FAILURE

We are much bound to them that do succeed;
But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound

To such as fail. They all our loss expound;
They comfort us for work that will not speed,
And life itself a failure.

Ay, his deed,

Sweetest in story, who the dusk profound

Of Hades flooded with entrancing sound, Music's own tears, was failure. Doth it read Therefore the worse? Ah, no! so much to dare, He fronts the regnant Darkness on its throne,— So much to do; impetuous even there,

He pours out love's disconsolate sweet moan
He wins; but few for that his deed recall:
Its power is in the look which costs him all.

LORD LYTTON

Born 1831

THE HEART AND NATURE

The lake is calm; and, calm, the skies
In yonder cloudless sunset glow,
Where, o'er the woodland, homeward flies
The solitary crow;

No moan the cushat makes to heave
A leaflet round her windless nest;
The air is silent in the eve;

The world's at rest.

All bright below; all pure above;

No sense of pain, no sign of wrong;
Save in thy heart of hopeless love,
Poor Child of Song!

Why must the soul through Nature rove,
At variance with her generaı plan?
A stranger to the Power, whose love
Soothes all save Man?

Why lack the strength of meaner creatures? The wandering sheep, the grazing kine, Are surer of their simple natures

Than I of mine.

For all their wants the poorest land

Affords supply; they browse and breed ; I scarce divine, and ne'er have found, What most I need.

O God, that in this human heart
Hath made Belief so hard to grow,
And set the doubt, the pang, the smart
In all we know—

Why hast thou, too, in solemn jest
At this tormented Thinking-power,
Inscribed, in flame on yonder West,
In hues on every flower,

Through all the vast unthinking sphere
Of mere material Force without,
Rebuke so vehement and severe
To the least doubt?

And robed the world, and hung the night,
With silent, stern, and solemn forms;
And strown with sounds of awe, and might,
The seas and storms ;—

All lacking power to impart

To man the secret he assails,
But arm'd to crush him, if his heart
Once doubts or fails!

To make him feel the same forlorn

Despair, the Fiend hath felt ere now, In gazing at the stern sweet scorn On Michael's brow?

LEWIS MORRIS

Born 1833

ON A FLIGHT OF LADY-BIRDS

Over the summer sea,

Floating on delicate wings, Comes an unnumbered host

Of beautiful fragile things; Whence they have come, or what

Blind impulse has forced them here, What still voice marshalled them out Over wide seas without fear,

You cannot tell, nor I.

But to-day the air is thick

With these strangers from far away:

On hot piers and drifting ships

The weary travellers stay.

On the sands where to-night they will drown,

On the busy waterside street,

P