Who knows the inscrutable design? This crowns his feast with wine and wit: Or hunger hopeless at the gate. So each shall mourn, in life's advance, Pray God the heart may kindly glow, Come wealth or want, come good or ill, And bear it with an honest heart, Go, lose or conquer as you can; But if you fail, or if you rise, Be each, pray God, a gentleman. A gentleman, or old or young! (Bear kindly with my humble lays); Upon the first of Christmas days: My song, save this, is little worth; And wish you health, and love, and mirth, As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still— Coventry kersey Dighton Patmore 1823-1896 THE TOYS My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, Having my law the seventh time disobey'd, I struck him, and dismiss'd With hard words and unkiss'd, His Mother, who was patient, being dead. Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, I visited his bed, But found him slumbering deep, With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet And I, with moan, Kissing away his tears, left others of my own; For, on a table drawn beside his head, A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone, A bottle with bluebells And two French copper coins, ranged there with care ful art, To comfort his sad heart. So when that night I pray'd To God, I wept, and said: Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, Not vexing Thee in death, And Thou rememberest of what toys We made our joys, How weakly understood, Thy great commanded good, Then, fatherly not less Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, "I will be sorry for their childishness.” THE TWO DESERTS Not greatly moved with awe am I To learn that we may spy Five thousand firmaments beyond our own. The best that's known Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small. Is of ill objects worst, A corpse in Night's highway, naked, fire-scarr'd, accurst; And now they tell That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst So, judging from these two, As we must do, The Universe, outside our living Earth, Put by the Telescope! Better without it man may see, Stretch'd awful in the hush'd midnight, The ghost of his eternity. Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye A mind not much to pry Beyond our royal-fair estate Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great. Ne'er wandering far. Sydney Thompson Dobell 1824-1874 KEITH OF RAVELSTON (From A Nuptial Eve) The murmur of the mourning ghost "Oh, Keith of Ravelston, The sorrows of thy line!" Ravelston, Ravelston, The merry path that leads Down the golden morning hill, And thro' the silver meads; Ravelston, Ravelston, The stile beneath the tree, The maid that kept her mother's kine, The song that sang she! She sang her song, she kept her kine, When Andrew Keith of Ravelston His henchmen sing, his hawk-bells ring, Oh, Keith of Ravelston, Year after year, where Andrew came, Her misty hair is faint and fair, Oh, Keith of Ravelston, The sorrows of thy line! I lay my hand upon the stile, |