Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; THE DIRGE I "SING from the chamber to the grave!" Thus did the dead man say: "A sound of melody I crave Upon my burial-day. II "Bring forth some tuneful instrument, My spirit listened, as it went, To music of the skies. III "Sing sweetly while you travel on, IV "Sing from the threshold to the porch! And sing you loudly in the church, V "Then bear me gently to my grave, VI "So earth to earth, and dust to dust! ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER. Author's Note. The first of these verses haunted the memory and the lips of a good and blameless young farmer who died in my parish some years ago. It was, as I conceive, a fragment of some forgotten dirge, of which he could remember no more. But it was his strong desire that "the words" should be "put upon his headstone," and he wished me also to write "some other words, to make it complete." I fulfilled his entreaty, and the stranger who visits my churchyard will find this dirge carven in stone, "in sweet remembrance of the just," and to the praise of the dead, Richard Cann. THE SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN A GOOD Sword and a trusty hand! King James's men shall understand And have they fixed the where and when? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Out spake their captain brave and bold, "If London Tower were Michael's hold, "We'll cross the Tamar, land to land, With 'one and all,' and hand in hand, "And when we come to London Wall, Come forth! come forth, ye cowards all, "Trelawny he's in keep and hold, Trelawny he may die; But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold, ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER. IN LOVE, IF LOVE BE LOVE, FROM IN Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours, It is the little rift within the lute, The little rift within the lover's lute It is not worth the keeping: let it go: LORD TENNYSON. EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO Ar the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, Will they pass to where- by death, fools think, imprisoned Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved So, - Pity me? Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel -Being who? One who never turned his back but marched breast. forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here!" ROBERT BROWNING. THE YEAR'S AT THE SPRING, FROM THE year's at the spring The hill-side's dew-pearl'd; All's right with the world! ROBERT BROWNING. |