The mystery of soundless days

Hath sought for him and found him.

He hides within his simple brain
An instinct innocent and holy,
The music of a wood-bird's strain,-
Not blithe, nor melancholy,

But hung upon the calm content

Of wholesome leaf and bough and blossomAn unecstatic ravishment

Born in a rustic bosom.

He knows the moods of forest things,
He feels, in his own speechless fashion,
For helpless forms of fur and wings
A mild paternal passion.

Within his horny hand he holds

The warm brood of the ruddy squirrel; Their bushy mother storms and scolds, But knows no sense of peril.

The dormouse shares his crumb of cheese,

His homeward trudge the rabbits follow; He finds, in angles of the trees,

The cup-nest of the swallow.

And through this sympathy, perchance,
The beating heart of life he reaches
Far more than we who idly dance
An hour beneath the beeches.

Our science and our empty pride,
Our busy dream of introspection,
To God seem vain and poor beside
This dumb, sincere reflection.

Yet he will die unsought, unknown,

A nameless head-stone stand above him, And the vast woodland, vague and lone, Be all that's left to love him.

TWO POINTS OF VIEW

If I forget,

May joy pledge this weak heart to sorrow! If I forget,

May my soul's coloured summer borrow

The hueless tones of storm and rain,
Of ruth and terror, shame and pain,-
If I forget!

Though you forget,—

There is no binding code for beauty;

Though you forget,

Love was your charm, but not your duty;
And life's worst breeze must never bring
A ruffle to your silken wing,

Though you forget.

If I forget,

The salt creek may forget the ocean;
If I forget,-

The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion,
May I sink meanlier than the worst,
Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,-
If I forget!

Though you forget,

No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
Though you forget,-

You filled my barren life with treasure,
You may withdraw the gift you gave,
You still are lord, I still am slave,-
Though you forget.

WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK

Born 1850

A CONQUEST

I found him openly wearing her token;
I knew that her troth could never be broken;

I laid my hand on the hilt of my sword,

He did the same and spoke not a word;
I bad him confess his villany,

He smiled, and said, 'She gave it me.'

We searched for seconds, they soon were found,
They measured our swords and measured the ground,
To save us they would not have uttered a breath,
They were ready enough to help us to death.
We fought in the midst of a wintry wood,

Till the fair white snow was red with his blood:

But his was the victory, for, as he died,

He swore by the rood that he had not lied.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

A naked house, a naked moor,

A shivering pool before the door,
A garden bare of flowers and fruit
And poplars at the garden-foot;
Such is the place that I live in,
Bleak without and bare within.

Born 1850

Yet shall your ragged moor receive
The incomparable pomp of eve,
And the cold glories of the dawn
Behind your shivering trees be drawn ;
And when the wind from place to place
Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase,
Your garden gloom and gleam again,
With leaping sun, with glancing rain.
Here shall the wizard moon ascend
The heavens, in the crimson end
Of day's declining splendour; here