For men may come and men may go,
Put I go on forever.
I
Alfred Tennyson.
Oh, heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale, Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and
wail ? 'Tis the Chief of Glenara laments for his dear, And her sire and her people are called to her bier.
Glenara came first with the mourners and shroud ; His kinsmen they followed but mourned not aloud. Their plaids o'er their bosoms were folded around, They marched all in silence, — they looked on the
ground.
In silence they went, over mountain and moor,
To a heath where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar;
“Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn;
Why speak ye no word ?” said Glenara the stern.
“ And tell me, I charge you, ye clan of my spouse, Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your
brows ?” So spake the rude chieftain : — no answer is made Till each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed.
Cried a voice from the kinsmen all wrathful and
“I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud,
And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem ; Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!”
Oh pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween, When the shroud was unclosed and no lady was
seen ; When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in
scorn, ’T was the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of
Lorn,
“I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief;
I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief;
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem !
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!”
In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground, And the desert revealed where his lady was found; From a rock in the ocean that beauty is borne, Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn!
Thomas Campbell.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth-
ing
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail ;
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That
sunny
dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye! -
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh!
The difference to me!
William Wordsworth.
THREE
years
she
grew
in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, “ A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown:
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.
“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse : and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
“She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs ;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute, insensate things.
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