OF ENGLISH SONNETS

ALICE MEYNELL

YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH

YOUR own fair youth, you care so little for it,

Smiling towards Heaven you would not stay the advances

Of time and change upon your happiest fancies. I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it

Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year's

pansies,

Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;

In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To guard all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
Happy, and pensive past unaltered is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
In which your June has never passed away.
Walk there awhile among my memories.

GOLDEN

ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER
WULFRUNA'S HAMPTON
(WOLVERHAMPTON)

Now certain women carved their names in stone
That whosoever ran the same might read.
Cambridge was founded by Saint Etheldrede,
The holy daughter of an Anglian throne :
Saint Frides wide it was made Oxford known
By many a generous gift and godly deed :
Saint Hilda nobly helped Northumbria's need
When Whitby's abbey to full height had grown.
Wulfruna, likewise, chose the better part;
And in the midst of this our Mercian plain
A stately minster to God's glory raised,
To prove thereafter to the thronging mart
That favour is deceitful, beauty vain,

But she that fears her Maker shall be praised

OF ENGLISH SONNETS

MAURICE HEWLETT
THE WINDS' POSSESSION

WHEN Winds blow high and leaves begin to fall,
And the wan sunlight flits before the blast;
When fields are brown and crops are garnered all,
And rooks, like mastered ships, drift wide and fast
Maid Artemis, that feeleth her young blood
Leap like a freshet river for the sea,
Speedeth abroad with hair blown in a flood

To snuff the salt west wind and wanton free.

Then would you know how brave she is, how high Her ancestry, how kindred to the wind,

Mark but her flashing feet, her ravisht eye

That takes the boist'rous weather and feels it kind
And hear her eager voice, how tuned it is
To Autumn's clarion shrill for Artemis.

OF ENGLISH SONNETS

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

REGRET

I HOLD it now more shameful to forget
Than fearful to remember; if I may

Make choice of pain, my Father, I will pray
That I may suffer rather than regret ;

And this dull aching at my heart to-day

Is harder far to bear than when I set

My passionate heart some golden thing to get, And, as I clasped it, it was torn away.

• The world is fair,' the elder spirit saith,
"The tide flows fast, and on the further shore
Wait consolations and surprises rare.'

But youth still cries, 'The love that was my faith
Is broken, and the ruined shrine is bare,
And I am all alone for evermore.'

OF ENGLISH SONNETS

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
ON THE HILL

I WOULD not dwell with Passion; Passion grows
By what he feeds on-sense and sound and sight—
The myriad bubbles dancing to the light,

The frenzied fragrance of the wanton rose.

But Love may dwell with me: pure Love, that glows The richer through the cold and lonely night;

And gilds with warm effulgence, brave and bright, The frosty sparkle of unsullied snows.

When Passion throbs and quivers, Love is still
And piteous; swift to picture, apt to bend

And listen; at the shut of evening gray

He rises, threads the valley, climbs the hill,

To stand beside the milestone, stand and say: So many leagues divide me from my friend.