YOUR hands lie open in the long fresh grass,

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky : —
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

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ΙΟ

SONNET LXXXVI-LOST DAYS

THE lost days of my life until to-day,

What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?

Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?

I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,

Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
'I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me?'
'And I - and I thyself,' (lo! each one saith,)

And thou thyself to all eternity!'

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ΙΟ

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

1837

CHORUS

[From Atalanta in Calydon]

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

is the shadows and windy places

Vith lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

For he Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,

With a noise of winds and many rivers,

With a clamor of waters, and with might;

Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;

For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!

For the stars and the winds are unto her

As raiment, as songs of the harp-player ;

For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,

And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a traveling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid ;

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And soft as lips that laugh and hide

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The laughing leaves of the trees divide,

And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair

Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;

The wild vine slipping down leaves bare

Her bright breast shortening into sighs;

The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,

But the berried ivy catches and cleaves

To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

ENG. POEMS - 21

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THE SALT OF THE EARTH

IF childhood were not in the world,
But only men and women grown ;
No baby-locks in tendrils curled,
No baby blossoms blown;

Though men were stronger, women fairer,
And nearer all delights in reach,
And verse and music uttered rarer
Tones of more godlike speech;

Though the utmost life of life's best hours

Found, as it cannot find, words;

Though desert sands were sweet as flowers
And flowers could sing like birds,

But children never heard them, never

They felt a child's foot leap and run ;

This were a drearier star than ever
Yet looked upon the sun.

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ΙΟ

15

ALFRED TENNYSON

1809-1892

MARIANA

'Mariana in the moated grange.'

- Measure for Measure.

WITH blackest moss the flower-pots
Were thickly crusted, one and all;
The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the pear to the gable wall.

The broken sheds look'd sad and strange;
Unlifted was the clinking latch:
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, 'My life is dreary,

He cometh not,' she said;

She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

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Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,

Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,

When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, 'The night is dreary,

He cometh not,' she said;

She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

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Upon the middle of the night,

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Waking she heard the night-fowl crow;

The cock sung out an hour ere light;

From the dark fen the oxen's low

Came to her without hope of change,

In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn

About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, 'The day is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;

She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!'

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