Dead--he is dead! The rouge has left a trace On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear, Even while the people laughed that held him dear But yesterday. He died,--and not in grace, And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear, And gold must win a passage for his bier, And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.
Ah, Moliere, for that last time of all, Man's hatred broke upon thee, and went by, And did but make more fair thy funeral.
Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily, Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall, For torch, the stars along the windy sky!
BION.
The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying The Muses heard, and loved it long ago;They heard the hollows of the hills replying, They heard the weeping water's overflow;They winged the sacred strain--the song undying, The song that all about the world must go, -When poets for a poet dead are sighing, The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.
And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping For Adonais by the summer sea, The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping Far from 'the forest ground called Thessaly'), These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping, And are but echoes of the moan for thee.
SPRING.
(AFTER MELEAGER.)
Now the bright crocus flames, and now The slim narcissus takes the rain, And, straying o'er the mountain's brow, The daffodilies bud again.
The thousand blossoms wax and wane On wold, and heath, and fragrant bough, But fairer than the flowers art thou, Than any growth of hill or plain.
Ye gardens, cast your leafy crown, That my Love's feet may tread it down, Like lilies on the lilies set:
My Love, whose lips are softer far Than drowsy poppy petals are, And sweeter than the violet!
BEFORE THE SNOW.
(AFTER ALBERT GLATIGNY.)
The winter is upon us, not the snow, The hills are etched on the horizon bare, The skies are iron grey, a bitter air, The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.
One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow, Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.
Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where The black trees seem to shiver as you go.
Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer, A sharper gust would shake them from their hold, Yet up that path, in summer of the year, And past that melancholy pile we strolled To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.
VILLANELLE.
TO LUCIA.
Apollo left the golden Muse And shepherded a mortal's sheep, Theocritus of Syracuse!
To mock the giant swain that woo's The sea-nymph in the sunny deep, Apollo left the golden Muse.
Afield he drove his lambs and ewes, Where Milon and where Battus reap, Theocritus of Syracuse!
To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise Below the dim Sicilian steep Apollo left the golden Muse.
Ye twain did loiter in the dews, Ye slept the swain's unfever'd sleep, Theocritus of Syracuse!
That Time might half with HIS confuse Thy songs,--like his, that laugh and leap, -Theocritus of Syracuse, Apollo left the golden Muse!
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] OD. III. 47.
"Once CAGN was like a father, kind and good, But He was spoiled by fighting many things;He wars upon the lions in the wood, And breaks the Thunder-bird's tremendous wings;But still we cry to Him,--'We are thy brood -O Cagn, be merciful!' and us He brings To herds of elands, and great store of food, And in the desert opens water-springs."So Qing, King Nqsha's Bushman hunter, spoke, Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair, When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:
And suddenly in each man's heart there woke A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.
THE ODYSSEY.
As one that for a weary space has lain Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, Where that AEaean isle forgets the main, And only the low lutes of love complain, And only shadows of wan lovers pine, As such an one were glad to know the brine Salt on his lips, and the large air again, -So gladly, from the songs of modern speech Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, And through the music of the languid hours, They hear like ocean on a western beach The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
IDEAL.
Suggested by a female head in wax, of unknown date, but supposed to be either of the best Greek age, or a work of Raphael or Leonardo.
It is now in the Lille Museum.
Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid, Dateless and fatherless, how long ago, A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed, Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!
Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow, While magical his fingers o'er thee strayed, Or that great pupil taught of Verrocchio Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade That hides all fair things lost, and things unborn, Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace, And that grave tenderness of thine awhile;Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her face Is pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn, And only on thy lips I find her smile.
THE FAIRY'S GIFT.
"Take short views."--SYDNEY SMITH.
The Fays that to my christ'ning came (For come they did, my nurses taught me), They did not bring me wealth or fame, 'Tis very little that they brought me.
But one, the crossest of the crew, The ugly old one, uninvited, Said, "I shall be avenged on YOU, My child; you shall grow up short-sighted!"With magic juices did she lave Mine eyes, and wrought her wicked pleasure.
Well, of all gifts the Fairies gave, HERS is the present that I treasure!
The bore whom others fear and flee, I do not fear, I do not flee him;I pass him calm as calm can be;
I do not cut--I do not see him!
And with my feeble eyes and dim, Where YOU see patchy fields and fences, For me the mists of Turner swim -MY "azure distance" soon commences!
Nay, as I blink about the streets Of this befogged and miry city, Why, almost every girl one meets Seems preternaturally pretty!
"Try spectacles," one's friends intone;
