I enter'd by the western door; I saw a knight's helm lying there: I raised my eyes from off the floor, And caught the gleaming of his hair. I stept full softly up to him; I laid my chin upon his head; "There comes no sleep nor any love." But Galahad stoop'd and kiss'd his brow: He shiver'd; I saw his pale lips move. SIR OZANA. There comes no sleep nor any love; God move me to thee, dear, to-night! Christ help! I have but little wit: My life went wrong; I see it writ, [SON of the late Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne; born in London, April 5, 1837. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1857, but left the University without taking a degree. He afterwards visited Florence and spent some time with Walter Savage Landor. His first production, The Queen Mother, and Rosamond, two plays, appeared in 1861. These were followed by Atalanta in Calydon, a Tragedy, in 1864; Chastelard, a Tragedy, in 1865; and Poems and Ballads, in 1866; published in New York under the title Laus Veneris. His later poetical works are A Song of Italy, 1867; Siena, a Poem, 1868; Bothwell, a Tragedy, 1870; Songs before Sunrise, 1871; Erechtheus, a drama on the Greek model, 1875; Poems and Ballads, (second series) 1878; Studies in Song, 1881; Tristam of Lyonesse, 1882; and A Century of Roundels, 1883.] Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, And the south west-wind and the westwind sing. For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. The full streams feed on flower of rushes, Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, And the oat is heard above the lyre, And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes The chestnut-husk at the chestnut root. And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, Follows with dancing and fills with delight The Mænad and the Bassarid; And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid. The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; The wild vine slipping down leaves bare Her brightbreastshortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, But the berried ivy catches and cleaves To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. FROM "THE GARDEN of PROSERPINE." PALE, beyond porch and portal, With cold immortal hands; From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; The life of fruits and corn; There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all disastrous things; Red strays of ruined springs. And joy was never sure; Time stoops to no man's lure; Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; Winds somewhere safe to sea. All sounds of all changes, All shadows and lights On the world's mountain-ranges Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earthshaking nights; All forms of all faces, All works of all hands Of time-stricken lands, All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands. Though sore be my burden And more than ye know, And my growth have no guerdon Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below. DAVID GRAY. 1838-1861. [BORN Jan. 29, 1838, at Duntiblae, a small village on the banks of the Luggie, about eight miles from Glasgow. Son of a weaver. Educated in part at Glasgow University, for the Christian ministry, but abandoned it for literary pursuits, and betook himself at an early age to writing verses, many of which appeared from time to time in The Glasgow Citizen, under the nom de plume of "Will Gurney." In 1860 he determined to go to London, hoping to attain literary eminence in the great metropolis, where he arrived in the month of May, without friends or means of subsistence. He attracted the favorable notice of several men of letters, who gave him some literary employment and otherwise befriended him, but soon fell ill with pulmonary disease, and was sent back to Merkland, where his parents were then living. He struggled with the disease till the third of December, 1861, when he passed away. His poems, The Luggie, and Other Poems, were published shortly after his death by Macmillan & Co., with a Memoir by James Hedderwick, and a Prefatory Notice by R. M. Milnes, M.P.] HOMESICK. COME to me, O my Mother! come to me, Thine own son slowly dying far away! Through the moist ways of the wide ocean, blown By great invisible winds, come stately To this calm bay for quiet anchorage; away, But, O my Mother, never comest thou! white snow, That cold soft revelation pure as light, The winter is decrepit, under-born, Far from the frost enchantment, and the Jewelled from bough to bough? Ο O river in the valley of my home, more Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch |