A FOREST IN BOSNIA Spirit of Trajan! What a world is here. LILAC AND GOLD AND GREEN Lilac and gold and green! Those are the colours I love the best, Spring's own raiment untouched and clean, When the world is awake and yet hardly dressed, And the stranger sun, her bridegroom shy, She is so beautiful, he so blest. Those were the colours you wore to-day. Robed you were in them fold on fold, Clothed in the light of your love's delay. And I held you thus in my arms, once only, And wondered still, as you left me lonely, How the world's beauty was changed to grey. I would die for the truth of those colours true : Lilac for loyalty, gold for my queen, And green the faith of my love for you. Here is a posy of all the three. My heart is with it. So think of me, And our weeping skies shall once more be blue. FROM "IN VINCULIS" Behold the Court of Penance. Four gaunt walls Shutting out all things but the upper heaven. Stone flags for floor, where daily from their stalls The human cattle in a circle driven Tread down their pathway to a mire uneven, Pale-faced, sad-eyed, and mute as funerals. Woe to the wretch whose weakness unforgiven Falters a moment in the track or falls. Yet is there consolation. Overhead The pigeons build and the loud jackdaws talk, And once in the wind's eye, like a ship moored, A sea-gull flew and I was comforted. Even here the heavens declare thy glory, Lord, My prison has its pleasures. Every day Across the prison rules, and a brave mouse Watches in sympathy the warder's tread, These two my fellow prisoners in the house. But about dusk in the rooms opposite I see lamps lighted, and upon the blind A shadow passes all the evening through. It is the gaoler's daughter fair and kind And full of pity-so I image it— Till the stars rise, and night begins anew. AUSTIN DOBSON Born 1840 A DEAD LETTER "A cœur blessé-l'ombre et le silence" H. DE BALZAC I I drew it from its china tomb; It came out feebly scented With some thin ghost of past perfume An old, old letter,-folded still! That glimmering in the sultry haze, Slumbered like Goldsmith's Madam Blaize, |