There 'mong the blest thou dost for ever shine,

And wheresoe'er thou cast thy view

Upon that white and radiant crew,

See'st not a soul cloth'd with more light than thine.

Friends

Abraham Cowley.

YOU

You ask me "why I like him." Nay,

I cannot; nay, I would not, say.

I think it vile to pigeonhole

The pros and cons of a kindred soul.

You "wonder he should be my friend.”
But then why should you comprehend?
Thank God for this--a new-surprise :
My eyes, remember, are not your eyes.

Cherish this one small mystery;
And marvel not that love can be
"In spite of all his many flaws."
In spite? Supposing I said "Because."

A truce, a truce to questioning:
"We two are friends" tells everything.

Yet if you must know, this is why:
Because he is he and I am I.

E. V. L.

Mimnermus in Church

YOU promise heavens free from strife,

You

Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
But sweet, sweet is this human life,

So sweet, I fain would breathe it still.
Your chilly stars I can forego,

This warm kind world is all I know.

You say there is no substance here,
One great reality above :

Back from that void I shrink in fear,
And child-like hide myself in love :
Show me what angels feel. Till then,
I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires
From faltering lips and fitful veins
To sexless souls, ideal quires,

Unwearied voices, wordless strains :
My mind with fonder welcome owns
One dear dead friend's remembered tones.

Forsooth the present we must give
To that which cannot pass away;
All beauteous things for which we live
By laws of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why
I clasp them, is because they die.

William Cory.

By the Fireside

How well I know what I mean to do

When the long dark autumn-evenings come; And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices dumb, In life's November too!

I shall be found by the fire, suppose,

O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "There he is at it, deep in Greek:

Now then, or never, out we slip

To cut from the hazels by the creek A mainmast for our ship!"

I shall be at it indeed, my friends:
Greek puts already on either side
Such a branch-work forth as soon extends
To a vista opening far and wide,
And I pass out where it ends.

The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees:
But the inside-archway widens fast,

And a rarer sort succeeds to these,

And we slope to Italy at last,

And youth, by green degrees.

I follow wherever I am led,

Knowing so well the leader's hand : Oh woman-country, wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead!

Look at the ruined chapel again,
Half-way up in the Alpine gorge!
Is that a tower, I point you plain,
Or is it a mill, or an iron-forge
Breaks solitude in vain?

A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; The woods are round us, heaped and dim ; From slab to slab how it slips and springs, The thread of water single and slim, Through the ravage some torrent brings !

Does it feed the little lake below?
That speck of white just on its marge
Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets heaven in snow!

On our other side is the straight-up rock; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it By boulder-stones, where lichens mock

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block.

Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,
And thorny balls, each three in one,

The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,

That crimson the creeper's leaf across
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening-nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,

Where a freaked fawn-coloured flaky crew
Of toadstools peep indulged.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,

Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond
Danced over by the midge.

The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,
Blackish-grey and mostly wet;

Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke.
See here again, how the lichens fret

And the roots of the ivy strike!