17 I 68 blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the fright? have done it, while you were asleep-you were only made for the day. have gather'd my baby together-and now you may go your way. VI 20 Nay-for it's kind of you, madam, to sit by an old dying wife. But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life. I kiss'd my boy in the prison, before he went out to die. "They dared me to do it," he said, and he never has told me a lie. I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child" he said; he "The farmer dared me to do it, was always so wild And he took no life, but he took one purse, and when all was done He flung it among his fellows-"I'll none of it," said my son. VIII Falls? what falls! who knows? As the tree I came into court to the judge and the lawyers. falls so must it lie. I told them my tale, God's own truth-but they kill'd him, they kill'd him for robbing the mail. They hang'd him in chains for a show-we had always borne a good name— To be hang'd for a thief-and then put away -is n't that enough shame? Dust to dust-low down-let us hide! but they set him so high But the night has crept into my heart, and That all the ships of the world could stare at begun to darken my eyes. They would scratch him up-they would hang But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy's him again on the cursed tree. voice in the wind 60 Sin? O, yes, we are sinners, I know-let all The snow and the sky so bright-he used but that be, to call in the dark, And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's good- And he calls to me now from the church and will toward mennot from the gibbet-for hark! "Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord"-Nay-you can hear it yourself—it is coming MILTON (ALCAICS)* O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, Milton, a name to resound for ages: Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, (WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH.) Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; Landscape-lover, lord of language Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! more than he that sang the "Works and So they row'd, and there we Days, ''1 All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, *This poem is one of Tennyson's experiments in venusta Sirmio!" 2 A shepherd piper in 4 Title landed-"O of the fourth Eclogue, which is prophetic of a golden age. 3 Eclogue sixth. There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the | I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in Sweet my stable, Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines? II What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack? Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar! OLD AGE Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL Flower in the grannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, WAGES Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: linkt with thee eighty years back. Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star. have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past, Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire, Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher. VASTNESS Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish'd face, Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish'd race. Raving politics, never at rest-as this poor earth's pale history runs, The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam 598 Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and | What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer, Charity setting the martyr aflame; Thraldom who walks with the banner of Free- All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair? dom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name. 10 Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools; Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow'd up by her vassal legion of fools; Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn; Desolate offing, sailorless harbours, famishing populace, wharves forlorn; Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom of the evening, Life at a close; Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway with her flying robe and her poison'd rose; Pain that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleas ure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light; Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; honest Poverty, bare to the bone; Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery gilding the rift in a throne; 20 Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubilant challenge to Time and to Fate; Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the laurell'd graves of the great; Love for the maiden, crown'd with marriage, no regrets for aught that has been, Household happiness, gracious children, debtless competence, golden mean; National hatreds of whole generations, and ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) pigmy spites of the village spire; Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and vows that are snapt in a moment of fire; FROM PIPPA PASSES NEW YEAR'S HYMN All service ranks the same with God: If now, as formerly he trod Say not "a small event!" Why "small"'! Written in Tennyson's eighty-first year. |