III.

With you I may not dwell. Yet man is great;
And the mind triumphs over place and time:
I therefore, doomed to weave my lonely rhyme,
Here 'mid these pines, these moon-scenes desolate,
Have found therein a joy that mocks at fate;

And stationed on a specular mount sublime,
Have scanned yon fields low-lying, whence I climb
To commune with the stars inviolate.

The sempiternal stars, the flawless snows,

The crystal gems fashioned by art of frost,

The thin pure wind that whence it listeth blows,

The solitude whereon the soul is tossed

In contemplation of the world's huge woes;
These things suffice.

IV.

Life's labour is not lost.

Friends have I found here too : this peasant folk,
Comradely, frank, athletic; men who draw
Their lineage from a race that never saw
Fear on the field, but with firm sinewy stroke
Those knightly ranks, Burgundian, Austrian, broke,
And bade the Italian tyrant far withdraw;
These vales, these hills have known no lord but law
Since Freedom for this people first awoke.
Their joys austere, their frugal style be mine;

Low houses builded of the rude rough stone,
Raftered and panelled with smooth native pine;
Here let me rest heart-whole, nor rest alone;

High thoughts be my companions; words divine
Of poets; these are still the spirit's own.

MISCELLANEOUS,

1. THE GRAVE OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

MAR KHAYYAM, in life's calm eventide,

With one whose youth shone like the rising moon, Murmured these words: "When earth on either side Shall clasp this breathing clay, the potter's pride; When all these songs are silenced, soon, too soon; Then shall red rose-leaves, morning,night,and noon, Blown by North-winds, the dust of Omar hide." Listened the youth, and wondered: yet, being sure No wise man's words like snow-flakes melt in vain, After long years, with eld's slow steps, again Turning toward Omar's home in Naishapûr,

He sought that tomb, but found, by wild winds blown, Drift of red rose-leaves, deep on a hidden stone.

II.-A SISTER OF THE POOR.

NEW you this lady? She was one whom God

ΚΑ

Loved greatly; yet the proud ones of the land
Eyed her askance, what time rough paths she trod
And wild waste places, with an angel's hand
Soothing intolerable anguish. Men

By maddening fever fretted, orphans thrown
Like fruit untimely on the barren stone
Of city streets, babes in the stifling den
Of crime and famine to her bosom pressed-
These knew her. As a folded lily keeps
Whiteness unstained on stony Alpine steeps,
Even so this maiden in the festering nest

Of sin and sickness blossomed. Now she sleeps
Pure with the pure, and with the saints at rest.

III.-O SI, O SI, OTIOSI,

H that the waters of oblivion

OH

Might purge
the burdened soul of her life's dross,
Cleansing dark overgrowths that dull the gloss
Wherewith that pristine gold so purely shone!
Oh that some spell might make us dream undone
Those deeds that fret our pillow, when we toss
Racked by the torments of that living cross
Where memory frowns, a grim centurion!
Sleep, the kind soother of our bodily smart,

Is bought and sold by scales-weight; quivering nerves
Sink into slumber when the hand of art

Hath touched some hidden spring of brain or heart;
But for the tainted will no medicine serves;
The road from sin to suffering never swerves.

OH,

IV. TO PROMETHEUS.

H, thou who sole 'neath heaven's impiteous stars,
Chained to thy crucifix on those fierce fells,
Pierced by the pendent spikes of icicles,

Quailest beneath the world-wind's scimitars;
Thou on whose wrinkling forehead delved with scars
Unnumbered ages score time's parallels;

Deep in whose heart sin's deathless vulture dwells
Who on the low earth's limitary bars

Seest suns rise, suns set, ascending signs

And signs descending through æonian years; Still uncompanioned save by dreams and fears, Still stayed by hope deferred that ne'er declines; Oh, thou, Prometheus, protomartyr, thus Teach man to dree life's doom on Caucasus !

V. THE CHORISTER.

NOW on the high-pitched minster roof and spire:

SNOW

Snow on the boughs of leafless linden trees:

Snow on the silent streets and squares that freeze Under night's wing down-drooping nigh and nighcr. Inside the church, within the shadowy choir,

Dim burn the lamps like lights on vaporous seas; Drowsed are the voices of droned litanies; Blurred as in dreams the face of priest and friar. Cold hath numbed sense to slumber here! But hark, One swift soprano, soaring like a lark,

Startles the stillness; throbs that soul of fire, Beats around arch and aisle, floods echoing dark With exquisite aspiration; higher, higher, Yearns in sharp anguish of untold desire!

VI. A DREAM OF BURIAL IN MID-OCEAN.

DOWN

OWN through the deep deep grey-green seas, in sleep
Plunged my drowsed soul; and ever on and on

Hurrying at first, then where the faint light shone
Through fathoms twelve, with slackening fall did creep,
Nor touched the bottom of that bottomless steep,
But with a slow sustained suspension,
Buoyed 'mid the watery wildernesses wan,
Like a thin cloud in air, voyaged the deep.

Then all those dreadful faces of the sea,

Horned things abhorred and shapes intolerable,
Fixing glazed lidless eyes swam up to me,

And pushed me with their snouts, and coiled and fell
In spiral volumes writhing horribly-

Jagged fins grotesque, fanged ghastly jaws of hell.

Robert Buchanan.

1841-1901.

HAD Robert Buchanan added to his other laurels those of a politician and orator he would have rivalled the versatility of the first Lord Lytton, who was surely the most variously endowed Englishman of his time.

As it was he made his mark as poet, novelist, biographer-his sketch of David Gray is a delightful piece of biographical work-essayist, critic, and playwright; and if it cannot truly be said of him, as it was said of Goldsmith, that he touched nothing which he did not adorn, it may be declared by the most exacting critic that in every kind of intellectual labour to which he put his hand he, somewhere or other, left an impress which no seeing eye can mistake for anything but the sign manual of genius.

And yet, curiously enough, while he was essentially a poet, and a novelist, playwright, and the rest only, as it were, par hasard, the work which is most characteristic, most truly his, has obtained recognition noticeably scanty when compared with that accorded to the other work which speaks of a talent rather than of a personality. His novels good and bad-and he produced both-have been read by thousands; night after night his plays have been greeted with the applause of crowded houses; but his poetry, though