DIM in the moon wide-weltering Humber flowed;
Shone the rare lights on Humber's reaches low;
And thou wert waking, where one lone light glowed,
Whose love made all my bliss, whose woe my woe.
Borne as on Fate's own stream, from thine abode
I with that tide must journey sad and slow;
In that tall ship on Humber's heaving road
Dream for the night and with the morning go.
Yet thro' this lifelong dimness desolate,
O Love, thy star within me fades not so;
On that lone light I gaze, and wondering wait,
Since life we lost, if death be ours or no;
Yea, toward thee moving on the flood of Fate,
Dream for the night, but with the morn will go.
FREDERIC W. H. MYERS
A CHILD OF THE AGE
Oн for a voice that in a single song
Could quiver with the hopes and moan the fears
And speak the speechless secret of the years,
And rise, and sink, and at the last be strong!
Oh for a trumpet-call to stir the throng
Of doubtful fighting-men, whose eyes and ears
Watch till a banner in the East appears,
And the skies ring that have been still so long!
O age of mine, if one could tune for thee
A marching music out of this thy woe!
If we could climb upon a hill and see
Thy gates of promise on the plain below,
And gaze a minute on the bliss to be
And, knowing it, be satisfied to know!
EDWARD DOWDEN
THE SINGER'S PLEA
WHY do I sing? I know not why, my friend;
The ancient rivers, rivers of renown,
A royal largess to the sea roll down,
And on those liberal highways nations send
Their tributes to the world,-stored corn and wine,
Gold-dust, the wealth of pearls, and orient spar,
And myrrh, and ivory, and cinnabar,
And dyes to make a presence-chamber shine.
But in the woodlands, where the wild-flowers are,
The rivulets, they must have their innocent will,
Who all the summer hours are singing still;
The birds care for them, and sometimes a star,
And should a tired child rest beside the stream
Sweet memories would slide into his dream.
EDWARD DOWDEN
COACHING, IN SCOTLAND
WHERE have I been this perfect summer day,-
Or fortnight is it, since I rose from bed,
Devoured that kippered fish, the oatmeal bread,
And mounted to this box? O bowl away,
Swift stagers, through the dusk; I will not say
'Enough,' nor care where I have been or be,
Nor know one name of hill, or lake, or lea,
Or moor, or glen! Were not the clouds at play
Nameless among the hills, and fair as dreams?
On such a day we must love things, not words,
And memory take or leave them as they are.
On such a day! What unimagined streams
Are in the world, how many haunts of birds,
What fields and flowers,—and what an evening Star!
THE tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore;
The tenderest light was in the western sky;—
Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly,
The sea articulated o'er and o'er
To comfort all tired things; and one might pore,
Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye,
On that slow-fading amber radiancy
Past the long levels of the ocean-floor.
A turn, the castle fronted me, four-square,
Holding its seaward crag, abrupt, intense
Against the west, an apparition bold
Of naked human will; I stood aware,
With sea and sky, of powers unowned of sense,
Presences awful, vast, and uncontrolled.
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