I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one, in a gracious hand, appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old and young;
And as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw a gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware.
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backwards by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
"Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I said; but there "Not Death, but Love."
WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
ALREADY evening! In the duskiest nook
Of yon dusk corner, under the Death's-head,
Between the alembics, thrust this legended
And iron-bound, and melancholy book;
For I will read no longer. The loud brook
Shelves his sharp light up shallow banks thin-spread;
The slumbrous west grows slowly red, and red:
Up from the ripen'd corn her silver hook
The moon is lifting: and deliciously
Along the warm blue hills the day declines.
The first star brightens while she waits for me,
And round her swelling heart the zone grows tight:
Musing, half-sad, in her soft hair she twines
The white rose, whispering "He will come to-night!"
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton).
THOU Comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain.
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o’erhanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves.
H. W. Longfellow.
THE passionate summer's dead! The sky's aglow
With roseate flushes of matur'd desire;
The winds at eve are musical and low
As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre,
Far up among the pillared clouds of fire
Whose pomp of strange procession upwards rolls
With gorgeous blazonry of pictured scrolls,
To celebrate the summer's past renown.
Ah me! How regally the heavens look down,
O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods,
And harvest-fields with hoarded increase brown,
And deep-toned majesty of golden floods
That lift their solemn dirges to the sky,
To swell the purple pomp that floateth by.
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