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No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,-fault of novel germs,-
Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,
The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,-

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb."

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

"Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

0

HERE lies the land to which the ship would go?

WH

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from?

Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.
On stormy nights when wild northwesters rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

Arthur Hugh Clough

THE IDEAL1

F here our life be briefer than a day

IF

In time Eternal, if the circling year
Drive on our days never to reappear,
If birth be but the prelude to decay,
What think you, soul, incarcerate in clay?
Why are you glad, at our dark daylight here,

The translation is by George Wyndham, and is reprinted with the persion of Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

If for the flight to an abode more clear
Your strong wings are well feathered to upstay?
There, is the good that every mind desires,
There, rest whereunto all the world aspires,
There love is, there of pleasure, too, full worth:
There, O my soul, led on to Heaven's last height,
The very self of Beauty in thy sight

Shall seem the image worshiped upon earth.

262

Joachim du Bellay

DOVER BEACH

HE sea is calm to-night,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath.

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold

I

STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Walter Savage Landor

I

THE PALACE OF ART1

BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.

I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse,

Dear soul, for all is well."

bridged.

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnished brass,
I chose. The ranged ramparts bright
From level meadow-bases of deep grass

Suddenly scaled the light.

Thereon I built it firm.

Of ledge or shelf

The rock rose clear, or winding stair.

My soul would live alone unto herself

In her high palace there.

And "While the world runs round and round,” I said,

"Reign thou apart, a quiet king,

Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade
Sleeps on his luminous ring."

To which my soul made answer readily:
"Trust me, in bliss I shall abide

In this great mansion, that is built for me,
So royal-rich and wide."

Full of long-sounding corridors it was,
That over-vaulted grateful gloom,

Thro' which the livelong day my soul did pass,
Well-pleased, from room to room.

Full of great rooms and small the palace stood,
All various, each a perfect whole

From living Nature, fit for every mood
And change of my still soul.

For some were hung with arras green and blue,
Showing a gaudy summer morn,

Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew
His wreathed bugle-horn.

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