IV.

RIVER, that stealest with such silent pace
Around the City of the Dead, where lies

A friend who bore thy name, and whom these

eyes

Shall see no more in his accustomed place, Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace

And say good night, for now the western skies Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise Like damps that gather on a dead man's face. Good night! good night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days

That are no more, and shall no more return. Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays

To cover up the embers that still burn.

V.

THE doors are all wide open; at the gate
The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,
And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze
Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,
And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,

The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,
Writes the last letter of his name, and stays
His restless steps, as if compelled to wait.
I also wait; but they will come no more,
Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied
The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me!
They have forgotten the pathway to my door!
Something is gone from nature since they died,
And summer is not summer, nor can be.

CHAUCER

N old man in a lodge within a park ;

AN

The chamber walls depicted all around

With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound, And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark

Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

A

SHAKESPEARE

VISION as of crowded city streets,

With human life in endless overflow; Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats, Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets; Tolling of bells in turrets, and below

Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets! This vision comes to me when I unfold

The volume of the Poet paramount,

Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone; Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,

And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount, Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

I

MILTON

PACE the sounding sea-beach and behold How the voluminous billows roll and run, Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,

And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold All its loose-flowing garments into one,

Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold. So in majestic cadence rise and fall

The mighty undulations of thy song,

O sightless bard, England's Mæonides!
And ever and anon, high over all

Uplifted, a ninth wave, superb and strong,
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.