MONTENEGRO

THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails,
They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night
Against the Turk, whose inroad nowhere scales
Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,
And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight
Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight
By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales.
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernogora! never since thine own
Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm
Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892).

WRITTEN IN EDINBURGH

EVEN thus, methinks, a city reared should be,
Yea, an imperial city, that might hold
Five times a hundred noble towns in fee,
And either with their might of Babel old,
Or the rich Roman pomp of empery
Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled,
Highest in arms; brave tenement for the free,
Who never couch to thrones, or sin for gold.
Thus should her towers be raised ·

with vicinage

Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets,
As if to vindicate 'mid choicest seats

Of art, abiding Nature's majesty;

And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage
Chainless alike, and teaching Liberty.

Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833).

PARTED LOVE

METHINKS I have passed through some dreadful door,
Shutting off summer and its sunniest glades

From a dark waste of marsh and ruinous shades:
And in that sunlit past, one day before
All other days is crimson to the core;

That day of days when hand in hand became
Encircling arms, and with an effluent flame
Of terrible surprise, we knew love's lore.
The rose-red ear that then my hand caressed,
Those smiles bewildered, that low voice so sweet,
The truant threads of silk about the brow
Dishevelled, when our burning lips were pressed
Together, and the temple-pulses beat!

THE UNIVERSE VOID

REVOLVING Worlds, revolving systems, yea,
Revolving firmaments, nor there we end:
Systems of firmaments revolving, send
Our thought across the Infinite astray,
Gasping and lost and terrified, the day
Of life, the goodly interests of home,
Shrivelled to nothing; that unbounded dome
Pealing still on, in blind fatality.

No rest is there for our soul's wingèd feet,

She must return for shelter to her ark ·

The body, fair, frail, death-born, incomplete,

And let her bring this truth back from the dark:
Life is self-centred, man is nature's god;

Space, time, are but the walls of his abode.

William Bell Scott.

THE HUMAN FLOWER

In the old void of unrecorded time,
In long, slow æons of the voiceless past,
A seed from out the weltering fire-mist cast,
Took root a struggling plant that from its prime
Through rudiments uncouth, through rock and slime,
Grew, changing form and issue- and clinging fast,
Stretched its aspiring tendrils till at last

Shaped like a spirit it began to climb
Beyond its rugged stem, with leaf and bud
Still burgeoning to greet the sunlit air
That clothed its regal top with love and power,
And compassed it as with a heavenly flood
Until it burst in boom beyond compare,

The world's consummate, peerless human flower.
Christopher P. Cranch (1813–1892).

AGED CITIES

I HAVE known cities with the strong-armed Rhine
Clasping their mouldering quays in lordly sweep;
And lingered where the Marne's low waters shine
Through Tyrian Frankfort; and been fain to weep
'Mid the green cliffs where pale Mosella laves
That Roman sepulchre, imperial Treves.

Ghent boasts her street, and Bruges her moonlight square;
And holy Mechlin, Rome of Flanders, stands,

Like a queen mother, on her spacious lands;
And Antwerp shoots her glowing spire in air.
Yet have I seen no place, by inland brook,
Hill-top, or plain, or trim arcaded bowers,
That carries age so nobly in its look,
As Oxford with the sun upon its towers.

Frederick William Faber (1814-1863).

TO A FLOWER ON THE SKIRTS OF
MONT BLANC

WITH heart not yet half-rested from Mont Blanc,
O'er thee, small flower, my wearied eyes I bent,
And rested on that humbler vision long.
Is there less beauty in thy purple tent

Outspread, perchance a boundless firmament
O'er viewless myriads which beneath thee throng,
Than in that mount whose sides, with ruin hung,
Frown o'er black glens and gorges thunder-rent?
Is there less mystery? Wisely if we ponder,
Thine is the mightier marvel. Life in thee
Is strong as in cherubic wings that wander,
Seeking the limits of Infinity;-

Life, life to be transmitted, not to expire
Till yonder snowy vault shall melt in fire.

Aubrey de Vere the Younger (1814-1902).

THE SUN-GOD

I SAW the Master of the Sun. He stood

High in his luminous car, himself more bright;
An Archer of immeasurable might:

On his left shoulder hung his quivered load;
Spurned by his Steeds the eastern mountains glowed;
Forward his eager eye, and brow of light

He bent; and, while both hands that arch embowed,
Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night.
No wings profaned that god-like form: around
His neck high-held an ever-moving crowd
Of locks hung glistening: while such perfect sound
Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome
Thrilled as a dew drop; and each passing cloud
Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.

Aubrey de Vere the Younger.

THOUGH TO THE VILEST THINGS BENEATH THE MOON 1

1

THOUGH to the vilest things beneath the moon
For poor Ease' sake I give away my heart,
And for the moment's sympathy let part
My sense and sight of truth, Thy precious boon,
My painful earnings, lost, all lost, as soon
Almost as gained; and though aside I start,
Belie Thee daily, hourly, still Thou art,
Art surely as in heaven the sun at noon;
How much so e'er I sin, what e'er I do
Of evil, still the sky above is blue,
The stars look down in beauty as before:
It is enough to walk as best we may,

To walk, and, sighing, dream of that blest day
When ill we cannot quell shall be no more.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861).

LOVE

Our love is not a fading, earthly flower:

Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise,
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower,
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise.

To us the leafless autumn is not bare,

Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green:
Our summer hearts make summer's fulness where
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen:
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie;
Love-whose forgetfulness is beauty's death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,

And makes the body's dark and narrow grate
The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).

1 Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.