Works

Again a verse for sake of you,
You soldiers in the ranks--you Volunteers,
Who bravely fighting, silent fell,
To fill unmention'd graves.

Ashes of soldiers!...

Though I cannot give thee fires
Glittering to my free desires;
These accept, and I'll be free,
Offering poppy unto thee.

Goddess, I do love a girl,
Ruby-lipp'd and tooth'd with pearl;
If so be I may but prove
Lucky in this maid I love,
I will promise there shall be
Myrtles offer'd up to thee.

"He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord."

The night-wind comes in sudden squalls:
The ruddy fire-light starts and falls
Fantastically on the walls.
...

(FIRST SCENE)


Damon:

I thank thee, no;
Already have I drunk a bowl of wine ...
Nay, nay, why wouldst thou rise?
There rolls thy ball of worsted! Sit thee down;...

A sickness of this world it most occasions
When best men die;
A wishfulness their far condition
To occupy.

A chief indifference, as foreign
A world must be
Themselves forsake contented,...

Evening sunshine never
Solace to my window bears,
Morning sunshine elsewhere fares; -
Here are shadows ever.

Sunshine freely falling,
Wilt thou not my chamber find?...

Again freckled cowslips are gilding the plain,
And crow-flowers yellow again o'er the lea,
Again the speck'd throstle comes in with her strain,
And welcomes the spring--but no spring can I see.
...

O happy spot! how much the sight of thee
Wakes the endearments of my infancy:
The very trees, through which the wild-winds sigh,
Seem whispering now some joys of youth gone by;...

A sight in camp in the day-break grey and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital
tent,...

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,
The noontides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
...

We thank Thee, Lord,
For all Thy Golden Silences,--
For every Sabbath from the world's turmoil;
For every respite from the stress of life;--
Silence of moorlands rolling to the skies,...

Dear Thomas, didst thou never pop
Thy head into a tin-man's shop?
There, Thomas, didst thou never see
('Tis but by way of simile)
A squirrel spend his little rage
In jumping round a rolling cage?...

("Soyez comme l'oiseau.")

[XXXIII. vi.]


Thou art like the bird
That alights and sings
Though the frail spray bends -
For he knows he has wings.

FANNY KEMBLE (BUTLER)

As when of old some sorceress threw
O'er the moon's face a sable hue,
To drive unseen her magic chair,
At midnight, through the darken'd air;
Wise people, who believed with reason...

That which he did not feel, he would not sing;
What most he felt, religion it was to hide
In a dumb darkling grotto, where the spring
Of tremulous tears, arising unespied,...

(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909)



I

In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,
That sentrys up and down all night, all day,
From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,...

There is a waving of grass in the breeze
And a song in the air,
And a murmur of myriad bees
That toil everywhere.
There is scent in the blossom and bough,
And the breath of the Spring...

Far-fetched and dear-bought, as the proverb rehearses,
Is good, or was held so, for ladies: but nought
In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is
Far-fetched and dear-bought.
...

Was one night,
And that a night
Without much sleep,
Enough to make me love
All the life long?

From the Japanese of the wife of the Mikado Sui-toka In (twelfth century).