And Wordsworth!-Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us-and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah, who will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly-
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
Oh Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hear thy voice right, now he is gone.
THE POETS OF ANCIENT GREECE
(Wine of Cyprus.)
Go, let others praise the Chian!
This is soft as Muses' string,
This is tawny as Rhea's lion,
This is rapid as his spring,
Bright as Paphia's eyes e'er met us,
Light as ever trod her feet;
And the brown bees of Hymettus
Make their honey not so sweet.
Very copious are my praises,
Though I sip it like a fly!
Ah-but, sipping,-times and places
Change before me suddenly:
As Ulysses' old libation
Drew the ghosts from every part,
So your Cyprus wine, dear Grecian,
Stirs the Hades of my heart.
And I think of those long mornings
Which my thoughts go far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio's turnings,
Solemn flowed the rythmic Greek:
Past the pane the mountain spreading,
Swept the sheep-bell's tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for ais and ois.
Then, what golden hours were for us!
While we sat together there,
How the white vests of the chorus
Seem to wave up a live air!
How the cothurns trod majestic
Down the deep iambic lines,
And the rolling anapæstic
Curled like vapour over shrines!
Oh, our Æschylus, the thunderous,
How he drove the bolted breath
Through the cloud, to wedge it ponderous
In the gnarlèd oak beneath!
Oh, our Sophocles, the royal,
Who was born to monarch's place,
And who made the whole world loyal,
Less by kingly power than grace!
Our Euripides, the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres!
Our Theocritus, our Bion,
And our Pindar's shining goals!—
These were cup-bearers undying,
Of the wine that's meant for souls.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD
OH, to be in England now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!
And after April, when May follows
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge
That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
And will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
So, some tempestuous morn in early June,
When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,
Before the roses and the longest day-
When garden-walks and all the grassy floor
With blossoms red and white of fallen May
And chestnut-flowers are strewn-
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vexed garden-
trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze,
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, And the full moon, and the white evening-star.
ODE TO THE NORTH-EAST WIND
Welcome, wild North-easter!
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr,
Ne'er a verse to thee.
Welcome, black North-easter!
O'er the German foam,
O'er the Danish moorlands,
From thy frozen home.
Tired we are of summer,
Tired of gaudy glare,
Showers soft and steaming,
Hot and breathless air.
Tired of listless dreaming,
Through the lazy day:
Jovial wind of winter
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike.
Fill the lake with wild-fowl;
Fill the marsh with snipe;
While on dreary moorlands
Lonely curlew pipe,
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