Sad Memory brings the light When I remember all The friends so link'd together Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. THOMAS MOORE. My Own Shall Come to Me. If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than "My Own Shall Come to Me," he would have stood to all ages as one of the greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater line in Greek or English literature than "I stand amid the eternal ways." SERENE I fold my hands and wait, I stay my haste, I make delays, And what is mine shall know my face. Asleep, awake, by night or day The friends I seek are seeking me; What matter if I stand alone? I wait with joy the coming years; The stars come nightly to the sky; The tidal wave comes to the sea; The waters know their own and draw The brook that springs in yonder heights: So flows the good with equal law Unto the soul of pure delights. JOHN BURROUGHS. Ode to a Skylark. "Ode to a Skylark," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually assigned to " grammar grades" of schools. It is included here out of respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these lines than with any other lines in any poem: "Like a poet hidden, In the light of thought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not." HAIL to thee, blithe spirit Bird thou never wert That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest, In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow-clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody: Like a poet hidden In the light of thought; Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now! PERCY BYSShe Shelley. The Sands of Dee. I have often had the pleasure of riding across the coast from Chester, England, to Rhyl, on the north coast of Wales, where stretch "The Sands of Dee" (Charles Kingsley, 1819-75). These purple sands at low tide stretch off into the sea miles away, and are said to be full of quicksands. "O MARY, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee." The western wind was wild and dark with foam And all alone went she. The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land; And never home came she. Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,-- A drowned maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee. They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea. But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee. CHARLES KINGSLEY. |