Memorabilia

H, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!

But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at-

My starting moves your laughter.

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt.
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.

H

Keats

Robert Browning.

E has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes-'t is Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone!

Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

He is made one with Nature: there is heard

His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move

Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

Shelley.

At the grave of Charles Lamb in Edmonton

OT here, O teeming City, was it meet Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose, But where the multitudinous life-tide flows Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat Of flocks in Spring-time, there should Earth enclose His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes, There, 'neath the music of thy million feet. In love of thee this lover knew no peer. Thine eastern or thy western fane had made

Fit habitation for his noble shade.

Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear,
Not here, in rustic exile, O not here,
Thy Elia like an alien should be laid!

HAT needs his laurel our ephemeral tears,
To save from visitation of decay?

W

Not in this temporal light alone, that bay Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears Sings he with lips of transitory clay. Rapt though he be from us,

Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus;

Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each
Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach;
Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach;
Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home;
Keats, on his lips the eternal rose of youth,
Doth in the name of Beauty that is Truth
A kinsman's love beseech;

Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam,
Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave,

His equal friendship crave:

And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech

Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome.

The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer;

The grass of yester-year

Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay:
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear:

Song passes not away.

Captains and conquerors leave a little dust,

And kings a dubious legend of their reign;
The swords of Cæsars, they are less than rust:
The poet doth remain.

Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive;

And thou, the Mantuan of this age and soil,
With Virgil shalt survive,

Enriching Time with no less honeyed spoil,
The yielded sweet of every Muse's hive;
Heeding no more the sound of idle praise
In that great calm our tumults cannot reach,
Master who crown'st our immelodious days
With flower of perfect speech.

H

William Watson.

Charles Kingsley

EACHERS pass; and the lesson-pages are torn,
And the dusty books laid by;

But, at least, this man has helped us to hear
the note

Of the wordless song whose wandering mur

murs float

From fields that the sunlight splashes with golden-brown As it plays on the shocks of corn, from woods that crown The sloping ridges, from meadow and lane and heath, And crowded pines, with a blush of heather beneath, And the stream where the fat trout lie;-oh, here is rest From the world, with its fevered brain and panting breast, And Youth comes back with its visions, and that sweet dawn

Of Hope, that lighted the dew upon dream-land's lawn, And set all the colours aflame in the garden-beds Where the flowers of love and glory lifted their heads,

And we see the land we had lost, and forget the din
Of a jarring age, and learn the wisdom anew,
That tells how only the losers in life shall win
And only the dreams be true.

L

A. E. J. Legge.

Robert Louis Stevenson

ONG, hatchet face, black hair, and haunting gaze

That follows, as you move about the room, Ah! this is he who trod the darkening ways, And plucked the flowers upon the edge of doom

The bright, sweet-scented flowers that star the road

To Death's dim dwelling. Others heed them not,
With sad eyes fixed upon that drear abode,
Weeping, and wailing their unhappy lot.

But he went laughing down the shadowed way,
The boy's heart leaping still within his breast,
Weaving his garlands when his mood was gay,
Mocking his sorrows with a solemn jest.

The high Gods gave him wine to drink; a cup
Of strong desire, of knowledge, and of pain,
He set it to his lips and drank it up,

Smiling, then turned unto his flowers again.

These are the flowers of that immortal strain

Which, when the hand that plucked them drops and dies,

Still keep their radiant beauty free from stain,

And breathe their fragrance through the centuries.

(B 838)

B. Faul Neumar 22