Rhymes à la Mode | Page 5

men be glad, mid frost and snow?To live such equal lives of pain?As now the hutted Eskimo!?Then none shall plough nor garner seed,?Then, on some last sad human shore,?Equality shall reign indeed,?The Rich shall be with us no more,?Thus, and not otherwise, shall come?The new, the true Millennium!
ALMAE MATRES--(ST. ANDREWS, 1862. OXFORD, 1865)
St. Andrews by the Northern sea,?A haunted town it is to me!?A little city, worn and grey,?The grey North Ocean girds it round.?And o'er the rocks, and up the bay,?The long sea-rollers surge and sound.?And still the thin and biting spray?Drives down the melancholy street,?And still endure, and still decay,?Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.?Ghost-like and shadowy they stand?Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.
St. Leonard's chapel, long ago?We loitered idly where the tall?Fresh budded mountain ashes blow?Within thy desecrated wall:?The tough roots rent the tomb below,?The April birds sang clamorous,?We did not dream, we could not know?How hardly Fate would deal with us!
O, broken minster, looking forth?Beyond the bay, above the town,?O, winter of the kindly North,?O, college of the scarlet gown,?And shining sands beside the sea,?And stretch of links beyond the sand,?Once more I watch you, and to me?It is as if I touched his hand!
And therefore art thou yet more dear,?O, little city, grey and sere,?Though shrunken from thine ancient pride?And lonely by thy lonely sea,?Than these fair halls on Isis' side,?Where Youth an hour came back to me!
A land of waters green and clear,?Of willows and of poplars tall,?And, in the spring time of the year,?The white may breaking over all,?And Pleasure quick to come at call.?And summer rides by marsh and wold,?And Autumn with her crimson pall?About the towers of Magdalen rolled;?And strange enchantments from the past,?And memories of the friends of old,?And strong Tradition, binding fast?The "flying terms" with bands of gold, -
All these hath Oxford: all are dear,?But dearer far the little town,?The drifting surf, the wintry year,?The college of the scarlet gown,?St. Andrews by the Northern sea,?That is a haunted town to me!
DESIDERIUM--IN MEMORIAM S. F. A.
The call of homing rooks, the shrill?Song of some bird that watches late,?The cries of children break the still?Sad twilight by the churchyard gate.
And o'er your far-off tomb the grey?Sad twilight broods, and from the trees?The rooks call on their homeward way,?And are you heedless quite of these?
The clustered rowan berries red?And Autumn's may, the clematis,?They droop above your dreaming head,?And these, and all things must you miss?
Ah, you that loved the twilight air,?The dim lit hour of quiet best,?At last, at last you have your share?Of what life gave so seldom, rest!
Yes, rest beyond all dreaming deep,?Or labour, nearer the Divine,?And pure from fret, and smooth as sleep,?And gentle as thy soul, is thine!
So let it be! But could I know?That thou in this soft autumn eve,?This hush of earth that pleased thee so,?Hadst pleasure still, I might not grieve.
BALLADE OF MIDDLE AGE
Our youth began with tears and sighs,?With seeking what we could not find;?Our verses all were threnodies,?In elegiacs still we whined;?Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,?We sought and knew not what we sought.?We marvel, now we look behind:?Life's more amusing than we thought!
Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!?Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!?What? not content with seas and skies,?With rainy clouds and southern wind,?With common cares and faces kind,?With pains and joys each morning brought??Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find?Life's more amusing than we thought!
Though youth "turns spectre-thin and dies,"?To mourn for youth we're not inclined;?We set our souls on salmon flies,?We whistle where we once repined.?Confound the woes of human-kind!?By Heaven we're "well deceived," I wot;?Who hum, contented or resigned,?"Life's more amusing than we thought!"
ENVOY
O nate mecum, worn and lined?Our faces show, but THAT is naught;?Our hearts are young 'neath wrinkled rind:?Life's more amusing than we thought!
THE LAST CAST--THE ANGLER'S APOLOGY
Just one cast more! how many a year?Beside how many a pool and stream,?Beneath the falling leaves and sere,?I've sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!
Dreamed of the sport since April first?Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,?Adown the pastoral valleys burst?Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.
Dreamed of the singing showers that break,?And sting the lochs, or near or far,?And rouse the trout, and stir "the take"?From Urigil to Lochinvar.
Dreamed of the kind propitious sky?O'er Ari Innes brooding grey;?The sea trout, rushing at the fly,?Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!
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Brief are man's days at best; perchance?I waste my own, who have not seen?The castled palaces of France?Shine on the Loire in summer green.
And clear and fleet Eurotas still,?You tell me, laves his reedy shore,?And flows beneath his fabled hill?Where Dian drave the chase of yore.
And "like a horse unbroken" yet?The yellow stream with rush and foam,?'Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,?Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!
I may not see them, but I doubt?If seen I'd find