Dear home in England, safe and fast The past shall seem a nothing past Clough, 1852. Home-Thoughts from Abroad Oн, 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 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, ΙΟΙ The Soldier's Dream Browning. OUR bugles sang truce-for the night-cloud had lower'd, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die. When reposing that night on my pallet of straw, Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array, To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back. I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore, From my home and my weeping friends never to part; My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er, And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart. 'Stay, stay with us!-rest! thou art weary and worn '; -melted away. Campbell. 102 Vailima BLOWS the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how! Blows] inversion of grammar=the wind blows. Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, Standing-stones on the vacant wine-red moor, Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanish'd races, And winds, austere and pure : Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth? YORK. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath; For all in vain comes counsel to his ear. GAUNT. Oh, but they say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony : Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain, Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose; YORK. No; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds, . Direct not him whose way himself will choose: 'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose. GAUNT. Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus expiring do foretell of him : His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. This fortress built by Nature for herself Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, England, bound in with the triumphant sea, pelting] paltry, petty. With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds: How happy then were my ensuing death!.. Shakespeare. 104 London, 1802 MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour: Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Wordsworth. 105 BREATHES there the man with soul so dead, This is my own, my native land!' Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, From wandering on a foreign strand ? |