Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

SHAKESPEARE

OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base

To the foil'd searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst walk on Earth unguess'd at. Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,

All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

A SWEET SONG SUNG NOT YET TO ANY MAN, FROM THE LIFE AND

DEATH OF JASON

I KNOW a little garden close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing, And though no pillared house is there, And though the apple boughs are bare Of fruit and blossom, would to God Her feet upon the green grass trod, And I beheld them as before.

There comes a murmur from the shore,
And in the place two fair streams are,
Drawn from the purple hills afar,
Drawn down unto the restless sea;
The hills whose flowers ne'er fed the bee,
The shore no ship has ever seen,
Still beaten by the billows green,
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
That maketh me both deaf and blind
Careless to win, unskilled to find,
And quick to lose what all men seek.
Yet tottering as I am, and weak,

Still have I left a little breath
To seek within the jaws of death
An entrance to that happy place,

To seek the unforgotten face

Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me

Anigh the murmuring of the sea.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

DIRGE IN WOODS

A WIND sways the pines,
And below

Not a breath of wild air;

Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead

Rushes life in a race,

As the clouds the clouds chase;

And we go,

And we drop like the fruits of the tree,

Even we,

Even so.

GEORGE MEREDITH.

THE SOLDIER

IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England

given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. RUPERT BROOKE.

THE SHEPHERDESS

SHE walks

the lady of my delight —

A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep.

She feeds them on the fragrant height,

And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night

The chastest stars may peep.

She walks the lady of my delight -
A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.

She walks the lady of my delight

A shepherdess of sheep.

ALICE MEYNELL.

Lovely thy tarrying, lovely too is night:
Pass thou away.

Pass, thou wild heart,

Wild heart of youth that still

Hast half a will

To stay.

I grow too old a comrade, let us part.

Pass thou away.

SIR WILLIAM WATSON.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor\
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name: