MILTON (ALCAICS)* O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages: Rings to the roar of an angel onset! Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. (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 more than he that sang the "Works and Days, ''1 All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; 1 Hesiod. *This poem is one of Tennyson's experiments in the quantitative metre of the classics. The two styles of Milton here described may be found in many passages of Paradise Lost; see especially, for the "angel onset," Boox VI, 96 ff., and for the "bowery loneliness," IV, 214 ff. For a festival on the six hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dante, 1865. All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; Poet of the happy Tityrus2 piping underneath his beechen bowers; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;3 Chanter of the Pollio,4 glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea; Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind; Light among the vanish'd ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore; Golden branch amid the shadows, 10 4 Title of the fourth Eclogue, which is prophetic of a golden age. 3 Eclogue sixth. *In these words, "Hail, brother, and farewell," the Roman poet Catullus lamented the death of his brother (Carmina 101, 10). Catullus had a villa on the peninsula of Sermione"yenusta (beautiful) Sirmio"-in Lake Garda. northern Italy. The last two lines of this little poem, which reproduce so well the soft music of Catullus's verse, are modelled upon lines in his thirty-first song. Catullus sed the word "Lydian" in the belief that the Etruscans, who anciently had settlements near the Lake of Garda, were of Lydian origin There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the | I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in hopeless woe, Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, years ago, "Frater Ave atque Vale"-as we wander'd to and fro Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below Sweet Catullus's Sirmio! save breaking my bones on the rack? Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar! OLD AGE all-but-island, olive-silvery Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL 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 of a man, And the man said, 'Am I your debtor?' as you can, And then I will let you a better.' I If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable, Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines, of a million million of suns? Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourned by the wise, Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies; Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat; Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy Charity setting the martyr aflame; varying voices of prayer, Thraldom who walks with the banner of Free- All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that i dom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her filthy with all that is fair? What is it all, if we all of us end but in bein our own corpse-coffins at last? Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown' in the deeps of a meaningless Past? What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or moment's anger of bees in their hive?Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love hir for ever: the dead are not dead bu alive. CROSSING THE BAR* Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, When that which drew from out the boundles deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, For tho' from out our bourne of Time an The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face National hatreds of whole generations, and ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent Hold by the right, you double your might; II. GIVE A ROUSE King Charles, and who 'll do him right now? Who gave me the goods that went since? King Charles, and who 's ripe for fight Give a rouse: here 's, in hell's despite To whom used my boy George quaff else, King Charles, and who 's ripe for fight Give a rouse: here 's, in hell's despite Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his Many's the friend there, will listen and pray snarls impressing, enlisting parleys, debates may it serve These songs are meant to portray the spirit of the adherents of Charles I., and their hatred of the Puritans, or Roundheads. The Byngs "God's luck to gallants that strike up the layCHO.-Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, fay, of Kent are famous in the annals of British Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my warfare. Pym, a leader of the Long Parliament, Hazelrig (or Hesilrige), Fiennes (Lord Say), and Sir Henry Vane the Younger, were all important figures in the rebellion against Charles. Prince Rupert was a nephew of Charles, and a celebrated cavalry leader. 4 Oliver's (1. e., Cromwell's) The standard of Charles was raised there in 1642, marking the beginning of the Civil War. CHO.-Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay! "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace We 've got you Ratisbon! The Marshal's in the market-place, And you'll be there anon To see your flag-bird flap his vans Where I, to heart's desire, plans MY LAST DUCHESS* FERRARA That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. How such a glance came there; so, not the first Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20 16 For calling up that spot of joy. She had Or blush, at least. She thanked men,-good! but thanked Somehow I know not how-as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his In speech-(which I have not)—to make your will The *A Duke of Ferrara stands before a portrait of his deceased Duchess, talking coolly with the envoy of a Count whose daughter he seeks to marry. The poem is a study in the heartless jealousy of supreme selfishness. nature of the commands (line 45) which such a man might give, living at the time of the Italian Renaissance, may be left to the imagi nation, as Browning leaves it. The artists mentioned (lines 3, 56) are imaginary. the monologue form, see Eng. Lit., p. 301. On |