Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

    Friend, old friend in the Manse by the fireside sitting,
        Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log;
    You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
    Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog.

    Silent here in the south sit I; and, leaning,
        One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand;
    Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
        Rather I read in the shadows and understand.

    Dear, kind she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
        Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:

Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
        Lit up a face in the leathern dusk of the shelves.

    Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
        Yet there is one gives back to the wint...

        Tune--Luther's Chorale
        "Ein' feste burg ist unser Gott"

I

Of old our City hath renown.
    Of God are her foundations,
Wherein this day a King we crown
    Elate among the nations.
            Acknowledge, then, thou King--
            And you, ye people, sing--
            What deeds His arm hath wrought:
            Yea, let their tale be taught
                To endless generations.

II

So long, so far, Jehovah guides
    His people's path attending,
By pastures green and water-sides
    Toward His hill ascending;
            Whence they beneath the stars
            Shall view their ancient wars,
            Their perils, far removed.
            O might of mercy proved!
              ...

Plain Language from truthful James[1].


Do I sleep?    Do I dream?
    Am I hoaxed by a scout?
Are things what they seem,
    Or is Sophists about?
Is our "to ti en einai" a failure, or is Robert Browning played out?

Which expressions like these
    May be fairly applied
By a party who sees
    A Society skied
Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.

'Twas November the third,
    And I says to Bill Nye,
'Which it's true what I've heard:
    If you're, so to speak, fly,
There's a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High.'

Which I mentioned its name,
    And he ups and remarks:
'If dress-coats is the game
    And pow-wow in the Parks,
Then I 'm nuts on...

A thousand songs I might have made
    Of You, and only You;
A thousand thousand tongues of fire
That trembled down a golden wire
    To lamp the night with stars, to braid
The morning bough with dew.

Within the greenwood girl and boy
    Had loiter'd to their lure,
And men in cities closed their books
To dream of Spring and running brooks
And all that ever was of joy
    For manhood to abjure.

And I'd have made them strong, so strong
    Outlasting towers and towns--
Millennial shepherds 'neath the thorn
Had piped them to a world reborn,
And danced Delight the dale along
    And up the daisied downs.

A thousand songs I might have made...
    But you required them not;
Content to reign your little while
Ere, abdicatin...

O'er the tears that we shed, dear
    The bitter vines twist,
And the hawk and the red deer
    They keep where we kiss'd:
All broken lies the shieling
    That sheltered from rain,
With a star to pierce the ceiling,
    And the dawn an empty pane.

Thro' the mist, up the moorway,
    Fade hunters and pack;
From the ridge to thy doorway
    Happy voices float back ...
O, between the threads o' mist, love,
    Reach your hands from the house.
Only mind that we kiss'd, love,
    And forget the broken vows!

From my farm, from hèr farm
    Furtively we came.
In either home a hearth was warm:
    We nursed a hungrier flame.

Our feet were foul with mire,
    Our faces blind with mist;
But all the night was naked fire
    About us where we kiss'd.

To her farm, to my farm,
    Loathing we returned;
Pale beneath a gallow's arm
    The planet Saturn burned.

Over the rim of the Moor,
    And under the starry sky,
Two men came to my door
    And rested them thereby.

Beneath the bough and the star,
    In a whispering foreign tongue,
They talked of a land afar
    And the merry days so young!

Beneath the dawn and the bough
    I heard them arise and go:
And my heart it is aching now
    For the more it will never know.

Why did they two depart
    Before I could understand?
Where lies that land, O my heart?
    --O my heart, where lies that land?

By Sir W. S.


Written on the occasion of the visit of the United Fire Brigades to Oxford, 1887.



I.

St. Giles's street is fair and wide,
    St. Giles's street is long;
But long or wide, may naught abide
    Therein of guile or wrong;
For through St. Giles's, to and fro,
The mild ecclesiastics go
    From prime to evensong.
It were a fearsome task, perdie!
To sin in such good company.



II.

Long had the slanting beam of day
Proclaimed the Thirtieth of May
Ere now, erect, its fiery heat
Illumined all that hallowed street,
And breathing benediction on
Thy serried battlements, St. John,
Suffused at once with equal glow
The cluster'd Archipelago,
The Art Professor's studio
    An...

Down in the street the last late hansoms go
        Still westward, but with backward eyes of red
        The harlot shuffles to her lonely bed;
The tall policeman pauses but to throw
A flash into the empty portico;
        Then he too passes, and his lonely tread
        Links all the long-drawn gas-lights on a thread
And ties them to one planet swinging low.

O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend
        O'er Helen's bosom in the trancèd west--
        To watch the hours heave by upon her breast
And at her parted lip for dreams attend:
        If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deem'd.
        Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?