Farewell the long-continued ache,

The days a-dream, the nights awake,
I will rejoice and merry make,
And never more complain.

King Love is dead and gone for aye,
Who ruled with might and main,
For with a bitter word one day,
I found my tyrant slain,
And he in Heathenesse was bred,
Nor ever was baptized, 'tis said,
Nor is of any creed, and dead
Can never rise again.

RETROSPECT

Here beside my Paris fire, I sit alone and ponder All my life of long ago that lies so far asunder; "Here, how came I thence?" I say, and greater grows the wonder

As I recall the farms and fields and placid hamlets yonder.

... See, the meadow-sweet is white against the water

courses,

Marshy lands are kingcup-gay and bright with streams

and sources,

Dew-bespangled shines the hill where half-abloom the gorse is;

And all the northern fallows steam beneath the ploughing horses.

There's the red-brick-chimneyed house, the ivied haunt of swallows,

All its garden up and down and full of hills and

hollows;

Past the lawn, the sunken fence whose brink the laurel

follows;

And then the knee-deep pasture where the herd for ever wallows!

So they've clipped the lilac bush: a thousand thousand

pities!

'Twas the blue old-fashioned sort that never grows in

cities.

There we little children played and chaunted aimless

ditties,

While oft the old grandsire looked at us and smiled his
Nunc Dimittis!

Green, O green with ancient peace, and full of sap and

sunny,

Lusty fields of Warwickshire, O land of milk and

honey,

Might I live to pluck again a spike of agrimony,
A silver tormentilla leaf or ladysmock upon ye!

Patience, for I keep at heart your pure and perfect seeming,

I can see you wide awake as clearly as in dreaming, Softer, with an inner light, and dearer, to my deeming, Than when beside your brooks at noon I watched the sallows gleaming!

TWILIGHT

When I was young the twilight seemed too long.

How often on the western window-seat

I leaned my book against the misty pane And spelled the last enchanting lines again, The while my mother hummed an ancient song, Or sighed a little and said: "The hour is sweet!" When I, rebellious, clamoured for the light.

But now I love the soft approach of night,

And now with folded hands I sit and dream While all too fleet the hours of twilight seem ; And thus I know that I am growing old.

O granaries of Age! O manifold
And royal harvest of the common years!
There are in all thy treasure-house no ways
But lead by soft descent and gradual slope
To memories more exquisite than Hope.
Thine is the Iris born of olden tears,
And thrice more happy are the happy days
That live divinely in thy lingering rays.
So autumn roses bear a lovelier flower;
So in the emerald after-sunset hour
The orchard wall and trembling aspen-trees
Appear an infinite Hesperides.

Ay, as at dusk we sit with folded hands,

Who knows, who cares in what enchanted lands We wander while the undying memories throng?

When I was young the twilight seemed too long.

ROBERT, LORD HOUGHTON

Born 1858

A WET SUNSET IN SOUTH AFRICA

Across the waste of dreary veldt,

Unmarked by hut, or knoll, or hollow, The lifeless mountain's arid belt

Trends southward, far as eye can follow.

A fitful rain is dripping still,

Close to the plain the swifts are skimming; The thirsty soil has drunk its fill,

And left a thousand pools a-brimming.

The west is rapt from sight and sense,
Lost in a haze of fairy yellow;
A sadness, born we know not whence,
Falls with that light divinely mellow :

Where hangs unseen the guiding Cross,
The lightning's magic veil is lifting,
Clouds like Atlantic billows toss,

From summit on to summit drifting;

S