Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

POETRY

FOR

HOME AND SCHOOL.

PART II.

SOME MURMUR, WHEN THEIR SKY IS CLEAR.R. C. Trench.

SOME murmur, when their sky is clear

And wholly bright to view,

If one small speck of dark appear
In their great heaven of blue;
And some with thankful love are filled,
If but one streak of light,

One ray of God's good mercy, gild
The darkness of their night.

In palaces are hearts that ask,
In discontent and pride,
Why life is such a dreary task,
And all good things denied ;
And hearts in poorest huts admire
How Love has in their aid
(Love that not ever seems to tire)
Such rich provision made.

WEEP NOT FOR BROAD LANDS LOST.-R. C. Trench.

WEEP not for broad lands lost;
Weep not for fair hopes crost;

A

Weep not when limbs wax old;
Weep not wher friends grow
cold;
Weep not that Death must part
Thine and the best loved heart;
Yet weep, weep all thou can,-
Weep, weep, because thou art
A sin-defilèd man.

SUNDAYS.-Henry Vaughan.

BRIGHT shadows of true rest! some shoots of bliss;
Heaven once a week;

The next world's gladness prepossessed in this;
A day to seek;
Eternity in time; the steps by which

We climb above all ages; lamps that light
Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich
And full redemption of the whole week's flight;
The pulleys unto headlong man; time's bower;
The narrow way;

Transplanted paradise; God's walking hour;
The cool o' th' day;

The creature's jubilee; God's parle with dust; Heaven here; man on those hills of myrrh and flowers;

Angels descending; the returns of trust;
A gleam of glory after six days' showers;
The church's love-feasts; time's prerogative
And interest,

Deducted from the whole; the combs and hive,
And home of rest;

The milky way chalked out with suns; a clue
That guides through erring hours, and in full story
A taste of heaven on earth; the pledge and cue
Of a full feast, and the out-courts of glory.

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.*— Rogers.

"SAY, what remains when hope is fled?".
She answered, "Endless weeping!"
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell,
The stag was roused on Barden-fell;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying;
When near the cabin in the wood,
In tartan clad and forest-green,
With hound in leash and hawk in hood,
The Boy of Egremond was seen.
Blithe was his song, a song of yore;
But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,

His voice was heard no more!

'T was but a step! the gulf he past;
But that step,
it was his last!

As through the mist he winged his way
(A cloud that hovers night and day),

The hound hung back, and back he drew
The master and his merlin too.

* In the twelfth century, William Fitz-Duncan laid waste the valleys of Craven with fire and sword, and was afterwards established there by his uncle, David of Scotland.

He was the last of the race; his son, commonly called the Boy of Egremond, dying before him in the manner here related; when a priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, that it might be as near as possible to the place where the accident happened. That place is still known by the name of the Strid; and the mother's answer, as given in the first stanza, is to this day often repeated in Wharfedale. Whitaker's History of Craven.

See

That narrow place of noise and strife
Received their little all of life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;
The "Miserere!" duly sung;
And holy men in cowl and hood
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless Lord,
Thou didst not shudder when the sword
Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.
Sit now and answer groan for groan;
The child before thee is thy own.
And she who wildly wanders there,
The mother in her long despair,
Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping,
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;
Of those who would not be consoled,
When red with blood the river rolled.

LIFE AND DEATH.-R. C. Trench.

A PARABLE, FROM THE GERMAN OF RÜCKERT.

THERE went a man through Syrian land,
Leading a camel by the hand.

The beast, made wild by some alarm,
Began to threaten sudden harm,
So fiercely snorting, that the man
With all his speed escaping ran;
He ran, and saw a well that lay,
As chance would have it, by the way.
He heard the camel snort so near,
As almost maddened him with fear,

And crawled into the well,

yet there Fell not, but dangled in mid air; For from a fissure in the stone,

Which lined its sides, a bush had grown;
To this he clung with all his might,
From thence lamenting his sad plight.
He saw, what time he looked on high,
The beast's head perilously nigh,
Ready to drag him back again;
He looked into the bottom then,
And there a dragon he espied,
Whose horrid jaws were yawning wide,
Agape to swallow him alive,

As soon as he should there arrive.
But as he hung two fears between,
A third by that poor wretch was seen;
For, where the bush by which he clung
Had from the broken wall outsprung,
He saw two mice precisely there,
One black, one white, a stealthy pair;-
He saw the black one and the white,
How at the root by turns they bite,
They gnaw, they pull, they dig; and still
The earth that held its fibres spill,
Which, as it rustling downward ran,
The dragon to look up began,
Watching how soon the shrub and all
Its burden would together fall.

The man in anguish, fear, despair,
Beleaguered, threatened everywhere,
In state of miserable doubt,
In vain for safety gazed about.
But as he looked around him so,
A twig he spied, and on it grow

« ForrigeFortsæt »