Puslapio vaizdai
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THESE

R. L. S.

IN MEMORIAM

HESE to his Memory. May the Age arriving
As ours recall

That bravest heart, that gay and gallant striving,
That laurelled pall!

Blithe and rare spirit! We who later linger
By bleaker seas,

Sigh for the touch of the Magician's finger,—
His golden keys!

1901.

A BALLAD OF INCAPACITY

"My Lord, I cannot speak."

-MACLEAN THE HIGHWAYMAN

(on his trial).

ILENCE is golden," saith the saw,

"SILEN

And rightly is extolled;

For Speech, too oft, outrides the law
By waxing overbold:

Yet he, I think (of mortal mould!)

Most needs the aid of "cheek,”

The man who can no tale unfold,

The man who cannot speak!

He listens with a kind of awe,
And hears around him rolled
The long, reverberate guffaw
That greets the quicker-souled;
He hears the jest, or new or old,
And mutely eats his "leek,"—

-

Is classed as either dull or cold,---
The man who cannot speak!

He may have "Latin in his mawe,"
He may keep down controlled
Potentialities of "jaw"

Unmatched by any scold;

He may have thoughts of sterling gold

For each day in the week;

But he must all these things withhold,The man who cannot speak.

ENVOY.

FRIENDS, 'tis of me the fable's told;
Your sufferance I seek;

In me that shameless sight behold,-
The man who cannot speak!

1901.

"A VOICE IN THE SCENTED NIGHT"

A

(Villanelle at Verona)

VOICE in the scented night,—

A step where the rose-trees blow,—

O Love, and O Love's delight!

Cold star at the blue vault's height,
What is it that shakes you so ?
A voice in the scented night!

She comes in her beauty bright,—
She comes in her young love's glow,--
O Love, and O Love's delight!

She bends from her casement white,
And she hears it, hushed and low,

A voice in the scented night.

And he climbs by that stairway slight,-
Her passionate ROMEO:-

O Love, and O Love's delight!

For it stirs us still in spite

Of its "ever so long ago,"

That voice in the scented night,-
O Love, and O Love's delight!

1902.

A WELCOME FROM THE

JOHNSON CLUB

TO WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE, March 12, 1903

WHEN

WHEN POPE came back from Trojan wars
once more,

He found a Bard, to meet him on the shore,
And hail his advent with a strain as clear
As e'er was sung by BYRON or by FRERE.

You, SIR, have travelled from no distant clime, Yet would JOHN GAY might welcome you in rhyme; And by some Fable, not too coldly penned, Teach how with judgment one may praise a Friend.

There is no need that I should tell in words
Your prowess from The Paradise of Birds;
No need to show how surely you have traced
The Life in Poetry, the Law in Taste;
Or mark with what unwearied strength you wear
The weight that WARTON found too great to bear.
There is no need for this or that. My plan
Is less to laud the Matter than the Man.

This is my brief. We recognise in you
The mind judicial, the untroubled view;

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