Grass of Parnassus | Page 2

depth and height
Dost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away,

When now the moors have doffed the heather bright,
Grass of
Parnassus, flower of my delight,
How gladly with the unpermitted
bay--
Garlands not mine, and leaves that not decay--
How gladly
would I twine thee if I might!
The bays are out of reach! But far below
The peaks forbidden of the
Muses' Hill,
Grass of Parnassus, thy returning snow
Between
September and October chill
Doth speak to me of Autumns long ago,

And these kind faces that are with me still.
DEEDS OF MEN
[Greek text]
To Colonel Ian Hamilton.

To you, who know the face of war,
You, that for England wander far,

You that have seen the Ghazis fly
From English lads not sworn to
die,
You that have lain where, deadly chill,
The mist crept o'er the
Shameful Hill,
You that have conquered, mile by mile,
The currents
of unfriendly Nile,
And cheered the march, and eased the strain

When Politics made valour vain,
Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,

We send our lays of Englishmen!
SEEKERS FOR A CITY.
"Believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill
visible to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed thither. . . But
the number and variety of the ways! For you know, THERE IS BUT
ONE ROAD THAT LEADS TO CORINTH."
HERMOTIMUS (Mr Pater's Version).
"The Poet says, DEAR CITY OF CECROPS, and wilt thou not say,
DEAR CITY OF ZEUS?"
M. ANTONINUS.
"TO CORINTH LEADS ONE ROAD," you say:
Is there a Corinth,
or a way?
Each bland or blatant preacher hath
His painful or his
primrose path,
And not a soul of all of these
But knows the city
'twixt the seas,
Her fair unnumbered homes and all
Her gleaming
amethystine wall!
Blind are the guides who know the way,
The guides who write, and
preach, and pray,
I watch their lives, and I divine
They differ not
from yours and mine!
One man we knew, and only one,
Whose seeking for a city's done,

For what he greatly sought he found,
A city girt with fire around,
A
city in an empty land
Between the wastes of sky and sand,
A city
on a river-side,
Where by the folk he loved, he died. {1}

Alas! it is not ours to tread
That path wherein his life he led,
Not
ours his heart to dare and feel,
Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel;

Yet are we not quite city-less,
Not wholly left in our distress--
Is it
not said by One of old,
"Sheep have I of another fold?"
Ah! faint of
heart, and weak of will,
For us there is a city still!
"Dear city of Zeus," the Stoic says, {2}
The Voice from Rome's
imperial days,
In Thee meet all things, and disperse,
In Thee, for
Thee, O Universe!
To me all's fruit thy seasons bring,
Alike thy
summer and thy spring;
The winds that wail, the suns that burn,

From Thee proceed, to Thee return.
"Dear city of Zeus," shall WE not say,
Home to which none can lose
the way!
Born in that city's flaming bound,
We do not find her, but
are found.
Within her wide and viewless wall
The Universe is
girdled all.
All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth,
All things that
travail on the earth,
God's will they work, if God there be,
If not,
what is my life to me?
Seek we no further, but abide
Within this city great and wide,
In her
and for her living, we
Have no less joy than to be free;
Nor death
nor grief can quite appal
The folk that dwell within her wall,
Nor
aught but with our will befall!
THE WHITE PACHA.
Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave,
He perished with the
folk he could not save,
And though none surely told us he is dead,

And though perchance another in his stead,
Another, not less brave,
when all was done,
Had fled unto the southward and the sun,
Had
urged a way by force, or won by guile
To streams remotest of the
secret Nile,

Had raised an army of the Desert men,
And, waiting for
his hour, had turned again
And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we
know
GORDON is dead, and these things are not so!
Nay, not for

England's cause, nor to restore
Her trampled flag--for he loved
Honour more--
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he
have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
He will not come again,
whate'er our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed

From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen
and rewards of kings.
Nay, somewhere by the sacred River's shore

He sleeps like those who shall return no more,
No more return for all
the prayers of men--
Arthur and Charles--they never come again!

They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem:
Whate'er sick Hope
may whisper, vain the dream!
MIDNIGHT, JANUARY 25, 1886.
To-morrow is a year since Gordon died!
A year ago to-night, the
Desert still
Crouched on the spring, and panted for its fill
Of lust
and blood. Their old art statesmen plied,
And paltered, and evaded,
and denied;
Guiltless as yet, except for feeble will,
And craven
heart, and calculated skill
In long