Sorrow and Pleasure, and Love and Hate,

If you ever felt them, have vaporised hence To this odour-so subtle and delicate

Of myrrh, and cassia, and frankincense.

Of course they embalmed you! Yet not so sweet
Were aloes and nard, as the youthful glow
Which Amenti stole when the small dark feet
Wearied of treading our world below.

Look! it was flood-time in valley of Nile,
Or a very wet day in the Delta, dear!

When your slippers tripped lightly their latest mileThe mud on the soles renders that fact clear.

You knew Cleopatra, no doubt! You saw
Antony's galleys from Actium come.
But there! if questions could answers draw
From lips so many a long age dumb,

I would not teaze you with history,

Nor vex your heart for the men that were; The one point to learn that would fascinate me Is, where and what are you to-day, my dear!

You died, believing in Horus and Pasht,
Isis, Osiris, and priestly lore;

And found, of course, such theories smashed
By actual fact on the heavenly shore.

What next did you do? Did you transmigrate ?
Have we seen you since, all modern and fresh ?
Your charming soul-so I calculate-

Mislaid its mummy, and sought new flesh.

Were you she whom I met at dinner last week,
With eyes and hair of the Ptolemy black,
Who still of this find in the Fayoum would speak,
And to Pharaohs and scarabs still carry us back?
A scent of lotus about her hung,

And she had such a far-away wistful air

As of somebody born when the Earth was young;
And she wore of gilt slippers a lovely pair.

Perchance you were married? These might have been
Part of your trousseau-the wedding shoes;
And you laid them aside with the garments green,
And painted clay Gods which a bride would use;
And, may be, to-day, by Nile's bright waters
Damsels of Egypt in gowns of blue-
Great-great-great-very-great-grand-daughters
Owe their shapely insteps to you!

But vainly I beat at the bars of the Past,
Little green slippers with golden strings!
For all you can tell is that leather will last

When loves, and delightings, and beautiful things

Have vanished, forgotten-No! not quite that!
I catch some gleam of the grace you wore
When you finished with Life's daily pit-a-pat,
And left your shoes at Death's bedroom door.

You were born in the Egypt which did not doubt;
You were never sad with our new-fashioned sorrows :
You were sure, when your play-days on Earth ran out,
Of play-times to come, as we of our morrows!
Oh, wise little Maid of the Delta! I lay

Your shoes in your mummy-chest back again,
And wish that one game we might merrily play
At" Hunt the Slipper "-to see it all plain.

F

LEWIS MORRIS

Born 1833

AT LAST

Let me at last be laid

On that hillside I know which scans the vale, Beneath the thick yews' shade,

For shelter when the rains and winds prevail.

It cannot be the eye

Is blinded when we die,

So that we know no more at all

The dawns increase, the evenings fall;
Shut up within a mouldering chest of wood
Asleep, and careless of our children's good.

Shall I not feel the spring,

The yearly resurrection of the earth,

Stir thro' each sleeping thing

With the fair throbbings and alarms of birth,

Calling at its own hour

On folded leaf and flower,

Calling the lamb, the lark, the bee,

Calling the crocus and anemone,

Calling new lustre to the maiden's eye,

And to the youth love and ambition high?

Shall I no more admire

The winding river kiss the daisied plain ?

Nor see the dawn's cold fire

Steal downward from the rosy hills again?
Nor watch the frowning cloud,
Sublime with mutterings loud,

Burst on the vale, nor eves of gold,

Nor crescent moons, nor starlights cold,
Nor the red casements glimmer on the hill

At Yule-tides, when the frozen leas are still?

Or should my children's tread

Through Sabbath twilights, when the hymns are done, Come softly overhead,

Shall no sweet quickening through my bosom run,

Till all my soul exhale

Into the primrose pale,

And every flower which springs above
Breathes a new perfume from my love;
And I shall throb, and stir, and thrill beneath
With a pure passion stronger far than death?

Sweet thought! fair, gracious dream,
Too fair and fleeting for our clearer view!