CCCLXXXIX. JOSEPH HAMBLEDON.
No mighty deluge can extinguish love,
Nor rivers drown it. He that thinks to prove
The power of gold to purchase love, shall end,
Though all the treasures of his house he spend,
By finding wealth is wasted upon naught;
Shame and confusion all that he hath bought.
CCCXC. HORATIUS BONAR.
Sunshine is ever strong.
No blast can break or bend one single ray ;
In sevenfold strength it faces wave and wind;
Heedless of their opposing turbulence,
It passes through them in its quiet power
Unruffled, and unbroken, and unbent.
No might of armies, and no rage of storms
Can turn aside one sunbeam from its path,
Or bate its speed, or force it back again
To the far fountain-head from whence it came.
CCCXCI. R. NEWTON LEE.
TO A LADY AFTER DEATH.
How tranquil and soft is that slumber,
As if dreaming of glories divine!
How few of all earth's mighty number,
May hope for repose such as thine!
On thy lip there still lingers a smile
Of farewell to the world and its woes;
Death's hand must have falter'd awhile
And could only thine eyelids half close.
Their loss, in thy prime, those are weeping
Ou thine innocent childhood who smil'd;
Yet angels a vigil are keeping
To receive their still innocent child.
CCCXCII. ED. SHELTON.
THE MISSING TWELVE.
A little boat put out to sea;
Its helm was set, its sails were free,
And wooed the wind right lovingly.
Within the boat twelve revellers were
Devoid of sorrow, thought, or care,
For all were young-a portion fair.
So sailed they forth-that joyous throng,
With merry jest, and shout, and song,
And peals of laughter loud and long.
The boatman watched them 'neath his hand,
And shouted cautions from the land,
Which none car'd now to understand.
The thirsty keel the cool spray drank,
The vessel in the distance shrank
A patch, a blot, a speck, a blank.
Then sped the pleasant hours away,
As will they not if hearts be gay,
And heaven bestows a sunny day.
Evening approached with glowing sky,
And golden bars upraised on high
To let the weary sun pass by.
Then followed that uncertain light
Which hesitates 'twixt day and night
But still no boat appeared in sight.
Darker and darker now it grew,
Strange! there should be no trace nor clue,
Of the long-missing jocund crew.
And now the sea which late had kept
Unbroken calm as though it slept
In sudden fury, straight upleapt.
Against the rocks it blindly dashed,
The shore with maddened fury lashed,
Then fled, half angry, half abashed.
Athwart the heavens the thunder broke,
The lightning darted with fell stroke,
And winds in threat'ning murmurs spoke.
The boatman from his ingle chair,
Listens, and marks the lurid glare,
And wonders how the laughers fare.
Friends, brothers, parents, watch and wait
By open door or garden gate,
Then hasten forth to question fate.
With restless steps, these pace the beach
In silence; each conceals from each
The fears they dare not trust to speech.
One listened-hush! was that a cry?
One pierced the dun with curious eye,
A sail? Ah, no, a phantasy.
Thus passed that fearful night away,
How long, how wretched, let him say
Who sleepless lies, and prays for day.
Then morning broke with pleasant gleam,
Making the night's afflictions seem
The mere creations of a dream.
The boatman comes along the strand,
His eyes are bent upon the sand,
He starts, he shouts, he lifts his hand.
All hasten there, what to behold?
A batter'd hull, whereon was scrolled
The vessel's name-the tale was told.
Nought else did e'er the sea restore,
The hapless Twelve who left that shore,
Departed, to return no more.
CCCXCIII. W. COSMO MONKHOUSE.
VANITY.
We steer by stars, which fail us in our need,
To lands we never dreamt of when we sailed.
O miserable uncertainty, to toil
And see the painful labour of a life
Outraged by use unworthy; see the shaft
We pointed to a hair's breadth, miss the mark
Caught by a passing breath; the sword we forged
Turn its ungrateful edge against our cause.
Oh happy they who die with some vast work
Half-done, with all the purple bloom of hope
Still fresh upon their hearts, nor live to see
The full diversity of aim and end
Attending noble efforts,-know what 'tis
To be so strong and yet so powerless.
CCCXCIV. ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.
1. RAILING AGAINST THE GODS.
For now we know not of them; but one saith
The gods are gracious, praising God; and one,
When hast thou seen ? or hast thou felt his breath
Touch, nor consume thine eyelids as the sun,
Nor fill thee to the lips with fiery death?
None hath beheld him, none.
Seen above other gods and shapes of things,
Swift without feet and flying without wings,
Intolerable, not clad with death or life,
Insatiable, not known of night or day,
The lord of love and loathing and of strife,
Who gives a star and takes a sun away;
Who shapes the soul, and makes her a barren wife
To the earthly body and grievous growth of clay
Who turns the large limbs to a little flame,
And binds the great sea with a little sand;
Who makes desire, and slays desire with shame;
Who makes the heaven as ashes in his hand;
Who, seeing the light and shadow for the same,
Bids day waste night as fire devours a brand,
Smites without sword, and scourges without rod,
The supreme evil, God!
2. THE CALEDONIAN BOAR.
But he so galled
Sprang straight, and rearing cried no lesser cry
Than thunder and the roar of wintering streams
That mix their own foam with the yellower sea
And as a tower that falls by fire in fight
With ruin of walls and all its archery,
And breaks the iron flower of war beneath,
Crushing charred limbs and molten arms of men;
So through crushed branches and the reddening brake
Clamoured and crashed the fervour of his feet,
And trampled, springing sideways from the tusk,
Too tardy a moving mould of heavy strength,
Ancæus; and as flakes of weak-winged snow
Break, all the hard thews of his heaving limbs
Broke, and rent flesh fell every way, and blood
Flew, and fierce fragments of no more a man.
3. MELEAGER'S DYING SPEECH.
And let no brother or sister grieve too sore,
Nor melt their hearts out on me with their tears,
Since extreme love and sorrowing overmuch
Vex the great gods, and overloving men
Slay and are slain for love's sake; and this house
Shall bear much better children; why should these
Weep? but in patience let them live their lives
And mine pass by forgotten: thou alone,
Mother, thou sole and only, thou not these,
Keep me in mind a little when I die
Because I was thy first-born; let thy soul
Pity me, pity even me gone hence and dead,
Though thou wert wroth, and though thou bear again
Much happier sons, and all men later born
Exceedingly excel me; yet do thou
Forget not, nor think shame; I was thy son.
CCCXCV. G. W. WEEKS.
1. ENGLAND'S EMPIRE.
It stretcheth far into the frozen north
Among Canadian snows: and to the west,
Where the great sun unpacks his wealth of gold
Ere he doth sleep, and leaves it in the valleys,
And on the hill sides, like a prodigal,
That men may gather it.
2. FLOWERS.
This gay young earth,
Wooed of the sun, would break its heart with joy,
But that its joy doth vent itself in flowers.
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