As doth eternity: cold Pastoral !
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'-that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
540. TO ONE WHO HAS BEEN LONG IN CITY PENT
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with one ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,-an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
541. WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;-then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
543. SWEET NURSLINGS OF THE VERNAL SKIES.
SWEET nurslings of the vernal skies,
Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew,
What more than magic in you lies,
To fill the heart's fond view?
Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,
As pure, as fragrant, and as fair,
As when ye crowned the sunshine hours
Of happy wanderers there.
J. KEBLE (The Christian Year).
544. WE NEED NOT BID, FOR CLOISTERED CELL
We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbour and our work farewell,
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky:
The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God.
Seek we no more; content with these
Let present Rapture, Comfort, Ease,
As Heaven shall bid them, come and go :-
The secret this of Rest below.
J. KEBLE (The Christian Year).
545. WHO EVER SAW THE EARLIEST ROSE
WHO ever saw the earliest rose
First open her sweet breast?
Or, when the summer sun goes down,
The first soft star in evening's crown
Light up her gleaming crest?
But there's a sweeter flower than e'er
Blushed on the rosy spray-
A brighter star, a richer bloom
Than e'er did western heaven illume
At close of summer day.
'Tis Love, the last best gift of Heaven;
Love gentle, holy, pure;
But tenderer than a dove's soft eye,
The searching sun, the open sky,
She never could endure.
J. KEBLE (The Christian Year).
LIKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,-
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot;
The flight is past—and man forgot.
WHAT is the existence of man's life,
But open war, or slumbered strife;
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements;
And never feels a perfect peace
Till Death's cold hand signs his release?
It is a weary interlude
Which doth short joys, long woes, include,
The world the stage, the prologue tears,
The acts vain hopes and varied fears;
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but death.
Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for more than a week, dears,
But I never could find where she lay.
I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arms trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled:
Yet for old sakes' sake she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.
550. A FAREWELL
To C. E. G.
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe in skies so dull and grey;
Yet, if you will, one quiet hint I'll leave you,
For every day.
I'll tell you how to sing a clearer carol
Than lark who hails the dawn or breezy down,
To earn yourself a purer poet's laurel
Than Shakespeare's crown.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever,
Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long ;
And so make Life and Death, and that For Ever,
One grand sweet song.
551. THE SANDS OF DEE
'O MARY, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee';
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.
The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land:
And never home came she.
'Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,
A tress of golden hair,
A drowned maiden's hair
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes of Dee.'
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea :
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
552. ON THE DEATH OF A CERTAIN JOURNAL The Christian Socialist, started by the Council of Associates for promotion of Co-operation.
So die, thou child of stormy dawn,
Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse;
Chilled early by the bigot's curse,
The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn.
Fair death, to fall in teeming June,
When every seed which drops to earth
Takes root, and wins a second birth
From steaming shower and gleaming moon.
Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain;
Thou rain of God, make fat the land;
That roots which parch in burning sand
May bud to flower and fruit again,
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