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JULIAN FANE 1827-1870

WHE

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HEN the vast heaven is dark with ominous clouds,

That lower their gloomful faces to the earth;

When all things sweet and fair are cloaked in shrouds,
And dire calamity and care have birth ;

When furious tempests strip the woodland green,
And from bare boughs the hapless songsters sing;
When Winter stalks, a spectre, on the scene,
And breathes a blight on every living thing;
Then, when the spirit of man, by sickness tried,
Half fears, half hopes, that Death be at his side,
Outleaps the sun, and gives him life again.
O Mother, I clasped Death; but, seeing thy face,
Leapt from his dark arms to thy dear embrace.

CCCCLII

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2

O, like a wanderer from the world of shades,
Back to the firm earth and familiar skies,
Back to that light of love that never fades—
The unbroken sunshine of thy blissful eyes,
I come to greet thee on this happy day
That lets a fresh pearl on thy life appear;
That decks thy jewelled age with fresh array
Of good deeds done within the circled year;
So art thou robed in majesty of grace,
In regal purple of pure womanhood;
Throned in thy high pre-eminence of place;
Sceptred and crowned, a very Queen of Good.
Receive my blessing, perfect as thou art,
Queen of all good, and sovereign of my heart.

CCCCLIII

BEAUTY still walketh on the earth and air:

Our present sunsets are as rich in gold

As ere the Iliad's music was out-rolled,

The roses of the Spring are ever fair,

'Mong branches green still ring-doves coo and pair, And the deep sea still foams its music old;

So, if we are at all divinely souled,

ALEXANDER
SMITH

1830-1867

This beauty will unloose our bonds of care.

'Tis pleasant, when blue skies are o'er us bending Within old starry-gated Poesy,

To meet a soul set to no worldly tune,

Like thine, sweet Friend! Oh, dearer this to me
Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon,
Or noble music with a golden ending.

CCCCLIV

LAST night my cheek was wetted with warm tears,

Each worth a world. They fell from eyes divine.

Last night a loving lip was pressed to mine,
And at its touch fled all the barren years;
And softly couched upon a bosom white,
Which came and went beneath me like a sea,
An emperor I lay in empire bright,
Lord of the beating heart, while tenderly
Love-words were glutting my love-greedy ears.
Kind Love, I thank thee for that happy night!
Richer this cheek with those warm tears of thine
Than the vast midnight with its gleaming spheres.
Leander toiling through the moonlight brine,
Kingdomless Anthony, were scarce my peers.

ALEXANDER
SMITH

1830-1867

CCCCLV

HEATHED is the river as it glideth by,

SHE

Frost-pearled are all the boughs in forests old,
The sheep are huddling close upon the wold,
And over them the stars tremble on high.
Pure joys these winter nights around me lie;—
'Tis fine to loiter through the lighted street

At Christmas time, and guess from brow and pace
The doom and history of each one we meet,
What kind of heart beats in each dusky case;
Whiles startled by the beauty of a face

In a shop-light a moment. Or instead,
To dream of silent fields where calm and deep
The sunshine lieth like a golden sleep-
Recalling sweetest looks of Summers dead.

CCCCLVI

MISS NIGHTINGALE.

HOW must the soldier's tearful heart expand,

Who from a long and obscure dream of pain,

His foeman's frown imprinted in his brain,-
Wakes to thy healing face and dewy hand!

When this great noise hath rolled from off the land,
When all those fallen Englishmen of ours

Have bloomed and faded in Crimean flowers,
Thy perfect charity unsoiled shall stand.
Some pitying student of a nobler age,
Lingering o'er this year's half-forgotten page,
Shall see its beauty smiling ever there;
Surprised to tears his beating heart he stills,
Like one who finds among Athenian hills
A Temple like a lily white and fair.

CCCCLVII

WEET Mavis! at this cool delicious hour

SWEE

Of gloaming, when a pensive quietness
Hushes the odorous air,—with what a power
Of impulse unsubdued dost thou express
Thyself a spirit! While the silver dew
Holy as manna on the meadow falls,

Thy song's impassioned clarity, trembling through
This omnipresent stillness, disenthrals
The soul to adoration. First I heard
A low thick lubric gurgle, soft as love,
Yet sad as memory, through the silence poured
Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows,
Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move
Lucidly linked together, till the close.

DAVID GRAY

1838-1861

O

CCCCLVIII

DEEP unlovely brooklet, moaning slow
Through moorish fen in utter loneliness!
The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow
In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press
The huntsman fluskers through the rustled heather.
In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells
Break, satin-tinted, downy as the feather
Of moss-chat, that among the purplish bells
Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn.
The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear
And mournful, strange, his human cry forlorn;
While wearily, alone, and void of cheer,
Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen,
To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.

DAVID GRAY

1838-1861

CCCCLIX

IN THE SHADOWS.

I

F it must be; if it must be, O God!

IF

That I die young, and make no further moans; That underneath the unrespective sod,

In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones.

Shall crumble soon,—then give me strength to bear
The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath !

I tremble from the edge of life, to dare
The dark and fatal leap, having no faith,
No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse.
But like a child that in the night-time cries
For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse
Of knowledge and our human destinies.
O peevish and uncertain soul! obey
The law of life in patience till the Day.

CCCCLX

2

NOW, while the long-delaying ash assumes

The delicate April green, and, loud and clear,
Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms,
The thrush's song enchants the captive ear;
Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling,

Stirring the still perfume that wakes around;

Now that doves mourn, and from the distance calling,
The cuckoo answers with a sovereign sound,—
Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried!
But leave all books; for what with converse high,
Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide
On smoothly, as a river floweth by,
Or as on stately pinion, through the gray
Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way.

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