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Tell me no more of constancy,
The frivolous pretense
Of old age, narrow jealousy,
Disease, and want of sense.

Let duller fools on whom kind chance
Some easy heart has thrown,...

Against the cold pale sky
The elm tree company rose high.
All the fine hues of day
That flowered so bold had died away.
Only chill blue, faint green,
And deepening dark blue were seen.
...

A German Christmas Eve




...

'Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur.'
--MAJOR.


The Text.--There are seven texts of the Gest, to be distinguished as
follows:--
...

These Chinese toil and yet they do not starve,
And they obey, and yet they are not slaves.
It is the "free-born" fuddled Englishmen
That grovel rotting in their living graves.
...

(Foo-chow.)


From the bright and blinding sunshine,
From the whirling locust's song,
Into the dark and narrow fissures
Of the streets I am borne along.

Here and there dusky-beaming...

(Min River, Fo Kien.)


Up in the misty morning,
Up past the gardened hills,
With the rhythmic stroke of the rowers,
While the blue deep pales and thrills!
...

(Foo-chow.)


"Yes, I used always to think
That you Russians knew
How to make the good drink
As none others do.

"And I thought moreover,
(Not with the epicures),...

"Miserrimus," and neither name nor date,
Prayer, text, or symbol, graven upon the stone;
Nought but that word assigned to the unknown,
That solitary word, to separate...

"And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest."


The earth was green, the sky was blue:
I saw and heard one sunny morn
A skylark hang between the two,
A singing speck above the corn;...

Tune - "Major Graham."


I.

Ah, Chloris, since it may na be,
That thou of love wilt hear;
If from the lover thou maun flee,
Yet let the friend be dear.

II.
...

A night was near, a day was near;
Between a day and night
I heard sweet voices calling clear,
Calling me:
I heard a whirr of wing on wing,
But could not see the sight;...

Lancaster bore him, such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother...

The whispering water rocks the reeds,
And, murmuring softly, laps the weeds;
And nurses there the falsest bloom
That ever wrought a lover's doom.
Forget me not! Forget me not!
Ah! would I could forget!...

'Old things need not be therefore true,'
O brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah! still awhile the old thought retain,
And yet consider it again!

The souls of now two thousand years,...

Thou, thou that bear'st the sway,
With whom the sea-nymphs play;
And Venus, every way:
When I embrace thy knee,
And make short pray'rs to thee,
In love then prosper me.
This day I go to woo;...

'Twas not love's dart,
Or any blow
Of want, or foe,
Did wound my heart
With an eternal smart;

But only you,
My sometimes known
Companion,
My dearest Crew,...

Sea-born goddess, let me be
By thy son thus graced, and thee,
That whene'er I woo, I find
Virgins coy, but not unkind.
Let me, when I kiss a maid,
Taste her lips, so overlaid...

I built a castle in the air -
A radiant thing made out of dreams;
Love's dear desire its golden stair -
Naught heavier than a hope was there -
A thing of mist and rainbow gleams.
...

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,
abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer...