Unto thy guidance from this hour; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of Truth thy bondman let me live. William Wordsworth 253 COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE SEPTEMBER 3, 1802 ARTH has not anything to show more fair: A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear William Wordsworth 254 SPEAK PEAK low to me, my Savior, low and sweet 255 Let my tears drop like amber while I go Elizabeth Barrett Browning CROSSING THE BAR1 UNSET and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. Alfred Tennyson 1 Reprinted with the permission of The Macmillan Company. IV REFLECTIVE, DESCRIPTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life -WILLIAM WORDSWORTH be 256 RUBAIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM OF Ages of Progress! These eight hundred years To thee and half believeth what she hears! Hadst thou the Secret? Ah, and who may tell? Looms o'er us, and the thought of Heaven or Hell! Nay, we can never be as wise as thou, O idle singer 'neath the blossomed bough. We cannot shirk the questions "Where?" and "How?" -ANDREW LANG 1 The text is that of the fifth edition. Though ostensibly a translation, poem as a whole is more properly regarded as an original production eveloped from suggestions furnished by the Persian poet. (See the atroduction to The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam, by John Payne.) The aterial contained in the notes is mainly derived from Fitzgerald's ommentary, which without further acknowledgment is freely transcribed r paraphrased; from Nathan Haskell Dole's multivariorum edition of he Rubáiyát; and from the work by John Payne which is referred to bove. The epigraph, for which the present editors are responsible, is eprinted through special arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons. |