He is the humble, lowly one, In coat of rusty velveteen, In sleeves of lawn not ever seen. On it the dews of mercy shine; From heaven at dawn of day they fell; And it he wears by right divine, Like earthly kings, if truth they tell; And up to heaven the few to send, He still cries out, "Old souls to mend !" THE SIBYL A MAID who mindful of her playful time Steps to her summer, bearing childhood on To woman's beauty, heedless of her prime : She is the Sibyl; seek not, then, her voice ; — A laugh, a song, a sorrow, but thy share, With woes at hand for many who rejoice That she shall utter; that shall many hear; That warn all hearts who seek of her their fates, Her love but one awaits. She is the Sibyl; days that distant lio Bend to the promise that her word shall give; Already has she eyes that prophesy, For of her beauty shall all beauty live: Unknown to her, in her slow opening bloom, She turns the leaves of doom. Edward FitzGerald FROM HIS PARAPHRASE OF THE RUBÁLYÁT OF OMÁR KHAYYÁM OVERTURE And those who husbanded the golden grain, And those who flung it to the winds like rain, Alike to no such aureate earth are turn'd As, buried once, men want dug up again. The worldly hope men set their hearts upon Think, in this batter'd caravanserai How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp Abode his destin'd hour, and went his way. They say the lion and the lizard keep The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: And Bahrám, that great hunter - the wild ass Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep. Hobert Browning SONG FROM "PARACELSUS” OVER the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave, To a speeding wind and a bounding wave — A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree, Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nail'd all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black-bull hides, Seeth'd in fat and suppled in flame, To bear the playful billow's game ; So each good ship was rude to see, Rude and bare to the outward view, But each upbore a stately tent; Where cedar-pales in scented row Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine: And an awning droop'd the mast below, In fold on fold of the purple fine, That neither noontide, nor star-shine, Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, Might pierce the regal tenement. When the sun dawn'd, oh, gay and glad We set the sail and plied the oar; But when the night-wind blew like breath, For joy of one day's voyage more, We sang together on the wide sea, Like men at peace on a peaceful shore ; Each sail was loos'd to the wind so free, Each helm made sure by the twilight star, And in a sleep as calm as death, We, the strangers from afar, Lay stretch'd along, each weary crew In a circle round its wondrous tent, Whence gleam'd soft light and curl'd rich scent, And, with light and perfume, music too: So the stars wheel'd round, and the darkness past, And at morn we started beside the mast, One morn, the land appear'd! - a speck The shout, restrain the longing eye! And a statue bright was on every deck! We shouted, every man of us, An hundred shapes of lucid stone ! All day we built a shrine for each - "The isles are just at hand," they cried ; "Like cloudlets faint at even sleeping, Our temple-gates are open'd wide, Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping For the lucid shapes you bring" - they |