The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand Years

The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set,
And the eddies drove them here and there
As the winds did those of the upper air.

Then the rain came down, and the broken
stalks

Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers.

Spawn, weeds and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-
snakes.

And hour by hour, when the air was still,
The vapors arose which have strength to kill :
At morn they were seen, at noon they were
felt,

At night they were darkness no star could
melt.

Between the time of the wind and the snow
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
many a speck,
Crept and flitted in broad noonday

Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's Unseen; every branch on which they alit

back;

And thistles and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock and henbane, and hemlock dank
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank;

By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew,
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.

And plants at whose names the verse feels For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon loth By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; Filled the place with a monstrous under- The sap shrank to the root through every growth, Prickly and pulpous and blistering and blue, As blood to a heart that will beat no more. Livid, and starred with a lurid dew;

pore

For Winter came: the wind was his whip;

And agarics and fungi, with mildew and One choppy finger was on his lip;

mould,

Started like mist from the wet ground cold,
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated.

Their moss rotted off them flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's
stake,

He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles.

His breath was a chain which without a sound
The earth and the air and the water bound-
He came, fiercely driven in his chariot-throne
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.

Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on Then the weeds, which were forms of living

high,

Infecting the winds that wander by.

death,

Fled from the frost to the earth beneath;

Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost.

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want;
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air,
And were caught in the branches naked and
bare.

First there came down a thawing rain,
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;

And a northern Whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
Shook the boughs, thus laden and heavy
and stiff,

And snapped them off with his rigid griff.

When Winter had gone, and Spring came back,

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; But the mandrakes and toadstools and docks and darnels

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

CONCLUSION.

WHETHER the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.

Whether that Lady's gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love as stars do light,
Found sadness where it left delight,

I dare not guess. But in this life
Of error, ignorance and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY

CHURCHYARD.

HE curfew tolls the knell of | The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

parting day,

The lowing herd winds
slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward
plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to
darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering
landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn
stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning
flight

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

For them no more the blazing hearth shall
burn

Or busy housewife ply her evening care,
No children run to lisp their sire's return
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to
share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure,

The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile Molest her ancient solitary reign. The short and simple annals of the

poor.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the strawbuilt shed,

And all that beauty, all that wealth, e'er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise

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The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three ..., Volume 4