The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree :
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;" And the white rose weeps,
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
O that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain.
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!
When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.
A shadow flits before me,
Not thou, but like to thee;
Ah Christ, that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.
SELECTIONS FROM IDYLLS OF THE KING.
THESE to His memory-since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself-I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears
And indeed He seems to me
Scarce other than my own ideal knight,
Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her-'
Her-over all whose realms to their last isle,
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,
Darkening the world. We have lost him he is gone:
We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself,
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that;
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
And blackens every blot: for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son
A lovelier life, a more unstain'd, than his?
Or how should England dreaming of his sons
Hope more for these than some inheritance
Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine,
Thou noble Father of her kings to be,
Laborious for her people and her poor-
Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day-
Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste
To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace-
Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam
Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,
Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, thro' all times, Albert the Good.
Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure;
Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure,
Remembering all the beauty of that star
Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made
One light together, but has past and leaves
The Crown a lonely splendour.
SONGS FROM GARETH AND LYNETTE.
"O SUN, that wakenest all to bliss or pain, O moon, that layest all to sleep again, Shine sweetly: twice my love hath smiled on me.'
"O dewy flowers that open to the sun, O dewy flowers that close when day is done, Blow sweetly: twice my love hath smiled on me.'
"O birds, that warble to the morning sky, O birds that warble as the day goes by, Sing sweetly twice my love hath smiled on me.'
“O morning star that smilest in the blue, O star, my morning dream hath proven true, Smile sweetly, thou! my love hath smiled on me.'
"O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain,
O rainbow with three colours after rain,
Shine sweetly: thrice my love hath smiled on me.'”
SELECTION FROM ENID AND GERAINT.
THEN rode Geraint into the castle court,
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones.
He look'd and saw that all was ruinous.
Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern;
And here had fall'n a great part of a tower,
Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff,
And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers;
And high above a piece of turret stair,
Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound
Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems
Claspt the gray walls with hairy fibred arms,
And suck'd the joining of the stones and look'd
A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove.
And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear thro' the open casement of the Hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form ;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, "there is the nightingale,"
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
"Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me."
It chanced the song that Enid sang was one Of Fortune and her wheel, and Enid sang:
"Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel thro' sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
"Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.
"Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands; For man is man and master of his fate.
"Turn turn thy wheel above the staring crowd; Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate."
'Hark, by the bird's song ye may learn the nest,"
Said Yniol; "Enter quickly." Entering then,
Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones,
The dusky rafter's many-cobweb'd Hall,
He found an ancient dame in dim brocade;
And near her, like a blossom vermeil white,
That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath,
Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk,
Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint,
"Here by God's rood is the one maid for me."
STRAY LINES FROM ENID AND GERAINT.
O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, thro' the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!
"Yet fear me not: I call mine own self wild,
But keep a touch of sweet civility
Here in the heart of waste and wilderness."
"Because I knew my deeds were known,
I found, instead of scornful pity or pure scorn,
Such fine reserve and noble reticence
Manners so kind, yet stately, such a grace of tenderest
courtesy."
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