if the plan has been executed with success, may be heard throughout the following pages :—wherever the Poets of England are honoured, wherever the dominant language of the world is spoken, it is hoped that they will find fit audience.

6

NOTE

In this reprint one hundred additional poems are given representing the latter half of the nineteenth century. None but Mr. Palgrave could have grouped the newer poems in the most poetically-effective order,' as he conceived it, so they have been added in the chronological order of their authors' birth. A few dates in the original selection have been corrected. With regard to copyright poems, Messrs. William Blackwood & Sons have kindly permitted the inclusion of George Eliot's 'O may I join the choir invisible; Messrs. Chatto & Windus, Arthur O'Shaughnessy's ode; Mr. William Reeves and Mr. Bertram Dobell, James Thomson's lyric As we rush, as we rush in the train' (from Sunday at Hampstead'); and Mrs. Henley and Mr. Nutt, W. E. Henley's 'Out of the night that covers me."

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6

THE GOLDEN TREASURY

BOOK FIRST

1

SPRING

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,

In

every street these tunes our ears do greet, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Spring! the sweet Spring!

Phoebus, arise !

2

SUMMONS TO LOVE

And paint the sable skies

With azure, white, and red :

T. NASH

Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed
That she may thy career with roses spread :

The nightingales thy coming each where sing:

B

Make an eternal spring!

Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair

In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore

With diadem of pearl thy temples fair :

Chase hence the ugly night

Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn,

That day, long-wished day
Of all my life so dark,

(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn
And fates my hopes betray),

Which, purely white, deserves

An everlasting diamond should it mark.
This is the morn should bring unto this grove
My Love, to hear and recompense my love.
Fair King, who all preserves,

But show thy blushing beams,

And thou two sweeter eyes

Shalt see than those which by Penéus' streams

Did once thy heart surprise.

Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise :

If that ye winds would hear

A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre,
Your furious chiding stay;
Let Zephyr only breathe,
And with her tresses play.
-The winds all silent are,
And Phoebus in his chair
Ensaffroning sea and air
Makes vanish every star:
Night like a drunkard reels

Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels :
The fields with flowers are deck'd in every hue,
The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue;
Here is the pleasant place-

And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!

W. DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN

3

TIME AND LOVE

I

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of out-worn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—
That Time will come and take my Love away:

-This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

W. SHAKESPEARE

4

II

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower ?

O how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack!
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid ?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid ?

O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright..
W. SHAKESPEARE