Was it, as the Grecian sings,
Birds were born the first of things,
Before the sun, before the wind,
Before the gods, before mankind,
Airy, ante-mundane throng-
Witness their unworldly song!
Proof they give, too, primal powers,
Of a prescience more than ours-
Teach us, while they come and go,
When to sail, and when to sow.
Cuckoo calling from the hill,
Swallow skimming by the mill,
Swallows trooping in the sedge,
Starlings swirling from the hedge,
Mark the seasons, map our year,
As they show and disappear.
But, with all this travail sage
Brought from that anterior age,
Goes an unreversed decree
Whereby strange are they and we,
Making want of theirs, and plan,
Indiscernible by man.

M. Arnold

XXVIII

ORARA

A TRIBUTARY OF THE CLARENCE RIVER

The strong sob of the chafing stream,
That seaward fights its way

Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.

But far and faint a gray-wing'd form
Hangs where the wild lights wane—
The phantom of a bye-gone storm,
A ghost of wind and rain.

The soft white feet of afternoon
Are on the shining meads;
The breeze is as a pleasant tune
Amongst the happy reeds.

The fierce, disastrous, flying fire,
That made the great caves ring,

And scarr'd the slope, and broke the spire,
Is a forgotten thing.

The air is full of mellow sounds;

The wet hill-heads are bright;

And, down the fall of fragrant grounds,
The deep ways flame with light.

A rose-red space of stream I see,
Past banks of tender fern;
A radiant brook, unknown to me,
Beyond its upper turn.

The singing silver life I hear,

Whose home is in the green
Far-folded woods of fountains clear,
Where I have never been.

Ah, brook above the upper bend,
I often long to stand,
Where you in soft, cool shades descend

From the untrodden land:

But I may linger long, and look,
Till night is over all;

My eyes will never see the brook,

Or strange, sweet waterfall.

The world is round me with its heat,

And toil, and cares that tire;

I cannot with my feeble feet

Climb after my desire.

H. C. Kendall

XXIX

SONG OF PALMS

Mighty, luminous, and calm

Is the country of the palm,

Crown'd with sunset and sunrise,

Under blue unbroken skies,

Waving from green zone to zone,
Over wonders of its own;
Trackless, untraversed, unknown,

Changeless through the centuries.

Who can say what thing it bears?

Blazing bird and blooming flower, Dwelling there for years and years,

Hold the enchanted secret theirs: Life and death and dream have made Mysteries in many a shade,

Hollow haunt and hidden bower
Closed alike to sun and shower.

Who is ruler of each race

Living in each boundless place,
Growing, flowering, and flying,
Glowing, revelling, and dying?
Wave-like, palm by palm is stirr'd,
And the bird sings to the bird,
And the day sings one rich word,
And the great night comes replying

Long red reaches of the cane,

Yellow winding water-lane,

Verdant isle and amber river, Lisp and murmur back again,

And ripe under-worlds deliver Rapturous souls of perfume, hurl'd

Up to where green oceans quiver In the wide leaves' restless world.

Many thousand years have been,
And the sun alone hath seen,

Like a high and radiant ocean,
All the fair palm world in motion;

But the crimson bird hath fed

With its mate of equal red,

And the flower in soft explosion

With the flower hath been wed.

And its long luxuriant thought
Lofty palm to palm hath taught,
While a single vast liana

All one brotherhood hath wrought,
Crossing forest and savannah,
Binding fern and coco-tree,

Fig-tree, buttress-tree, banana,

I warf cane and tall marití.

A. O'Shaughnessy

XXX

WINTER

I, singularly moved

To love the lovely that are not beloved,

Of all the Seasons, most

Love Winter, and to trace

The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face. It is not death, but plenitude of peace;

And the dim cloud that does the world enfold

Hath less the characters of dark and cold

Than warmth and light asleep,

And correspondent breathing seems to keep

With the infant harvest, breathing soft below
Its eider coverlet of snow.

Nor is in field or garden anything

But, duly look'd into, contains serene

The substance of things hoped for, in the Spring;

And evidence of Summer not yet seen.

On every chance-mild day

That visits the moist shaw,

The honeysuckle, 'sdaining to be crost

In urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost, 'Voids the time's law

With still increase

Of leaflet new, and little, wandering spray;

Often, in sheltering brakes,

As one from rest disturb'd in the first hour,
Primrose or violet bewilder'd wakes,

And deems 'tis time to flower;

Though not a whisper of her voice he hear,
The buried bulb does know

The signals of the year,

And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.

XXXI

C. Patmore

LYNMOUTH

Around my love and me the brooding hills, . Full of delicious murmurs, rise on high, Closing upon this spot the summer fills,

And over which there rules the summer sky.

Behind us on the shore down there the sea
Roars roughly, like a fierce pursuing hound;
But all this hour is calm for her and me;

And now another hill shuts out the sound.

And now we breathe the odours of the glen,

And round about us are enchanted things;
The bird that hath blithe speech unknown to men,
The river keen, that hath a voice and sings.

The tree that dwells with one ecstatic thought,
Wider and fairer growing year by year,

The flower that flowereth and knoweth nought,
The bee that scents the flower and draweth near.

Our path is here, the rocky winding ledge

That sheer o'erhangs the rapid shouting stream;
Now dips down smoothly to the quiet edge,
Where restful waters lie as in a dream.

The green exuberant branches overhead
Sport with the golden magic of the sun,
Here quite shut out, here like rare jewels shed
To fright the glittering lizards as they run.