SCYTHE SONG Mowers, weary and brown and blithe, Sings to the blades of the grass below? Hush, ah, hush, the Scythes are saying, Robert Bridges Robert (Seymour) Bridges was born in 1844 and educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After traveling extensively, he studied medicine in London and practiced until 1882. Most of his poems, like his occasional plays, are classical in tone as well as treatment. He was appointed poet laureate in 1913, following Alfred Austin. His command of the secrets of rhythm, especially exemplified in Shorter Poems (1894), through a subtle versification give his lines a firm delicacy and beauty of pattern. WINTER NIGHTFALL The day begins to droop,- But nothing tells the place The hazy darkness deepens, And up the lane You may hear, but cannot see, The homing wain. An engine pants and hums The soaking branches drip, A tall man there in the house He knows he will never again Breathe the spring air: His heart is worn with work; He is giddy and sick If he rise to go as far As the nearest rick: He thinks of his morn of life, His hale, strong years; And braves as he may the night Of darkness and tears. The Irish-English singer, Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, was born in London in 1844. He was connected, for a while, with the British Museum, and was transferred later to the Department of Natural History. His first literary success, Epic of Women (1870), promised a brilliant future for the young poet, a promise strengthened by his Music and Moonlight (1874). Always delicate in health, his hopes were dashed by periods of illness and an early death in London in 1881. The poem here reprinted is not only O'Shaughnessy's best but is, because of its perfect blending of music and message, one of the immortal classics of our verse. ODE We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, On whom the pale moon gleams: Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Alice Meynell Alice (Christina Thompson) Meynell was born in 1848, was educated privately by her father and spent a great part of her early life in Italy. She married Wilfred Meynell, the friend and editor of Francis Thompson. Her work, which is high in conception and fine in execution, is distinguished by its pensive, religious note. Her first four volumes appeared, in a condensed form, in Collected Poems (1913). Since then, her most representative work is A Father of Women and Other Poems (1917). THE SHEPHERDESS She walks the lady of my delight A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep; She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep. She roams maternal hills and bright Dark valleys safe and deep. The chastest stars may peep. She holds her little thoughts in sight, She walks the lady of my delight- William Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley was born in 1849 and was educated at the Grammar School of Gloucester. From childhood he was afflicted with a tuberculous disease which finally necessitated the amputation of a foot. His Hospital Verses, those vivid precursors of current free verse, were a record of the time when he was at the infirmary at Edinburgh; they are sharp with the sights, sensations, even the actual smells of the sickroom. In spite (or, more probably, because) of his continued poor health, Henley never ceased to worship strength and energy; courage and a triumphant belief in a harsh world shine out of the athletic London Voluntaries (1892) and the lightest and most musical lyrics in Hawthorn and Lavender (1898). After a brilliant and varied career (see Preface), devoted mostly to journalism, Henley died in 1903. INVICTUS Out of the night that covers me, In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. |