, lightening the night,
 Rings, rages, flashes round what ravening pyre
 That makes time's face pale with its reflex light
 And leaves on earth, who seeing might scarce respire,
 A shadow of red remembrance? Right nor might
 Alternating wore ever shapes more dire
 Nor manifest in all men's awful sight
 In form and face that wore
 Heaven's light and likeness more
 Than these, or held suspense men's hearts at height
More fearful, since man first
 Slaked with man's blood his thirst,
 Than when Rome clashed with Hannibal in fight,
 Till tower on ruining tower was hurled
 Where Scipio stood, and Carthage was not in the world.
41.
Nor lacked there power of purpose in his hand
 Who carved their several praise in words of gold
 To bare the brows of conquerors and to brand,
 Made shelterless of laurels bought and sold
 For price of blood or incense, dust or sand,
 Triumph or terror. He that sought of old
 His father Ammon in a stranger's land,
 And shrank before the serpentining fold,
Stood in our seer's wide eye
 No higher than man most high,
 And lowest in heart when highest in hope to hold
 Fast as a scripture furled
 The scroll of all the world
 Sealed with his signet: nor the blind and bold
 First thief of empire, round whose head
 Swarmed carrion flies for bees, on flesh for violets fed.[1]
42.
As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,
 He saw the light of death, riotous and red,
 Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis
 Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,
Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,
 The steely snows of Russia, for the tread
 Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss
 The snaky lines of blood violently shed.
 Like living creeping things
 That writhe but have no stings
 To scare adulterers from the imperial bed
 Bowed with its load of lust,
 Or chill the ravenous gusts
 That made her body a fire from heel to head;
 Or change her high bright spirit and clear,
 For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.
43.
As light that blesses, hallowing with a look;
 He saw the godhead in Vittoria's face
Shine soft on Buonarroti's, till he took,
 Albeit himself God, a more godlike grace,
 A strength more heavenly to confront and brook
 All ill things coiled about his worldly race,
 From the bright scripture of that present book
 Wherein his tired grand eyes got power to trace
 Comfort more sweet than youth,
 And hope whose child was truth,
 And love that brought forth sorrow for a space,
 Only that she might bear
 Joy: these things, written there,
 Made even his soul's high heaven a heavenlier place,
 Perused with eyes whose glory and glow
 Had in their fires the spirit of Michael Angelo.
44.
With balms and dews of blessing he consoled
 The fair fame wounded by the black priest's fang,
 Giovanna's, and washed off her blithe and bold
 Boy-bridegroom's blood, that seemed so long to hang
 On her fair hand, even till the stain of old
 Was cleansed with healing song, that after sang
 Sharp truth by sweetest singers' lips untold
 Of pale Beatrice, though her death-note rang
 From other strings divine
 Ere his rekindling line
 With yet more piteous and intolerant pang
 Pierced all men's hearts anew
 That heard her passion through
 Till fierce from throes of fiery pity sprang
Wrath, armed for chase of monstrous beasts,
 Strong to lay waste the kingdom of the seed of priests.
45.
He knew the high-souled humbleness, the mirth
 And majesty of meanest men born free,
 That made with Luther's or with Hofer's birth
 The whole world worthier of the sun to see:
 The wealth of spirit among the snows, the dearth
 Wherein souls festered by the servile sea
 That saw the lowest of even crowned heads on earth
 Thronged round with worship in Parthenope.
 His hand bade Justice guide
 Her child Tyrannicide,
 Light winged by fire that brings the dawn to be;
And pierced with Tyrrel's dart
 Again the riotous heart
 That mocked at mercy's tongue and manhood's knee:
 And oped the cell where kinglike death
 Hung o'er her brows discrowned who bare Elizabeth.
46.
Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind
 He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one,
 For the base heart that soiled the starry mind
 Stern, for the father in his child undone
 Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed
 With their sweet image visibly set on
 As by God's hand, clear as his own designed
 The likeness radiant out of ages gone
That none may now destroy
 Of that high Roman boy
 Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son
 True-born of sovereign seed,
 Foredoomed even thence to bleed,
 The stately grace of bright Cæsarion,
 The head unbent, the heart unbowed,
 That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud.
47.
With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus
 At once by service and similitude,
 Service devout and worship emulous
 Of the same golden Muses once they wooed,
 The names and shades adored of all of us,
 The nurslings of the brave world's earlier brood,
Grown gods for us themselves: Theocritus
 First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed
 With blessings bright like tears
 From the old memorial years,
 And loves and lovely laughters, every mood
 Sweet as the drops that fell
 Of their own œnomel
 From living lips to cheer the multitude
 That feeds on words divine, and grows
 More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.
48.
Peace, the soft seal of long life's closing story,
 The silent music that no strange note jars,
 Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory
 Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars
Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary
 With much long warfare, and with gradual bars
 Blindly pent in: but these, being transitory,
 Broke, and the power came back that passion mars:
 And at the lovely last
 Above all anguish past
 Before his own the sightless eyes like stars
 Arose that watched arise
 Like stars in other skies
 Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars
 The Dioscurian songs divine
 That lighten all the world with lightning of their line.
49.
He sang the last of Homer, having sung
 The last of his Ulysses. Bright and wide
For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung
 About the day-star, doubtful to divide,
 Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue
 Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried,
 Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung,
 Homer, and grey Laertes at his side
 Kingly as kings are none
 Beneath a later sun,
 And the sweet maiden ministering in pride
 To sovereign and to sage
 In their more sweet old age:
 These things he sang, himself as old, and died.
 And if death be not, if life be,
 As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.
50.
Poet whose large-eyed loyalty of love
 Was pure toward all high poets, all their kind
 And all bright words and all sweet works thereof;
 Strong like the sun, and like the sunlight kind;
 Heart that no fear but every grief might move
 Wherewith men's hearts were bound of powers that bind;
 The purest soul that ever proof could prove
 From taint of tortuous or of envious mind;
 Whose eyes elate and clear
 Nor shame nor ever fear
 But only pity or glorious wrath could blind;
 Name set for love apart,
 Held lifelong in my heart,
 Face like a father's toward my face inclined;
 No gilts like thine are mine to give,
 Who by thine own words only bid thee hail, and live.

 

[1]

Thy lifelong works, Napoleon, who shall write?
 Time, in his children's blood who takes delight.
From the Greek of Landor.

NOTES.

Stanza
6.See note to the Imaginary Conversation of Leofric and Godiva for the exquisite first verses extant from the hand of Landor.
10.The Poems of Walter Savage Landor: 1795. Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope: 1795. Gebir.
13.Count Julian: Ines de Castro: Ippolito di Este.
14, 15.Poems 'on the Dead.'
16.Imaginary Conversations: Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney.
17, 18.Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum (1815): Corythus; Dryope; Pan et Pitys; Coresus et Callirrhoe; Helena ad Pudoris Aram.
19, 20.Imaginary Conversations: Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble; Æschines and Phocion; Kosciusko and Poniatowski; Milton and Marvell; Roger Ascham and Lady Jane Grey; Tiberius and Vipsania.
21, 22, 23.Hellenics: To Corinth.
24.Hellenics: Regeneration.
25.The Hamadryad; Acon and Rhodope.
26.The Shades of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia.
27.Enallos and Cymodameia.
28.The Children of Venus.
29.Cupid and Pan.
30.The Death of Clytemnestra; The Madness of Orestes; The Prayer of Orestes.
32.The Last of Ulysses.
33.Imaginary Conversations. Lady Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt.
35.Pro monumento super milites regio jussu interemptos.
36.The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare.
37.Pericles and Aspasia.
38.The Pentameron.
39.Imaginary Conversations: Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa.
40.Marcellus and Hannibal: P. Scipio Æmilianus, Polybius, and Panætius.
41.Alexander and Priest of Ammon: Bonaparte and the President of the Senate.
42.The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkoff.
43.Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarroti.
44.Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert; a Trilogy: Five Scenes (Beatrice Cenci).
45.Luther's Parents: The Death of Hofer: (Imaginary Conversations) Andrew Hofer, Count Metternich, and the Emperor Francis; Judge Wolfgang and Henry of Melchthal: The Coronation. Tyrannicide (The Last Fruit off an Old Tree): Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus: Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn.
46.Essex and Spenser (Imaginary Conversations): Essex and Bacon: Antony and Octavius (Scenes for the Study).
47.Critical Essays on Theocritus and Catullus.
48, 49.Heroic Idyls; Homer, Laertes, and Agatha.

'J'en passe, et des meilleurs.' But who can enumerate all or half our obligations to the illimitable and inexhaustible genius of the great man whose life and whose labour lasted even from the generation of our fathers' fathers to our own? Hardly any reader can feel, I think, so deeply as I feel the inadequacy of my poor praise and too imperfect gratitude to the majestic subject of their attempted expression; but 'such as I had have I given him.'

GRAND CHORUS OF BIRDS

FROM

ARISTOPHANES

Attempted in English verse after the original metre.

I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapæstic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language; and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees: and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line—which I doubt—could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause, in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who

'dance as 'twere to the music
 Their own hoofs make.'

I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation: but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes.

THE BIRDS.

(685-723.)

Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations,
 That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations,
 Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures fast fleeing,
 Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being:
 Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts are eternal;
 That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things aright as to matters supernal,
 Of the being of birds and beginning of gods, and of streams, and the dark beyond reaching,
 Truthfully knowing aright, in my name bid Prodicus pack with his preaching.
It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and hell's broad border,
 Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb of the dark without order
 First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched in her bosom,
 Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a blossom,
 Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning.
 He, after his wedlock with Chaos, whose wings are of darkness, in hell broad-burning,
 For his nestlings begat him the race of us first, and upraised us to light new-lighted.
 And before this was not the race of the gods, until all things by Love were united;
 And of kind united with kind in communion of nature the sky and the sea are
 Brought forth, and the earth, and the race of the gods everlasting and blest. So that we are
 Far away the most ancient of all things blest. And that we are of Love's generation
 There are manifest manifold signs. We have wings, and with us have the Loves habitation;
 And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom of them ended,
 Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued, by the help of us only befriended,
 With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb staring and splendid.
All best good things that befall men come from us birds, as is plain to all reason:
 For first we proclaim and make known to them spring, and the winter and autumn in season;
 Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric, in shrill-voiced emigrant number,
 And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season, and slumber;
 And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs if it freezes.
 And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the breezes,
 And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. Then does the swallow
 Give you notice to sell your greatcoat, and provide something light for the heat that's to follow.
 Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you, Dodona, nay, Phœbus Apollo.
 For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in all things your carriage,
 Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any one's marriage.
 And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to discerning prediction:
 Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon: you sneeze, and the sign's as a bird for conviction:
 All tokens are 'birds' with you—sounds too, and lackeys, and donkeys. Then must it not follow
 That we ARE to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in prophetic Apollo?

October 19, 1880.

OFF SHORE.

When the might of the summer
 Is most on the sea;
 When the days overcome her
 With joy but to be,
 With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free,
But for hours upon hours
 As a thrall she remains
 Spell-bound as with flowers
 And content in their chains,
 And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes;
Then only, far under
In the depths of her hold,
 Some gleam of its wonder
 Man's eye may behold,
 Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold.
Still deeper and dimmer
 And goodlier they glow
 For the eyes of the swimmer
 Who scans them below
 As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and snow.
Soft blossomless frondage
 And foliage that gleams
 As to prisoners in bondage
 The light of their dreams,
The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams.
Not as prisoners entombed
 Waxen haggard and wizen,
 But consoled and illumed
 In the depths of their prison
 With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen,
From the banks and the beds
 Of the waters divine
 They lift up their heads
 And the flowers of them shine
 Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them of water that glimmers like wine.
Bright bank over bank
 Making glorious the gloom,
 Soft rank upon rank,
 Strange bloom after bloom,
 They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea's womb.
Through the subtle and tangible
 Gloom without form,
 Their branches, infrangible
 Ever of storm
 Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the woodland when April is warm.
As the flight of the thunder, full
 Charged with its word,
 Dividing the wonderful
Depths like a bird,
 Speaks wrath and delight to the heart of the night that exults to have heard,
So swiftly, though soundless
 In silence's ear,
 Light, winged from the boundless
 Blue depths full of cheer,
 Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not before him, but hear.
Light, perfect and visible
 Godhead of God,
 God indivisible,
 Lifts but his rod,
 And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness is light at his nod.
At the touch of his wand,
 At the nod of his head
 From the spaces beyond
 Where the dawn hath her bed,
 Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one risen from the dead.
He puts forth his hand,
 And the mountains are thrilled
 To the heart as they stand
 In his presence, fulfilled
 With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and her sorrows are stilled.
The moan of her travail
 That groans for the light
 Till dayspring unravel
 The weft of the night,
At the sound of the strings of the music of morning, falls dumb with delight.
He gives forth his word,
 And the word that he saith,
 Ere well it be heard,
 Strikes darkness to death;
 For the thought of his heart is the sunrise, and dawn as the sound of his breath.
And the strength of its pulses
 That passion makes proud
 Confounds and convulses
 The depths of the cloud
 Of the darkness that heaven was engirt with, divided and rent as a shroud,
As the veil of the shrine
 Of the temple of old
 When darkness divine
 Over noonday was rolled;
 So the heart of the night by the pulse of the light is convulsed and controlled.
And the sea's heart, groaning
 For glories withdrawn,
 And the waves' mouths, moaning
 All night for the dawn,
 Are uplift as the hearts and the mouths of the singers on leaside and lawn.
And the sound of the quiring
 Of all these as one,
 Desired and desiring
Till dawn's will be done,
 Fills full with delight of them heaven till it burns as the heart of the sun.
Till the waves too inherit
 And waters take part
 In the sense of the spirit
 That breathes from his heart,
 And are kindled with music as fire when the lips of the morning part,
With music unheard
 In the light of her lips,
 In the life-giving word
 Of the dewfall that drips
 On the grasses of earth, and the wind that enkindles the wings of the ships.
White glories of wings
 As of seafaring birds
 That flock from the springs
 Of the sunrise in herds
 With the wind for a herdsman, and hasten or halt at the change of his words.
As the watchword's change
 When the wind's note shifts,
 And the skies grow strange,
 And the white squall drifts
 Up sharp from the sea-line, vexing the sea till the low cloud lifts.
At the charge of his word
 Bidding pause, bidding haste,
 When the ranks are stirred
And the lines displaced,
 They scatter as wild swans parting adrift on the wan green waste.
At the hush of his word
 In a pause of his breath
 When the waters have heard
 His will that he saith,
 They stand as a flock penned close in its fold for division of death.
As a flock by division
 Of death to be thinned,
 As the shades in a vision
 Of spirits that sinned;
 So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds on the stream of the wind.
But the sun stands fast,
 And the sea burns bright,
 And the flight of them past
 Is no more than the flight
 Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and afloat in the light.
Like flowers upon flowers
 In a festival way
 When hours after hours
 Shed grace on the day,
 White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through the snows of the spray.
Like snow-coloured petals
 Of blossoms that flee
 From storm that unsettles
The flower as the tree
 They flutter, a legion of flowers on the wing, through the field of the sea.
Through the furrowless field
 Where the foam-blossoms blow
 And the secrets are sealed
 Of their harvest below
 They float in the path of the sunbeams, as flakes or as blossoms of snow.
Till the sea's ways darken,
 And the God, withdrawn,
 Give ear not or hearken
 If prayer on him fawn,
 And the sun's self seem but a shadow, the noon as a ghost of the dawn.
No shadow, but rather
 God, father of song,
 Shew grace to me, Father
 God, loved of me long,
 That I lose not the light of thy face, that my trust in thee work me not wrong.
While yet I make forward
 With face toward thee
 Not turned yet in shoreward,
 Be thine upon me;
 Be thy light on my forehead or ever I turn it again from the sea.
As a kiss on my brow
 Be the light of thy grace,
 Be thy glance on me now
From the pride of thy place:
 As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face of thy face.
Thou wast father of olden
 Times hailed and adored,
 And the sense of thy golden
 Great harp's monochord
 Was the joy in the soul of the singers that hailed thee for master and lord.
Fair father of all
 In thy ways that have trod,
 That have risen at thy call,
 That have thrilled at thy nod,
 Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to be God.
As my soul has been dutiful
 Only to thee,
 O God most beautiful,
 Lighten thou me,
 As I swim through the dim long rollers, with eyelids uplift from the sea.
Be praised and adored of us
 All in accord,
 Father and lord of us
 Alway adored,
 The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light of us all and our lord.
At the sound of thy lyre,
 At the touch of thy rod,
 Air quickens to fire
By the foot of thee trod,
 The saviour and healer and singer, the living and visible God.
The years are before thee
 As shadows of thee,
 As men that adore thee,
 As cloudlets that flee:
 But thou art the God, and thy kingdom is heaven, and thy shrine is the sea.

AFTER NINE YEARS.

TO JOSEPH MAZZINI.

Primâ dicte mihi, summâ dicende Camenâ.

1.