THE PAST. 17 THE PAST. WILT thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Blossoms and leaves instead of mould? And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it! Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, That joy, once lost, is pain. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Modern Poets. 18 NIGHT AND DEATH. NIGHT AND DEATH. MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew This glorious canopy of light and blue? Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? J. Blanco White. LONDON AT SUNRISE. 19 LONDON AT SUNRISE: (FROM WESTMINSTER BRIDGE). EARTH has not anything to show more fair: This city now doth like a garment wear All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. W. Wordsworth. O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary. R. Burns. A WISH. MINE be a cot beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Around my ivied porch shall spring The village-church among the trees, Samuel Rogers. SOFT soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding, Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea; Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining, Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me. Deep, deep Love, within Thine own abyss abiding, Pour Thyself abroad, O Lord, on earth and air and sea; Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding, Shield from sorrow, sin, and shame my helpless babe and me. Charles Kingsley. |