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THE EAGLE.

HE clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

A. Tennyson.

ITYLUS.

SWALLOW, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thy heart to sing?

What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
The soft south whither thine heart is set?

Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?
Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?

Modern Poets.

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Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire,
Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
From tawny body and sweet small mouth,
Feed the heart of the night with fire.

I, the nightingale, all spring through,
O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
All spring through till the spring be done,
Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
Take flight and follow and find the sun.

Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,

Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber,
How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?

For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
Till life forget and death remember,
Till thou remember and I forget.

Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
Hast thou the heart? Is it all past over?
Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?

O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,

My heart in me is a molten ember,

And over my head the waves have met.

But thou would'st tarry or I would follow,
Could I forget or thou remember,

Couldst thou remember and I forget.

O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
The heart's division divideth us.

Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
To the place of the slaying of Itylus,

The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.

O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
I I pray thee sing not a little space.

Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
The woven web that was plain to follow,
The small slain body, the flower-like face,
Can I remember if thou forget?

O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!

The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child's blood crying yet
Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.

A. C. Swinburne.

148

SUMMER-TIME.

SUMMER-TIME.

WHAT is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth, if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
And whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over woodlands and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace.
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest-
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;

Now the heart is so full that a drop o'erfills it,
We are happy now, because God so wills it.
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear
That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the river is bluer than the sky,

That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back
For other couriers we should not lack;

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing—
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,

Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Fames Russell Lowell.

WINTER-TIME.

DOWN swept the chill wind from the mountain-peak,
From the snow five thousand summers old;
On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;
It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;
The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams
He groined his arches and matched his beams;

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