LESSONS FROM THE GORSE. "To win the secret of a weed's plain heart." LOWELL. MOUNTAIN gorses, ever-golden! Cankered not the whole year long! Do ye teach us to be strong, Howsoever pricked and holden Like your thorny blooms, and so Trodden on by rain and snow, Up the hill-side of this life, as bleak as where ye grow? Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms! Do ye teach us to be glad When no summer can be had, Blooming in our inward bosoms? Ye, whom God preserveth still, Set as lights upon a hill, Tokens to the wintry earth, that Beauty liveth still! teach us Mountain gorses, do ye From that academic chair Canopied with azure air, That the first fruit Wisdom reaches Hath the hue of childly cheek? Ye, who live on mountain peak, Yet live low along the ground, beside the grasses meek! Mountain gorses! since Linnæus Knelt beside you on the sod, For your beauty thanking God,— For your teaching, ye should see us Bowing in prostration new, Whence arisen,-if one or two Drops be on our cheeks-O world! they are not tears, but dew. THE DEAD PAN. Excited by Schiller's "Götter Griechenlands," and partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch ("De Oraculorum Defectu "), according to which, at the hour of the Saviour's agony, a cry of "Great Pan is dead!" swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners,-and the oracles ceased. It is in all veneration to the memory of the deathless Schiller, that I oppose a doctrine still more dishonouring to poetry than to Christianity. As Mr. Kenyon's graceful and harmonious paraphrase of the German poem was the first occasion of the turning of my thoughts in this direction, I take advantage of the pretence to indulge my feelings (which overflow on other grounds) by inscribing my lyric to that dear friend and relative, with the earnestness of appreciating esteem as well as of affectionate gratitude. E. B. B. GODS of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. In what revels are ye sunken In old Æthiopia? Have the Pygmies made you drunken, Bathing in mandragora Your divine pale lips that shiver Like the lotus in the river? Pan, Pan is dead. Do ye sit there still in slumber, In gigantic Alpine rows? The black poppies out of number And so kept alive and fine? Pan, Pan is dead. Or lie crushed your stagnant corses Stung to life by centric forces Thrown like rays out from the sun? While the smoke of your old altars Is the shroud that round you welters? Great Pan is dead. Do ye leave your rivers flowing All alone, O Naiades, While your drenched locks dry slow in This cold feeble sun and breeze ? Not a word the Naiads say, Though the rivers run for aye. For Pan is dead. From the gloaming of the oak wood, At the rushing thunderstroke, would Though the forests wave for aye. For Pan is dead. |