THE WATER-SNAKES

This and the following verse are a few beautiful words from a great poem, The Ancient Mariner, too long for full quotation in this book.

BEYOND the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes :

They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

They coiled and swam

and every track

Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare;

A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:

Sure my kind Saint took pity on me,

And I blessed them unaware.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

SLEEP

O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary Queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA

A wooden sailing ship as the sailor loved it.

A WET sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast

And fills the white and rustling sail
And bends the gallant mast;

And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While like the eagle free

Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.

O for a soft and gentle wind!
I heard a fair one cry;

But give to me the snoring breeze
And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my lads,
The good ship tight and free-
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon horned moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;

But hark the music, mariners !
The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashes free-

While the hollow oak our palace is,

Our heritage the sea.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

THE ISLES OF GREECE

Byron writes for Greece in the person of a Greek. And in the person of a Greek, making himself a patriot for a country not his own, he died. This poem is, I think, the finest and noblest he has written. I have left out the two or three stanzas that required full knowledge of Greek history.

THE Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For, standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not think myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,

And men in nations ;-all were his!
He counted them at break of day-
And when the sun set where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now

The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race
To feel at least a patriot's shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush-for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush ?—Our fathers bled.
Earth render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopyla !

What, silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no-the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, 'Let one living head, But one, arise, we come, we come! 'Tis but the living who are dumb.

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade-
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,

Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mineDash down yon cup of Samian wine!

LORD BYRON.

THE NOSEGAY

One of the most beautiful of the many flower-poems in English poetry.

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets;