“‘Dead and gone,’—a sorry burden of the Ballad of Life.”

Death’s Jest Book.

Say, fair maids, maying
In gardens green,
In deep dells straying,
What end hath been
Two Mays between
Of the flowers that shone
And your own sweet queen—
“They are dead and gone!”

Say, grave priests, praying
In dule and teen,
From cells decaying
What have ye seen
Of the proud and mean,
Of Judas and John,
Of the foul and clean?—
“They are dead and gone!”

ENVOY.

Through the mad world’s scene,
We are drifting on,
To this tune, I ween,
“They are dead and gone!”

There’s a joy without canker or cark,
There’s a pleasure eternally new,
’Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that’s ancient and blue;
Unchipp’d all the centuries through
It has pass’d, since the chime of it rang,
And they fashion’d it, figure and hue,
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

These dragons (their tails, you remark,
Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),—
When Noah came out of the ark,
Did these lie in wait for his crew?
They snorted, they snapp’d, and they slew,
They were mighty of fin and of fang,
And their portraits Celestials drew
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

ENVOY.

Come, snarl at my ecstasies, do,
Kind critic, your “tongue has a tang”
But—a sage never heeded a shrew
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

(AFTER VILLON.)

Nay, tell me now in what strange air
The Roman Flora dwells to-day.
Where Archippiada hides, and where
Beautiful Thais has passed away?
Whence answers Echo, afield, astray,
By mere or stream,—around, below?
Lovelier she than a woman of clay;
Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?

Where is wise Héloïse, that care
Brought on Abeilard, and dismay?
All for her love he found a snare,
A maimed poor monk in orders grey;
And where’s the Queen who willed to slay
Buridan, that in a sack must go
Afloat down Seine,—a perilous way—
Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?

ENVOY.

Prince, all this week thou need’st not pray,
Nor yet this year the thing to know.
One burden answers, ever and aye,
“Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?”

Nay, be you pardoner or cheat,
Or cogger keen, or mumper shy,
You’ll burn your fingers at the feat,
And howl like other folks that fry.
All evil folks that love a lie!
And where goes gain that greed amasses,
By wile, and trick, and thievery?
’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

Rhyme, rail, dance, play the cymbals sweet,
With game, and shame, and jollity,
Go jigging through the field and street,
With myst’ry and morality;
Win gold at gleek,—and that will fly,
Where all you gain at passage passes,—
And that’s?  You know as well as I,
’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

ENVOY.

Your clothes, your hose, your broidery,
Your linen that the snow surpasses,
Or ere they’re worn, off, off they fly,
’Tis all to taverns and to lasses!

Far in the Past I peer, and see
A Child upon the Nursery floor,
A Child with books upon his knee,
Who asks, like Oliver, for more!
The number of his years is IV,
And yet in Letters hath he skill,
How deep he dives in Fairy-lore!
The Books I loved, I love them still!

One gift the Fairies gave me: (Three
They commonly bestowed of yore)
The Love of Books, the Golden Key
That opens the Enchanted Door;
Behind it BLUEBEARD lurks, and o’er
And o’er doth JACK his Giants kill,
And there is all ALADDIN’S store,—
The Books I loved, I love them still!

ENVOY.

Fate, that art Queen by shore and sea,
We bow submissive to thy will,
Ah grant, by some benign decree,
The Books I loved—to love them still.

The soft wind from the south land sped,
He set his strength to blow,
From forests where Adonis bled,
And lily flowers a-row:
He crossed the straits like streams that flow,
The ocean dark as wine,
To my true love to whisper low,
To be your Valentine.

The Spring half-raised her drowsy head,
Besprent with drifted snow,
“I’ll send an April day,” she said,
“To lands of wintry woe.”
He came,—the winter’s overthrow
With showers that sing and shine,
Pied daisies round your path to strow,
To be your Valentine.

ENVOY.

Spring, Swallow, South Wind, even so,
Their various voice combine;
But that they crave on me bestow,
To be your Valentine.

(Les Œuvres de Monsieur Molière.  A Paris,
chez Louys Billaine, à la Palme.
M.D.C. LXVI.)

LA COUR.

When these Old Plays were new, the King,
Beside the Cardinal’s chair,
Applauded, ’mid the courtly ring,
The verses of Molière;
Point-lace was then the only wear,
Old Corneille came to woo,
And bright Du Parc was young and fair,
When these Old Plays were new!

LA COMÉDIE.

LA VILLE.

Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tastes of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know:
Old school books, useless long ago,
Old Logics, where the spirit, railed in,
Could scarcely answer “yes” or “no”—
The many things I’ve tried and failed in!

Here’s Villon, in morocco fine,
(The Poet starved, in mud and snow,)
Glatigny does not crave to dine,
And René’s tears forget to flow.
And here’s a work by Mrs. Crowe,
With hosts of ghosts and bogies jailed in;
Ah, all my ghosts have gone below—
The many things I’ve tried and failed in!

ENVOY.

Prince, tastes may differ; mine and thine
Quite other balances are scaled in;
May you succeed, though I repine—
“The many things I’ve tried and failed in!”

Swift as sound of music fled
When no more the organ sighs,
Sped as all old days are sped,
So your lips, love, and your eyes,
So your gentle-voiced replies
Mine one hour in sleep that seem,
Rise and flit when slumber flies,
Following darkness like a dream!

Like the scent from roses red,
Like the dawn from golden skies,
Like the semblance of the dead
From the living love that hies,
Like the shifting shade that lies
On the moonlight-silvered stream,
So you rise when dreams arise,
Following darkness like a dream!

ENVOY.

Sleep, that giv’st what Life denies,
Shadowy bounties and supreme,
Bring the dearest face that flies
Following darkness like a dream!

Fair islands of the silver fleece,
Hoards of unsunned, uncounted gold,
Whose havens are the haunts of Peace,
Whose boys are in our quarrel bold;
Our bolt is shot, our tale is told,
Our ship of state in storms may toss,
But ye are young if we are old,
Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!

Ay, we must dwindle and decrease,
Such fates the ruthless years unfold;
And yet we shall not wholly cease,
We shall not perish unconsoled;
Nay, still shall Freedom keep her hold
Within the sea’s inviolate fosse,
And boast her sons of English mould,
Ye Islands of the Southern Cross!

ENVOY.

Britannia, when thy hearth’s a-cold,
When o’er thy grave has grown the moss,
Still Rule Australia shall be trolled
In Islands of the Southern Cross!

Where smooth the southern waters run
By rustling leagues of poplars grey,
Beneath a veiled soft southern sun,
We wandered out of yesterday,
Went maying through that ancient May
Whose fallen flowers are fragrant yet,
And loitered by the fountain spray
With Aucassin and Nicolette.

The grass-grown paths are trod of none
Where through the woods they went astray.
The spider’s traceries are spun
Across the darkling forest way.
There come no knights that ride to slay,
No pilgrims through the grasses wet,
No shepherd lads that sang their say
With Aucassin and Nicolette!

ENVOY.

Prince, ’tis a melancholy lay!
For youth, for love we both regret.
How fair they seem, how far away,
With Aucassin and Nicolette!

AFTER FROISSART.

Not Jason nor Medea wise,
I crave to see, nor win much lore,
Nor list to Orpheus’ minstrelsies;
Nor Her’cles would I see, that o’er
The wide world roamed from shore to shore;
Nor, by St. James, Penelope,—
Nor pure Lucrece, such wrong that bore:
To see my Love suffices me!

Virgil and Cato, no man vies
With them in wealth of clerkly store;
I would not see them with mine eyes;
Nor him that sailed, sans sail nor oar,
Across the barren sea and hoar,
And all for love of his ladye;
Nor pearl nor sapphire takes me more:
To see my Love suffices me!

The modish Airs,
The Tansey Brew,
The Swains and Fairs
In curtained Pew;
Nymphs Kneller drew,
Books Bentley read,—
Who knows them, who?
Queen Anne is dead!

We buy her Chairs,
Her China blue,
Her red-brick Squares
We build anew;
But ah! we rue,
When all is said,
The tale o’er-true,
Queen Anne is dead!

ENVOY.

Friend, praise the new;
The old is fled:
Vivat Frou-Frou!
Queen Anne is dead!

(AFTER LYONNET DE COISMES.)

Who have loved and ceased to love, forget
That ever they loved in their lives, they say;
Only remember the fever and fret,
And the pain of Love, that was all his pay;
All the delight of him passes away
From hearts that hoped, and from lips that met—
Too late did I love you, my love, and yet
I shall never forget till my dying day.

We must live our lives, though the sun be set,
Must meet in the masque where parts we play,
Must cross in the maze of Life’s minuet;
Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay:
But while snows of winter or flowers of May
Are the sad year’s shroud or coronet,
In the season of rose or of violet,
I shall never forget till my dying day!

ENVOY.

Queen, when the clay is my coverlet,
When I am dead, and when you are grey,
Vow, where the grass of the grave is wet,
“I shall never forget till my dying day!”

Here I’d come when weariest!
   Here the breast
Of the Windburg’s tufted over
Deep with bracken; here his crest
   Takes the west,
Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

Silent here are lark and plover;
   In the cover
Deep below the cushat best
Loves his mate, and croons above her
   O’er their nest,
Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover.

ENVOY.

Friend, or stranger kind, or lover,
Ah, fulfil a last behest,
   Let me rest
Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!

As, to the pipe, with rhythmic feet
In windings of some old-world dance,
The smiling couples cross and meet,
Join hands, and then in line advance,
So, to these fair old tunes of France,
Through all their maze of to-and-fro,
The light-heeled numbers laughing go,
Retreat, return, and ere they flee,
One moment pause in panting row,
And seem to say—Vos plaudite!

A. D.

(FROM THE PROSE OF C. BAUDELAIRE.)

Thine eyes are like the sea, my dear,
   The wand’ring waters, green and grey;
Thine eyes are wonderful and clear,
   And deep, and deadly, even as they;
The spirit of the changeful sea
   Informs thine eyes at night and noon,
She sways the tides, and the heart of thee,
   The mystic, sad, capricious Moon!

The Moon came down the shining stair
   Of clouds that fleck the summer sky,
She kissed thee, saying, “Child, be fair,
   And madden men’s hearts, even as I;
Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet,
   That know me and are known of me;
The lover thou shalt never meet,
   The land where thou shalt never be!”

“And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.”—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso.  Luciani Vera Historia.

’Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o’er
   With all the waves and wars, a weary while,
   Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,
And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,
Go down the ways of gold, and evermore
   His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,
   Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,
Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet
   To look across the sad and stormy space,
   Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,
Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,
   Because, within a fair forsaken place
   The life that might have been is lost to thee.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea
   With all the notes of music in its tone,
   With tides that wash the dim dominion
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me
   Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown
   That glasses Egypt’s temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore
   To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;
Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,
   As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast
His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore
   Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)

Dead—he is dead!  The rouge has left a trace
   On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,
   Even while the people laughed that held him dear
But yesterday.  He died,—and not in grace,
And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace
   To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear,
   And gold must win a passage for his bier,
And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.

Ah, Molière, for that last time of all,
   Man’s hatred broke upon thee, and went by,
And did but make more fair thy funeral.
   Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily,
Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall,
   For torch, the stars along the windy sky!

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying
   The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;
They heard the hollows of the hills replying,
   They heard the weeping water’s overflow;
They winged the sacred strain—the song undying,
   The song that all about the world must go,—
When poets for a poet dead are sighing,
   The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping
   For Adonais by the summer sea,
The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping
   Far from ‘the forest ground called Thessaly’),
These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping,
   And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

(AFTER MELEAGER.)

Now the bright crocus flames, and now
   The slim narcissus takes the rain,
And, straying o’er the mountain’s brow,
   The daffodilies bud again.
   The thousand blossoms wax and wane
On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough,
But fairer than the flowers art thou,
   Than any growth of hill or plain.

Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown,
That my Love’s feet may tread it down,
   Like lilies on the lilies set;
My Love, whose lips are softer far
Than drowsy poppy petals are,
   And sweeter than the violet!

(AFTER ALBERT GLATIGNY.)

The winter is upon us, not the snow,
   The hills are etched on the horizon bare,
   The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,
The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.
One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,
   Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.
   Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where
The black trees seem to shiver as you go.

Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old
   And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,
A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,
   Yet up that path, in summer of the year,
And past that melancholy pile we strolled
   To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.

TO LUCIA.

Apollo left the golden Muse
   And shepherded a mortal’s sheep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

To mock the giant swain that woo’s
   The sea-nymph in the sunny deep,
Apollo left the golden Muse.

Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,
   Where Milon and where Battus reap,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise
   Below the dim Sicilian steep
Apollo left the golden Muse.

Ye twain did loiter in the dews,
   Ye slept the swain’s unfever’d sleep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!

            ἐπει καὶ τοῦτον ὀῖομαι ἀθανάτοισιν
ἔυχεσθαι·.  Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι.

Od. iii. 47.

“Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good,
   But He was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
   And breaks the Thunder-bird’s tremendous wings;
But still we cry to Him,—We are thy brood—
   O Cagn, be merciful! and us He brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
   And in the desert opens water-springs.”

As one that for a weary space has lain
   Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
   In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
   And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
   As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,—
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
   Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
      Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
      And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
   The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

Suggested by a female head in wax, of unknown date, but supposed to be either of the best Greek age, or a work of Raphael or Leonardo.  It is now in the Lille Museum.

Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,
   Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,
A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,
   Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!
   Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,
While magical his fingers o’er thee strayed,
   Or that great pupil taught of Verrocchio
Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade

“Take short views.”—Sydney Smith.

The Fays that to my christ’ning came
   (For come they did, my nurses taught me),
They did not bring me wealth or fame,
   ’Tis very little that they brought me.
But one, the crossest of the crew,
   The ugly old one, uninvited,
Said, “I shall be avenged on you,
   My child; you shall grow up short-sighted!”
With magic juices did she lave
   Mine eyes, and wrought her wicked pleasure.
Well, of all gifts the Fairies gave,
   Hers is the present that I treasure!

AFTER ROMNEY.

Mysterious Benedetta! who
That Reynolds or that Romney drew
Was ever half so fair as you,
   Or is so well forgot?
These eyes of melancholy brown,
These woven locks, a shadowy crown,
Must surely have bewitched the town;
   Yet you’re remembered not.

Through all that prattle of your age,
Through lore of fribble and of sage
I’ve read, and chiefly Walpole’s page,
   Wherein are beauties famous;
I’ve haunted ball, and rout, and sale;
I’ve heard of Devonshire and Thrale,
And all the Gunnings’ wondrous tale,
   But nothing of Miss Ramus.

Oh, lovely face and innocent!
Whatever way your fortunes went,
And if to earth your life was lent
   For little space or long,
In your kind eyes we seem to see
What Woman at her best may be,
And offer to your memory
   An unavailing song!

[Scribie, on the north-east littoral of Bohemia, is the land of stage conventions.  It is named after the discoverer, M. Scribe.]

A pleasant land is Scribie, where
   The light comes mostly from below,
And seems a sort of symbol rare
   Of things at large, and how they go,
In rooms where doors are everywhere
   And cupboards shelter friend or foe.

This is a realm where people tell
   Each other, when they chance to meet,
Of things that long ago befell—
   And do most solemnly repeat
Secrets they both know very well,
   Aloud, and in the public street!

A land where Virtue in distress
   Owes much to uncles in disguise;
Where British sailors frankly bless
   Their limbs, their timbers, and their eyes;
And where the villain doth confess,
   Conveniently, before he dies!

A land of lovers false and gay;
   A land where people dread a “curse;”
A land of letters gone astray,
   Or intercepted, which is worse;
Where weddings false fond maids betray,
   And all the babes are changed at nurse.

Oh, happy land, where things come right!
   We of the world where things go ill;
Where lovers love, but don’t unite;
   Where no one finds the Missing Will—
Dominion of the heart’s delight,
   Scribie, we’ve loved, and love thee still!

NIGHT.

Ah, listen through the music, from the shore,
The “melancholy long-withdrawing roar”;
Beneath the Minster, and the windy caves,
The wide North Ocean, marshalling his waves
Even so forlorn—in worlds beyond our ken—
May sigh the seas that are not heard of men;
Even so forlorn, prophetic of man’s fate,
Sounded the cold sea-wave disconsolate,
When none but God might hear the boding tone,
As God shall hear the long lament alone,
When all is done, when all the tale is told,
And the gray sea-wave echoes as of old!

MORNING.

(FOUNDED ON A NEW ZEALAND MYTH.)

So Man was alone, and he wished he could see
On the Earth some one like him, but fairer than he,
With locks like the red gold, a smile like the sun,
To welcome him back when his hunting was done.
And he sighed for a voice that should answer him still,
Like the affable Echo he heard on the hill:
That should answer him softly and always agree,
And oh, Man reflected, how nice it would be!

For weather’s a painfully changeable thing,
Not always the child of the Echo would sing;
And the face of the Sun may be hidden with mist,
And his child can be terribly cross if she list.
And unfortunate Man had to learn with surprise
That a frown’s not peculiar to masculine eyes;
That the sweetest of voices can scold and can sneer,
And cannot be answered—like men—with a spear.

“And the smoke shall ye breathe and no more shall ye fret,
But the child of the Echo and Sun shall forget:
Shall forget all the trouble and torment she brings,
Shall bethink ye of none but delectable things;
And the sound of the wars with your brethren shall cease,
While ye smoke by the camp-fire the great pipe of peace.”
So the last state of Man was by no means the worst,
The second gift softened the sting of the first.

The painted Briton built his mound,
And left his celts and clay,
On yon fair slope of sunlit ground
That fronts your garden gay;
The Roman came, he bore the sway,
He bullied, bought, and sold,
Your fountain sweeps his works away
Beside your manor old!

The Roman fell: his firm-set bound
Became the Saxon’s stay;
The bells made music all around
For monks in cloisters grey,
Till fled the monks in disarray
From their warm chantry’s fold,
Old Abbots slumber as they may,
Beside your manor old!

Envoy.

Creeds, empires, peoples, all decay,
Down into darkness, rolled;
May life that’s fleet be sweet, I pray,
Beside your manor old.

A DREAM IN JUNE.

In twilight of the longest day
   I lingered over Lucian,
Till ere the dawn a dreamy way
   My spirit found, untrod of man,
Between the green sky and the grey.

Amid the soft dusk suddenly
   More light than air I seemed to sail,
Afloat upon the ocean sky,
   While through the faint blue, clear and pale,
I saw the mountain clouds go by:
   My barque had thought for helm and sail,
And one mist wreath for canopy.

Between the daylight and the dark
   That island lies in silver air,
And suddenly my magic barque
   Wheeled, and ran in, and grounded there;
And by me stood the sentinel
   Of them who in the island dwell;
      All smiling did he bind my hands,
      With rushes green and rosy bands,
They have no harsher bonds than these
   The people of the pleasant lands
Within the wash of the airy seas!

There was no heavy heat, no cold,
   The dwellers there wax never old,
      Nor wither with the waning time,
But each man keeps that age he had
      When first he won the fairy clime.
The Night falls never from on high,
   Nor ever burns the heat of noon.
But such soft light eternally
   Shines, as in silver dawns of June
Before the Sun hath climbed the sky!

Then did a new soul in me wake,
The dead men’s bread I feared to break,
Their fruit I would not taste indeed
Were it but a pomegranate seed.
Nay, not with these I made my choice
To dwell for ever and rejoice,
For otherwhere the River rolls
That girds the home of Christian souls,
And these my whole heart seeks are found
On otherwise enchanted ground.

L’Envoi.

To E. W. G.

(Who also had rhymed on the Fortunate Islands of Lucian).

(ST. ANDREWS, 1862.  OXFORD, 1865.)

St. Andrews by the Northern sea,
   A haunted town it is to me!
A little city, worn and grey,
   The grey North Ocean girds it round.
And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,
   The long sea-rollers surge and sound.
And still the thin and biting spray
   Drives down the melancholy street,
And still endure, and still decay,
   Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.
Ghost-like and shadowy they stand
Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.

O, broken minster, looking forth
   Beyond the bay, above the town,
O, winter of the kindly North,
   O, college of the scarlet gown,
And shining sands beside the sea,
   And stretch of links beyond the sand,
Once more I watch you, and to me
   It is as if I touched his hand!

A land of waters green and clear,
   Of willows and of poplars tall,
And, in the spring time of the year,
   The white may breaking over all,
And Pleasure quick to come at call.
   And summer rides by marsh and wold,
And Autumn with her crimson pall
   About the towers of Magdalen rolled;
And strange enchantments from the past,
   And memories of the friends of old,
And strong Tradition, binding fast
   The “flying terms” with bands of gold,—

IN MEMORIAM S. F. A.

The call of homing rooks, the shrill
   Song of some bird that watches late,
The cries of children break the still
   Sad twilight by the churchyard gate.

And o’er your far-off tomb the grey
   Sad twilight broods, and from the trees
The rooks call on their homeward way,
   And are you heedless quite of these?

The clustered rowan berries red
   And Autumn’s may, the clematis,
They droop above your dreaming head,
   And these, and all things must you miss?

Yes, rest beyond all dreaming deep,
   Or labour, nearer the Divine,
And pure from fret, and smooth as sleep,
   And gentle as thy soul, is thine!

So let it be!  But could I know
   That thou in this soft autumn eve,
This hush of earth that pleased thee so,
   Hadst pleasure still, I might not grieve.

Our youth began with tears and sighs,
With seeking what we could not find;
Our verses all were threnodies,
In elegiacs still we whined;
Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,
We sought and knew not what we sought.
We marvel, now we look behind:
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”
To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;
We set our souls on salmon flies,
We whistle where we once repined.
Confound the woes of human-kind!
By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;
Who hum, contented or resigned,
“Life’s more amusing than we thought”!

Envoy.

O nate mecum, worn and lined
Our faces show, but that is naught;
Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:
Life’s more amusing than we thought!

THE ANGLER’S APOLOGY.

Just one cast more! how many a year
   Beside how many a pool and stream,
Beneath the falling leaves and sere,
   I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!

Dreamed of the sport since April first
   Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,
Adown the pastoral valleys burst
   Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.

Dreamed of the singing showers that break,
   And sting the lochs, or near or far,
And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”
   From Urigil to Lochinvar.

* * * * *

Brief are man’s days at best; perchance
   I waste my own, who have not seen
The castled palaces of France
   Shine on the Loire in summer green.

And clear and fleet Eurotas still,
   You tell me, laves his reedy shore,
And flows beneath his fabled hill
   Where Dian drave the chase of yore.

And “like a horse unbroken” yet
   The yellow stream with rush and foam,
’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,
   Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!

Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,
   And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,
And Autumn in that lonely vale
   Where wedded Avons westward sweep,

Or where, amid the empty fields,
   Among the bracken of the glen,
Her yellow wreath October yields,
   To crown the crystal brows of Ken.

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,
   Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,
You never heard the ringing reel,
   The music of the water side!

My cradle song,—nor other hymn
   I’d choose, nor gentler requiem dear
Than Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,
   Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!

SONNET.

(AFTER RICHEPIN.)

Light has flown!
   Through the grey
   The wind’s way
The sea’s moan
Sound alone!
   For the day
   These repay
And atone!

Scarce I know,
Listening so
   To the streams
      Of the sea,
   If old dreams
      Sing to me!

TO C. H. ARKCOLL.

When strawberry pottles are common and cheap,
Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,
When midnight dances are murdering sleep,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And far from Fleet Street, far from here,
The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,
And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When big trout late in the twilight leap,
When cuckoo clamoureth far and near,
When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer,
Where kine knee deep in the water stand,
On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

Envoy.

Friend, with the fops while we dawdle here,
Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!
And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand,
When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

Between the moonlight and the fire
In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire
To make your merry blood run slow!
How old, how grave, how wise we grow!
No Christmas ghost can make us chill,
Save those that troop in mournful row,
The ghosts we all can raise at will!