IV 'Lost one and all' were the words But they rode like victors and lords Ranged like a storm or stood like a rock For our men gallopt up with a cheer and a shout, And the foeman surged, and waver'd, and reel'd Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, out of the field, And over the brow and away. POET. Yet tho' this cheek be gray, I would the globe from end to end Or Love with wreaths of flowers. Involving ours he needs must fight He needs must combat might with might, And who loves war for war's own sake His meed of fame in verse; It still were right to crown with song A crown the Singer hopes may last, For dare we dally with the sphere Old Horace? I will strike,' said he, Let it live then-ay, till when? Earth passes, all is lost In what they prophesy, our wise men, And deed and song alike are swept As far as man can see, except The man himself remain; Too many a voice may cry He wrought of good or brave I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. of Sermione (the Latin Sirmio), where Catullus had his country house, is about three miles and a half to the east of Desenzano. There are some slight remains of an ancient building on the edge of the lake, said to belong to the poet's villa; and on a hill near by are fragments of Roman baths. Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! So they row'd, and there we landed - 'O venusta Sirmio !' There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow, There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, Came that Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless woe, Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, 'Frater Ave atque Vale' as we wander'd to and fro Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio! HELEN'S TOWER [Written at the request of my friend, Lord Dufferin.] Inscribed on the walls of a tower erected in 1860 by the Earl of Dufferin on his estate near Belfast, as a tribute to his mother, the late Countess of Gifford, and named after her. The fourth line refers to a poetical inscription on the tower, written by Lady Gifford to her son. Later, in 1861, 'Helen's Tower' was privately printed by Lord Dufferin. It was also printed in Good Words' for January, 1884, before it appeared in the Tiresias' volume. HELEN'S TOWER, here I stand, |