Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours. Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine And knew the intruders on his ancient home, The young light-hearted masters of the waves Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits, and unbent sails There where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales. DOVER BEACH. THE sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits: -on the French coast the light Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand, Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. PHILOMELA. HARK! ah, the nightingale The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark! —what pain! O wanderer from a Grecian shore, Still, after many years, in distant lands, Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain And can this fragrant lawn To thy racked heart and brain Dost thou to-night behold, Here, through the moonlight on this English grass. The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Dost thou again peruse With hot cheeks and seared eyes The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Thy flight, and feel come over thee, Poor fugitive, the feathery change Once more, and once more seem to make resound With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale? Listen, Eugenia How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves ! thou hearest? Again Eternal passion! Eternal pain! IMMORTALITY. FOILED by our fellow-men, depressed, outworn, The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne. And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn No, no! the energy of life may be From strength to strength advancing - only he, EAST LONDON. 'T WAS August, and the fierce sun overhead I met a preacher there I knew, and said: 'Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene ?’'Bravely!' said he; for I of late have been Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.' O human soul! as long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light, To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night! Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home. |