And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us A newer good to cure an older ill; And sweet are all things when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them. - AUBREY DE VERE. 13. TO THE MOON. WITH how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess? THE COMMON GRAVE. LAST night beneath the foreign stars I stood, Upon the darkness they went visibly, Each in the vesture of its own distress. Among them there came One, frail as a sigh, And like a creature of the wilderness Dug with her bleeding hands. She neither cried Nor wept; nor did she see the many stark And dead that lay unburied at her side. All night she toiled; and at that time of dawn, - SYDNEY Dobell. 15. TO HIS LUTE. My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve, Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above, What art thou but a harbinger of woe? Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more, Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear; WILLIAM DRUMMOND. 16. RESIGNATION AND DESPAIR. As due by many titles, I resign Myself to Thee, O God. First I was made By Thee and for Thee; and, when I was decayed, Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine: I am thy son, made with Thyself to shine; Thy servant, whose pains Thou hast still repaid, Thy sheep, thine image; and, till I betrayed Myself, a temple of thy Spirit divine. Why doth the devil then usurp on me? Why doth he steal, nay, ravish that's thy right? Oh! I shall soon despair, when I shall see That Thou lov'st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me. -JOHN DONNE. 17. LAST SONNET. BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors. No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest; -JOHN KEATS. 18. RETIREMENT. GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild Where, far from cities, I may spend my days, And by the beauties of the scene beguil'd, May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways, While on the rock I mark the browsing goat, List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise, Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note, I shall not want the world's delusive joys; But with my little scrip, my book, my lyre, Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more; And when, with time, shall wane the vital fire, I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore, And lay me down to rest where the wild wave Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave. 19. EVENING. ALREADY evening! In the duskiest nook For I will read no longer. The loud brook The moon is lifting: and deliciously Along the warm blue hills the day declines. The first star brightens while she waits for me, And round her swelling heart the zone grows tight: Musing, half-sad, in her soft hair she twines The white rose, whispering "He will come to-night!" - Owen MEREDITH (LORD LYTTON). 20. TWILIGHT. IT is the hour when from the boughs Seem sweet in every whispered word; |