LATE OF IPSWICH, AND ONE OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.


From thy sad sire and weeping kindred torn,
    Thine is the crown of everlasting life;
On thy closed eye has burst a brighter morn,
    In realms where joy and peace alone are rife;
Thy soul, in Christ, enlightened and new-born,
    Has meekly triumphed over nature's strife,
And passed the dreary portals of the grave,
Strong in the faith of Him who died to save!

Soldier of Christ! thy warfare now is o'er,
    Thy toils accomplished and thy trials done,
And thou shalt weep and sigh, young saint, no more;
    With thee the scene is closed, the race is run.
Death heaved the bar of that eternal door;
    The palm is gained,--the victory is won,
And earthly sorrows shall no more alloy
Thy soul's...

As rivers seek the sea,
Much more deep than they,
So my soul seeks thee
Far away:
As running rivers moan
On their course alone
So I moan
Left alone.

As the delicate rose
To the sun's sweet strength
Doth herself unclose,
Breadth and length:
So spreads my heart to thee
Unveiled utterly,
I to thee
Utterly.

As morning dew exhales
Sunwards pure and free,
So my spirit fails
After thee:
As dew leaves not a trace
On the green earth's face;
I, no trace
On thy face.

Its goal the river knows,
Dewdrops find a way,
Sunlight cheers the rose
In her day:
Shall I, lone sorrow past,
Find thee at the last?
Sorrow past,
Thee at last?

It fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Seyd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discussed
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirred the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Ev...

    Such wast thou: now in earth below,
    Dust and a skeleton thou art.
    Above thy bones and clay,
    Here vainly placed by loving hands,
    Sole guardian of memory and woe,
    The image of departed beauty stands.
    Mute, motionless, it seems with pensive gaze
    To watch the flight of the departing days.
    That gentle look, that, wheresoe'er it fell,
    As now it seems to fall,
    Held fast the gazer with its magic spell;
    That lip, from which as from some copious urn,
    Redundant pleasure seems to overflow;
    That neck, on which love once so fondly hung;
    That loving hand, whose tender pressure still
    The hand it clasped, with trembling joy would thrill;
    That bosom, whose transparent loveliness
    The color from t...

I cannot change as others do,
Though you unjustly scorn;
Since that poor swain that sighs for you
For you alone was born.
No, Phillis, no; your heart to move
A surer way I’ll try;
And, to revenge my slighted love,
Will still love on and die.

When kill’d with grief Amyntas lies,
And you to mind shall call
The sighs that now unpitied rise,
The tears that vainly fall,
That welcome hour, that ends this smart,
Will then begin your pain;
For such a faithful tender heart
Can never break in vain.

("O! dis-moi, tu veux fuir?")

[Bk. IV, vii., Jan. 31, 1821.]


Forget? Can I forget the scented breath
Of breezes, sighing of thee, in mine ear;
The strange awaking from a dream of death,
The sudden thrill to find thee coming near?
Our huts were desolate, and far away
I heard thee calling me throughout the day,
No one had seen thee pass,
Trembling I came. Alas!
    Can I forget?

Once I was beautiful; my maiden charms
Died with the grief that from my bosom fell.
Ah! weary traveller! rest in my loving arms!
Let there be no regrets and no farewell!
Here of thy mother sweet, where waters flow,
Here of thy fatherland we whispered low;
    Here, music, praise, and prayer
    Filled the glad summer air.
    Can I forget?

Well have Canadians chosen thee
    As the emblem of their land,
Thou noble, spreading maple tree,
    Lord of the forest grand;
Through all the changes Time has made,
    Thy woods so deep and hoar
Have given their homesteads pleasant shade,
    And beauty to their shore.

Say, what can match in splendor rare
    Thy foliage, brightly green,
Thy leaves that wave in summer's air,
    Glossy as satin sheen,
When Spring returns the first art thou,
    On mountain or in vale,
With springing life and budding bough,
    To tell the joyous tale.

In Autumn's hours of cheerless gloom,
    How glowing is the dye
Of the crimson robe thou dost assume,
    Though it only be to die;
Like the red men who, long years ago,
    Reposed benea...

If it be true, celestial powers,
That you have form'd me fair,
And yet, in all my vainest hours,
My mind has been my care:
Then, in return, I beg this grace,
As you were ever kind,
What envious Time takes from my face
Bestow upon my mind!

Among a race high-handed, strong of heart,
Sea-rovers, conquerors, builders in the waste,
He had his birth; a nature too complete,
Eager and doubtful, no man's soldier sworn
And no man's chosen captain; born to fail,
A name without an echo: yet he too
Within the cloister of his narrow days
Fulfilled the ancestral rites, and kept alive
The eternal fire; it may be, not in vain;
For out of those who dropped a downward glance
Upon the weakling huddled at his prayers,
Perchance some looked beyond him, and then first
Beheld the glory, and what shrine it filled,
And to what Spirit sacred: or perchance
Some heard him chanting, though but to himself,
The old heroic names: and went their way:
And hummed his music on the march to death.

Through every sense a sweet balm permeates,
As music strikes new tones from every nerve.
The soul of Feeling enters at the gates
Of Intellect, and Fancy comes to serve
With fitting homage the propitious guest.
Nature, erewhile so lonely and oppressed,
Stands like a stately Presence, and looks down
As from a throne of power.    I have grown
Full twenty summers backwards, and my youth
Is surging in upon me till my hopes
Are as fresh-tinted as the checkered leaves
That the sun shines through.    All the future opes
Its endless corridors, where time unweaves
The threads of Error from the golden warp of Truth.

In heavens of riveted blue, that sunset dyes
With glaucous flame, deep in the west the Day
Stands Midas-like; or, wading on his way,
Touches with splendor all the twilight skies.
Each cloud that, like a stepping-stone, he tries
With rosy foot, transforms its sober gray
To burning gold; while, ray on crystal ray,
Within his wake the stars like bubbles rise.
So should the artist in his work accord
All things with beauty, and communicate
His soul's high magic and divinity
To all he does; and, hoping no reward,
Toil onward, making darkness aureate
With light of worlds that are and worlds to be.

Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
There, wrapp'd in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:
But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again.

All that I sung still to her praise did tend,
Still she was first; still she my songs did end;
Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy.
Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight:
It shall suffice that they were breath'd and died for her delight.

(The Dictionary Of National Biography)

Sitting at times over a hearth that burns
    With dull domestic glow,
My thought, leaving the book, gratefully turns
    To you who planned it so.

Not of the great only you deigned to tell---
    The stars by which we steer---
But lights out of the night that flashed, and fell
    Tonight again, are here.

Such as were those, dogs of an elder day,
    Who sacked the golden ports,
And those later who dared grapple their prey
    Beneath the harbour forts:

Some with flag at the fore, sweeping the world
    To find an equal fight,
And some who joined war to their trade, and hurled
    Ships of the line in flight.

Whether their fame centuries long should ring
    They cared not over-muc...

I
The clearest eyes in all the world they read
With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true
Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew
Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,
As they the light of ages quick and dead,
Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew
Can slay not one of all the works we knew,
Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.
The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,
And moulded of unconquerable thought,
And quickened with imperishable flame,
Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought
May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,
Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.

December 13, 1889.

II
Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom
Time is not lord, but servant? What ...

Ariel to Miranda: - Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee,
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain;
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who,
From life to life, must still pursue
Your happiness; - for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlu...

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on c...

My world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes
Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;
An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes
The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.

The surface of dreams is broken,
The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.
Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and I am woken
From the dreams that the distance flattered.

Along the railway, active figures of men.
They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they move
Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy world.

Here in the subtle, rounded flesh
Beats the active ecstasy.
In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,
The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh
Of men, vibrating in ecst...

Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable Time
And Nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament,
His myrrh, and wine, and rings,

His sheet of lead,
And trophies buried:
Go, get them where he earned them when alive;
As resolutely dig or dive.

Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand:
'T will soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark!