I will not enter there,

To sully your pure prayer

With thoughts unruly.

But suffer me to pace

Round the forbidden place,

Lingering a minute,

Like outcast spirits, who wait,
And see, through Heaven's gate,

24

1855.

Angels within it.

30

William Makepeace Thackeray.

SUMMER DAWN

PRAY but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips, Think but one thought of me up in the stars. The summer night waneth, the morning light

slips,

Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,

That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: Patient and colourless, though Heaven's gold Waits to float through them along with the sun. Far out in the meadows, above the young corn, The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun; Through the long twilight they pray for the

dawn,

Round the lone house in the midst of the corn. Speak but one word to me over the corn, Over the tender, bow'd locks of the corn. William Morris.

1858.

10

THE NYMPH'S SONG TO HYLAS

From Life and Death of Jason

I KNOW a little garden close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillared house is there,
And though the apple boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
Her feet upon the green grass trod,
And I beheld them as before.

There comes a murmur from the shore, And in the place two fair streams are, Drawn from the purple hills afar,

Drawn down unto the restless sea;

The hills whose flowers ne'er fed the bee,
The shore no ship has ever seen,
Still beaten by the billows green,
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
That maketh me both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskilled to find,

ΙΟ

20

And quick to lose what all men seek.

Yet tottering as I am, and weak, Still have I left a little breath

To seek within the jaws of death

An entrance to that happy place,

To seek the unforgotten face

Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me
Anigh the murmuring of the sea.

1867.

William Morris.

30

BEDOUIN LOVE-SONG

FROM the Desert I come to thee,
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee!

With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Look from thy window, and see

My passion and my pain!

I lie on the sands below,

And I faint in thy disdain.

Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,

12

66

Oh! That We Two Were Maying'

And melt thee to hear the vow

Of a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,

By the fever in my breast,

To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,

And open thy chamber door,

And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment

1854.

Book unfold!

24

36

Bayard Taylor.

"OH! THAT WE TWO WERE

MAYING "

From The Saint's Tragedy

OH! that we two were Maying

Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;

Like children with violets playing

In the shade of the whispering trees.

4

Oh! that we two sat dreaming

On the sward of some sheep-trimm'd down, Watching the white mist steaming

Over river and mead and town.

Oh! that we two lay sleeping

In our nest in the churchyard sod,

8

With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast, And our souls at home with God.

1848.

12

Charles Kingsley.

TO HELEN

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicæan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

1831.

5

ΙΟ

15

Edgar Allan Poe.