Through the poor form's decay. Not otherwise
These verses that I sing to thee are rife
With visions Adam dreamed in Paradise
And hopes that herald in the Eternal Day:
Hearts turn to dust,-Love changes not alway.
JOHN HALL INGHAM.
RID OF the world's injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English land!
Thy name was writ in water-it shall stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.
THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY AT ROME
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
FAIR little city of the pilgrim dead,
Dear are thy marble streets, thy rosy lanes:
Easy it seems and natural here to die,
And death a mother, who with tender care
Doth lay to sleep her ailing little ones.
Old are these graves, and they who, mournfully,
Saw dust to dust return, themselves are mourned;
Yet, in green cloisters of the cypress shade
Full-choired chants the fearless nightingale
Ancestral songs learned when the world was
Sing on, sing ever in thy breezy homes;
Toss earthward from the white acacia bloom
The mingled joy of fragrance and of song;
Sing in the pure security of bliss.
These dead concern thee not, nor thee the fear
That is the shadow of our earthly loves.
And me thou canst not comfort; tender hearts
Inherit here the anguish of the doubt
Writ on this gravestone. He, at least, I trust,
Serenity of sure attainment knows.
The night falls, and the darkened verdure starred
With pallid roses shuts the world away.
Sad wandering souls of song, frail ghosts of thought
That voiceless died, the massing shadows haunt,
Troubling the heart with unfulfilled delight.
The moon is listening in the vault of heaven,
And, like the airy beat of mighty wings,
The rhythmic throb of stately cadences
Inthralls the ear with some high-measured verse,
Where ecstasies of passion-nurtured words
For great thoughts find a home, and fill the mind
With echoes of divinely purposed hopes
That wore on earth the death-pall of despair.
Night darkens round me. Never more in life
May I, companioned by the friendly dead,
Walk in this sacred fellowship again;
Therefore, thou silent singer 'neath the grass,
Still sing to me those sweeter songs unsung,
"Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone,"
Caressing thought with wonderments of phrase
Such as thy springtide rapture knew to win.
Ay, sing to me thy unborn summer songs.
And the ripe autumn lays that might have been;
Strong wine of fruit mature, whose flowers alone
LIKE burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sunbleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, And the slight lizard show his jeweled head. And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some old-world Sphinx lurks darkly hid, Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.
Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.
OSCAR WILDE.
BUT, meanwhile axe and lever
Have manfully been plied;
And now the bridge hangs tottering
Above the boiling tide.
"Come back, come back, Horatius!"
Loud cried the Fathers all; "Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! Back, ere the ruin fall!"
Back darted Spurius Lartius,
Herminius darted back;
And as they passed beneath their feet
They felt the timbers crack.
But when they turned their faces,
And on the farther shore
Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
They would have crossed once more;
But with a crash like thunder
Fell every loosened beam,
And like a dam the mighty wreck
Lay right athwart the stream:
And a long shout of triumph
Rose from the walls of Rome,
As to the highest turret-tops
Was splashed the yellow foam.
And like a horse unbroken
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb, and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free;
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