64 "SAPPHO SURVIVES, BECAUSE WE SING HER SONGS,-(BROWNING) ROBERT BROWNING. VII. I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! My heart seemed full as it could hold— There was place and to spare for the frank young smile See, I shut inside the sweet cold hand. You will wake, and remember, and understand. ["The words of 'Evelyn Hope' are the words of a dreamer; but the utterance is wrung out of the sorrow of death; and its keynote is a hope for the fulfilment of love in other lives, not the knowledge of love in this life. The mind of the speaker walks ever with the touch of God upon his brow, under the brooding wings of God, who keeps him safe from wounding. For that which God made good shall in the end have its purpose in being good; and no least earthly beauty, no little flower, no white sun ray, no gold hair, red mouth, pure brow, shall go unhonoured to darkness and the grave."-J. T. Nettleship, Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry.] "BY THE SPIRIT, WHEN AGE SHALL O'ERCOME THEE, THOU STILL SHALT ENJOY-R. BROWNING) MORE INDEED THAN AT FIRST WHEN UNCONSCIOUS, THE LIFE OF A BOY."-ROBERT BROWNING. Now that April's there! And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf II. And after April, when May follows, And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! AND AESCHYLUS, BECAUSE WE READ HIS PLAYS."-R. BROWNING. "GOD IS SEEN GOD IN THE STAR, IN THE STONE, IN THE FLESH, IN THE SOUL, AND THE CLOD."-BROWNING. 66 'MEN ARE NOT ANGELS, NEITHER ARE THEY BRUTES:-(BROWNING) HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD. Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Blossoms and dew-drops-at the bent spray's hedge- The first fine careless rapture! "That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over.") [From the Collected Edition of his Poems, in 3 vols.] SOMETHING WE MAY SEE, ALL WE CANNOT SEE."-R. BROWNING. 65 "WIN THE NEXT WORLD'S REWARD AND REPOSE, BY THE STRUGGLE IN THIS."-ROBERT BROWNING. 66 SWIFT AS A WEAVER'S SHUTTLE FLEET OUR YEARS:-(R. BROWNING) HOME THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA. OBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the north-west Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Bluish 'mid the burning water; full in face Trafalgar lay; "I BELIEVE IT! 'TIS THOU, GOD, THAT GIVEST; 'TIS I WHO RECEIVE;-(R. BROWNING) IN THE FIRST IS THE LAST, IN THY WILL IS MY POWER TO BELIEVE."-ROBERT BROWNING. In the dimmest north-east distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and gray; "Here and here did England help me; how can I help Eng- Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, [From the Collected Edition of his Poems, in 3 vols.] * Off Cape Saint Vincent the British, under Jervis and Nelson, won the great sea-fight against the Spanish, on the 14th February, 1796. MAN GOETH TO THE GRAVE, AND WHERE IS HE?" "-ROBERT BROWNING. "LIFE'S INADEQUATE TO JOY, AS THE SOUL SEES JOY, TEMPTING LIFE to take."=bobert BroWNING, "ADMIRATION GROWS AS KNOWLEDGE GROWS."-R. BROWNING. HE rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. Ruined beneath her feet, and driven For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, With its seven proper colours chorded, And supreme the spectral creature lorded Fainter, flushier, and flightier— Rapture dying along its verge! Whose, from the straining topmast dark, [From the Collected Edition of his Poems, in 3 vols.] 66 THY LIFE STAYS IN THE POEMS MEN SHALL SING."-IBID. "AND MY WHOLE SOUL REVOLVES, THE WORLD AND LIFE'S TOO BIG TO PASS FOR A DREAM."-BROWNING. "AH! THE LAMPS NUMBERLESS, THE MYSTICAL JEWELS OF GOD, AND-R. BUCHANAN) 68 "SAD THINGS IN THIS LIFE OF BREATH-(BUCHANAN) ROBERT BUCHANAN. Robert Buchanan. [ROBERT BUCHANAN was born on the 18th of August 1841. He received his education at the High School and University of Glasgow, and removing to London in or about 1860, embraced a literary career. His principal works are:-" Undertones" (1860); "Idyls and Legends of Inverburn" (1865); "London Poems" (1866); "North Coast Poems" (1867); "David Gray, and other Essays" (1868); the "Book of Orm" (1870); and “Napoleon Fallen" (1871). A writer in The Spectator (July 1866) thus warmly and appreciatively criticises this young but growing poet, whose successive works exhibit a marked advance in depth and breadth of thought and range of expression : "Mr. Buchanan is far more than a minor poet. The volume before us would seem to prove that there is scarcely any eminence short of the very highest in our poetic literature which he may not hope to reach. He has not shown as yet the highest order of lyrical genius nor the highest fertility of dramatic conception, but his peculiar province is the union of lyrical with dramatic conceptions, so that he seems, to use a mathematical metaphor, to hit the locus of the points of intersection between the genius of Wordsworth and the genius of Browning. Thus he combines many of the beauties of Wordsworth with something of the dramatic vivacity and realism of Mr. Browning; and the glory of nature gives a sweetness, a melody, and a melancholy to his verses, which is seldom or never to be found in Browning's shrewd, loquacious 'apologies' for all sorts of characters. The lyrical poet is far deeper and sweeter in Mr. Buchanan than in Mr. Browning."] THE LUMINOUS, WONDERFUL, BEAUTIFUL LIGHTS OF THE VEIL!"-ROBERT BUCHANAN. UP IN AN ATTIC. ALF of a gold ring bright, A heather-sprig thereto, We roamed erratic; Last, an old book of song,— ARE TRUEST, SWEETEST, DEEPEST."-ROBERT BUCHANAN. |