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by foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
by strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
and bear about the mockery of woe

to midnight dances and the public show?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dressed,
and the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
there shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
there the first roses of the year shall blow;
while angels with their silver wings o'ershade
the ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.

CAMENA-SOLYMAN

A. POPE

HILE he is yet alive, he may be slain;

WHILE

but from the dead no flesh comes back again. While he remains alive, I live in fear.

Though he were dead, that doubt still living were.
None hath the power to end what he begun.
The same occasion follows every son.

Their greatness, or their worth, is not so much.
And shall the best be slain for being such?

Thy mother, or thy brother, are amiss;

I am betray'd, and one of them it is.

My mother if she errs, errs virtuously;
and let her err, ere Mustapha should die.
Kings for their safety must not blame mistrust.
Nor for surmises sacrifice the just.

Well, dear Camena, keep this secretly:

I will be well advised before he die.

655

LORD BROOKE

THE DEATH OF POMPEY

NE self-same ship contain'd us, when I saw

and when the man, that had afright the earth,
did homage to it with his dearest blood;
o'er whom I shed full many a bitter tear,
and did perform his exequies with sighs:
and on the strand upon the river side
(where to my sighs the waters seem'd to turn)

I wove a coffin for his corse, of seggs,
that with the wind did wave like bannerets,
and laid his body to be burned thereon;
which, when it was consum'd, I kindly took,
and sadly closed within an earthen urn
the ashy reliques of his hapless bones;
which, having 'scaped the rage of wind and sea,
I bring to fair Cornelia, to interr

within his elders' tomb that honour'd her.

T. KYD

656 HELENA OWNS HER LOVE FOR BERTRAM HEN I confess,

657

THEN

here on my knee, before high heaven and you, that before you, and next unto high heaven,

I love your son:

my friends were poor but honest; so's my love:
be not offended; for it hurts not him

that he is loved of me: I follow him not
with any token of presumptuous suit;

nor would I have him till I do deserve him;
yet never know how that desert should be:
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
yet, in this captious and intenible sieve,
I still pour in the waters of my love,
and lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
religious in mine error, I adore

the sun that looks upon his worshipper
but knows of him no more.

LEONORA-PRINCESS

W. SHAKESPEARE

Leon. IF friendship's soothing words console thee not, this beauteous world's calm power, and healing

time,

will imperceptibly restore thy heart.

Prin. Ay, beauteous is the world, and many a joy
floats through its wide dominion. But, alas,
when we would seize the wingéd good, it flies
and, step by step, along the path of life
allures our yearning spirits to the grave.
To mortal man so seldom is it given

to find what seem'd his heaven-appointed bliss;

658

659

alas, so seldom he retains the good

which, in auspicious hour, his hand had grasped;
the treasure to our heart that came unsought
doth tear itself away, and we ourselves

yield that which once with eagerness we seized.
There is a bliss, but 'tis to us unknown-
'tis known indeed, but yet we prize it not.

A. SWANWICK from Goethe

SEBASTIAN CAPTIVE TO HIS CONQUEROR THE
MOORISH Emperor muLEY MOLUCH

HERE satiate all your fury;

let fortune empty her whole quiver on me;

I have a soul that, like an ample shield,
can take in all; and verge enough for more.

I would have conquered you; and ventured only
a narrow neck of land for a third world;

to give my loosened subjects room to play.
Fate was not mine,

nor am I fate's: now have I pleased my longing,
and trod the ground which I beheld from far,
I beg no pity for this mouldering clay;

for if you give it burial, there it takes

possession of your earth;

if burned and scattered in the air, the winds

that strew my dust, diffuse my royalty,

and spread me o'er your clime; for where one atom

of mine shall light, know, there Sebastian reigns.

J. DRYDEN

M.

`HE blesséd sleep you know not, whose sweet
influence,

ere he can stretch his labour-aching limbs,
softly seals up the peasant's weary lids.
On the cold earth, with over-watching spent,
you stir and fret with feverish wakefulness;
till nature wearied out at length o'ercomes
the strong conceit of fear, and 'gins to dose:
but as oblivion steals upon your senses,
the hollow-groaning wind uprears you quick,
and you sit catching with suspended breath,

R.

well as the beating of your heart will let you,
the fancied step of justice.

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660

Wal.

Hark! who's there?

I hear nothing ;

nor aught do I behold save on yon tree
the miserable remnant of a wretch,

that was hanged there for murder.

WALLENSTEIN-GORDON

HO now persists in calling Fortune false?

WHO

To me she has proved faithful, with fond love took me from out the common ranks of men, and like a mother goddess, with strong arm carried me swiftly up the steps of life. Nothing is common in my destiny, nor in the furrows of my hand. Who dares interpret then my life for me as 'twere one of the undistinguishable many? True in this present moment I appear fall'n low indeed; but I shall rise again. The high flood will soon follow on this ebb. Gor. And yet remember I the good old proverb, Let the night come before we praise the day. I would be slow from long continued fortune to gather hope: for hope is the companion given to the unfortunate by pitying Heaven.

S. T. COLERIDGE from Schiller

661 WALLENSTEIN ON HEARING OF THE DESERTION

go by:

OF ISOLANI

LET that reckoned yet on gratitude.

And wherein doth he wrong in going from me?

He follows still the god whom all his life

he has worshipped at the gaming table. With

my Fortune, and my seeming destiny,

he made the bond, and broke it not with me.

I am but the ship in which his hopes were stowed,

662

663

and with the which well-pleased and confident
he traversed the open sea: now he beholds it
in imminent jeopardy amongst the coast-rocks,
and hurries to preserve his wares. As light
as the free bird from the hospitable twig
where it had nested, he flies off from me:
no human tie is snapped betwixt us two.
Yea, he deserves to find himself deceived,
who seeks a heart in the unthinking man.
S. T. COLERIDGE from Schiller

TO TITUS BEFORE THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM

ON of Vespasian! I have been a soldier,

SON

till the helm hath worn mine agéd temples bare. Battles have been familiar to mine eyes

as is the sunlight, and the angry Mars
wears not a terror to appal the souls

of constant men, but I have fronted it.

I have seen the painted Briton sweep to battle
on his scythed car, and, when he fell, he fell
as one that honoured death by nobly dying.
And I have been where flying Parthians showered
their arrows, making the pursuer check

his fierce steed with the sudden grasp of death.
But war like this, so frantic and so desperate,
man ne'er beheld. Our swords are blunt with slaying,
and yet, as though the earth cast up again
souls discontented with a single death,

they grow beneath the slaughter.

NATHAN TO DAVID

H. H. MILMAN

HUS Nathan saith unto his lord the king:

THU

'There were two men both dwellers in one town,

the one was mighty and exceeding rich

in oxen, sheep, and cattle of the field;
the other poor, having nor ox, nor calf,

nor other cattle, save one little lamb,

which he had bought and nourish'd by the hand;
and it grew up, and fed with him and his,
and eat and drank, as he and his were wont,
and in his bosom slept, and was to live

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