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NATURA BENIGNA1

WHAT power is this? What witchery wins my feet
To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow,
All silent as the emerald gulfs below,

Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat?
What thrill of earth and heaven — most wild, most
sweet-

What answering pulse that all the senses know,
Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow
Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet?
Mother, 't is I reborn: I know thee well:
That throb I know and all its prophesies,
O Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell
Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies!
Dumb Mother, struggling with the years to tell
The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes.

Theodore Watts-Dunton.

A DREAM

BENEATH the loveliest dream there coils a fear:
Last night came she whose eyes are memories now;
Her far-off gaze seemed all forgetful how

Love dimmed them once, so calm they shone and clear.
"Sorrow,” I said, "has made me old, my dear;
"Tis I, indeed, but grief can change the brow:
Beneath my load a seraph's neck might bow,
Vigils like mine would blanch an angel's hair.”
Oh, then I saw, I saw the sweet lips move!
I saw the love-mists thickening in her eyes
I heard a sound as if a murmuring dove
Felt lonely in the dells of Paradise;

But when upon my neck she fell, my love,

Her hair smelt sweet of whin and woodland spice.

Theodore Watts-Dunton.

1 The three following sonnets by Theodore Watts-Dunton are reprinted from The Coming of Love, by permission of the publishers, John Lane Company.

IN A GRAVEYARD

OLIVER MADOX BROWN

NOVEMBER 12, 1874

FAREWELL to thee, and to our dreams farewell
Dreams of high deeds and golden days of thine,
Where once again should Art's twin powers combine
The painter's wizard-wand, the poet's spell!

Though Death strikes free, careless of Heaven and Hell
Careless of Man, of Love's most lovely shrine;
Yet must Man speak must ask of Heaven a sign
That this wild world is God's, and all is well.
Last night we mourned thee, cursing eyeless Death,
Who, sparing sons of Baal and Ashtoreth,

Must needs slay thee, worth all the world to slay;
But round this grave the winds of winter say:
"On earth what hath the poet? An alien breath.
Night holds the keys that ope the doors of Day."
Theodore Watts-Dunton.

DANTE 1

POET, whose unscarred feet have trodden Hell,
By what grim path and dread environing
Of fire couldst thou that dauntless footstep bring
And plant it firm amid the dolorous cell
Of darkness where perpetually dwell
The spirits cursed beyond imagining?
Or else is thine a visionary wing,
And all thy terror but a tale to tell?
"Neither and both, thou seeker! I have been
No wilder path than thou thyself dost go,
Close masked in an impenetrable screen,
Which having rent I gaze around, and know
What tragic wastes of gloom, before unseen,
Curtain the soul that strives and sins below.

Richard Garnett (1835-1906).

1 The two sonnets by Richard Garnett are reprinted from The Queen and Other Poems, by permission of the publishers, John Lane Company.

AGE

I WILL not rail or grieve, when torpid eld
Frosts the slow-journeying blood, for I shall see
The lovelier leaves hang yellow on the tree,
The nimbler brooks in icy fetters held.
Methinks the aged eye that first beheld
The fitful ravage of December wild,

Then knew himself indeed dear Nature's child,
Seeing the common doom, that all compelled.
No kindred we to her beloved broods,
If, dying these, we drew a selfish breath;
But one path travel all her multitudes,
And none dispute the solemn Voice that saith:
"Sun to thy setting; to your autumn, woods;
Stream to thy sea; and man unto thy death!"
Richard Garnett.

A PARABLE 1

I LONGED for rest, and some one spoke me fair,
And proffered goodly rooms wherein to dwell,
Hung round with tapestries, and garnished well,
That I might take mine ease and pleasure there;
And there I sought a refuge from despair,
A joy that should my life's long gloom dispel;
But ominously through those fair halls there fell
Strange sounds, as of old music in the air.
As day went down, the music grew apace,
And in the moonlight saw I, white and cold,
A presence, radiant in the radiant space,
With smiling lips that never had grown old;
And then I knew the secret none had told,
And shivered there, an alien in that place.

Louise Chandler Moulton (1835-1908).

1 Reprinted from Poems and Sonnets, by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Company.

LOVE'S WISDOM1

Now on the summit of Love's topmost peak
Kiss we and part; no further can we go;
And better death than we from high to low
Should dwindle or decline from strong to weak.
We have found all, there is no more to seek;
All have we proved, no more is there to know;
And Time could only tutor us to eke

Out rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow.
We cannot keep at such a height as this;
For even straining souls like ours inhale
But once in life so rarefied a bliss.

What if we lingered till love's breath should fail!
Heaven of my Earth! one more celestial kiss,
Then down by separate pathways to the vale.
Alfred Austin (1835——).

ENGLAND

WHILE men pay reverence to the mighty things,
They must revere thee, thou blue-cinctured isle
Of England - not to-day, but this long while
In front of nations, Mother of great kings,
Soldiers, and poets. Round thee the sea flings
Her steel bright arm, and shields thee from the guile
And hurt of France. Secure, with august smile,
Thou sittest, and the East its tribute brings.
Some say thy old-time power is on the wane,
Thy moon of grandeur, filled, contracts at length
They see it darkening down from less to less.
Let but a hostile hand make threat again,
And they shall see thee in thy ancient strength,
Each iron sinew quivering, lioness!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907).

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

WHEN I BEHOLD WHAT PLEASURE IS
PURSUIT

WHEN I behold what pleasure is Pursuit
What life, what glorious eagerness it is;
Then mark how full Possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,
I am perplext, and often stricken mute,
Wondering which hath attained the higher bliss,
The winged insect, or the chrysalis

It thrust aside with unreluctant foot.
Spirit of verse, that still elud'st my art
Thou airy phantom that dost ever haunt me,
O never, never rest upon my heart,

If when I have thee I shall little want thee!
Still flit away in moonlight, rain, and dew,
Will-o'-the-wisp, that I may still pursue!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

TO THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON 1
SPRING speaks again, and all our woods are stirred,
And all our wide glad wastes a-flower around,
That twice have heard keen April's clarion sound
Since here we first together saw and heard
Spring's light reverberate and reiterate word
Shine forth and speak in season. Life stands crowned
Here with the best one thing it ever found,

As of my soul's best birthdays dawns the third.
There is a friend that as the wise man saith

Cleaves closer than a brother: nor to me

Hath time not shown, through days like waves at strife,
This truth more sure than all things else but death,
This pearl most perfect found in all the sea

That washes towards your feet these waifs of life.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909).

1 The two sonnets by Algernon Charles Swinburne are reprinted from his Collected Poems, published by Harper & Brothers.

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