Chapter I: Introduction

WILLIAM CORY (Johnson) was born at Torrington in Devonshire, on January 9, 1823. He was the son of Charles William Johnson, a merchant, who retired at the early age of thirty, with a modest competence, and married his cousin, Theresa Furse, of Halsdon, near Torrington, to whom he had long been attached. He lived a quiet, upright, peaceable life at Torrington, content with little, and discharging simple, kindly, neighbourly duties, alike removed from ambition and indolence. William Cory had always a deep love of his old home, a strong sense of local sanctities and tender associations. "I hope you will always feel," his mother used to say, "wherever you live, that Torrington belongs to you." He said himself, in later years, "I want to be a Devon man and a Torrington man." His memory lingered over the vine-shaded verandah, the jessamine that grew by the balustrade of the steps, the broad-leaved myrtle that covered the wall of the little yard.

The boy was elected on the foundation at Eton in 1832, little guessing that it was to be his home for forty years. He worked hard at school, became a first-rate classical scholar, winning the Newcastle Scholarship in 1841, and being elected Scholar of King's in 1842. He seems to have been a quiet, retiring boy, with few intimate friends, respected for his ability and his courtesy, living a self-contained, bookish life, yet with a keen sense of school patriotism--though he had few pleasant memories of his boyhood.

Honours came to him fast at Cambridge. He won the Chancellor's English Medal with a poem on Plato in 1843, the Craven Scholarship in 1844. In those days Kingsmen did not enter for the Tripos, but received a degree, without examination, by ancient privilege. He succeeded to a Fellowship in 1845, and in the same year was appointed to a Mastership at Eton by Dr. Hawtrey. At Cambridge he seems to have read widely, to have thought much, and to have been interested in social questions. Till that time he had been an unreflecting Tory and a strong High Churchman, but he now adopted more Liberal principles, and for the rest of his life was a convinced Whig. The underlying principle of Whiggism, as he understood it, was a firm faith in human reason. Thus, in a letter of 1875, he represents the Whigs as saying to their adversaries, "You are in a majority now: if I were an ultra-democrat or counter of noses, I should submit to you as having a transcendental --sometimes called divine--right; if I were a redcap, I should buy dynamite and blow you up; if I were a Tory, I should go to church or to bed; as it is, I go to work to turn your majority into a minority. I shall do it by reasoning and by attractive virtue." He intended in his university days, and for some time after, to take Anglican Orders, though he had also some thought of going to the Bar; but he accepted a Mastership with much relief, with the hope, as he wrote in an early letter, "that before my time is out, I may rejoice in having turned out of my pupil-room perhaps one brave soldier, or one wise historian, or one generous legislator, or one patient missionary." The whole of his professional life, a period of twenty-seven years, was to be spent at Eton.

No one who knew William Cory will think it an exaggeration to say that his mind was probably one of the most vigorous and commanding minds of the century. He had a mental equipment of the foremost order, great intellectual curiosity, immense vigour and many-sidedness, combined with a firm grasp of a subject, perfect clearness of thought, and absolute lucidity of expression.

He never lost sight of principles among a crowd of details; and though he had a strong bias in certain directions, he had a just and catholic appreciation even of facts which told against his case. Yet his knowledge was never dry or cold; it was full to the brim of deep sentiment and natural feeling.

He had a wide knowledge of history, of politics, both home and foreign, of political economy, of moral science. Indeed, he examined more than once in the Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge.

He had a thorough acquaintance with and a deep love of literature; and all this in spite of the fact that he lived a very laborious and wearing life as a school-teacher, with impossibly large classes, and devoted himself with whole-hearted enthusiasm to his profession. His knowledge was, moreover, not mere erudition and patient accumulation. It was all ready for use, and at his fingers' ends. Moreover, he combined with this a quality, which is not generally found in combination with the highly-developed faculties of the doctrinaire, namely an intense and fervent emotion. He was a lover of political and social liberty, a patriot to the marrow of his bones; he loved his country with a passionate devotion, and worshipped the heroes of his native land, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, poets, with an ardent adoration; the glory and honour of England were the breath of his nostrils. Deeds of heroism, examples of high courage and noble self-sacrifice, were the memories that thrilled his heart. As a man of fifty he wept over Lanfrey's account of Nelson's death; he felt our defeat at Majuba Hill like a keen personal humiliation; his letter on the subject is as the words of one mourning for his mother.

But his was not a mere poetical emotion, supplying him with highly-coloured rhetoric, or sentimental panegyric. He had a technical and minute acquaintance with the detailed movement of wars, the precise ships and regiments engaged, the personalities and characters of commanders and officers, the conduct of the rank and file.

Many delightful stories remain in the memories of his friends and hearers to attest this. His pupil-room at Eton, in what was formerly the old Christopher Inn, was close to the street, and the passage of the Guards through Eton, to and from their Windsor quarters, is an incident of constant occurrence. When the stately military music was heard far off, in gusty splendour, in the little town, or the fifes and drums of some detachment swept blithely past, he would throw down his pen and go down the little staircase to the road, the boys crowding round him. "Brats, the British army!" he would say, and stand, looking and listening, his eyes filled with gathering tears, and his heart full of proud memories, while the rhythmical beat of the footsteps went briskly echoing by.

Again, he went down to Portsmouth to see a friend who was in command of a man-of-war; he was rowed about among the hulks; the sailors in the gig looked half contemptuously at the sturdy landsman, huddled in a cloak, hunched up in the stem-sheets, peering about through his spectacles. But contempt became first astonishment, and then bewildered admiration, when they found that he knew the position of every ship, and the engagements in which each had fought.

He was of course a man of strong preferences and prejudices; he thought of statesmen and patriots, such as Pitt, Nelson, Castlereagh, Melbourne, and Wellington, with an almost personal affection. The one title to his vehement love was that a man should have served his country, striven to enhance her greatness, extended her empire, and safeguarded her liberty.

It was the same with his feeling for authors. He loved Virgil as a friend; he almost worshipped Charlotte Bronte. He spoke of Tennyson as "the light and joy of my poor life." In 1868 he saw Sir W. Scott's portrait in London, and wrote: "Sir Walter Scott, shrewd yet wistful, boyish yet dry, looking as if he would ask and answer questions of the fairies--him I saw through a mist of weeping. He is my lost childhood, he is my first great friend. I long for him, and hate the death that parts us."

In literature, the first claim on his regard was that a writer should have looked on life with a high-hearted, generous gaze, should have cared intensely for humanity, should have hoped, loved, suffered, not in selfish isolation, but with eager affection. Thus he was not only a philosophical historian, nor a mere technical critic; he was for ever dominated by an intense personal fervour. He cared little for the manner of saying a thing, so long as the heart spoke out frankly and freely; he strove to discern the energy of the soul in all men; he could forgive everything except meanness, cowardice, egotism and conceit; there was no fault of a generous and impulsive nature that he could not condone.

Thus he was for many boys a deeply inspiring teacher; he had the art of awakening enthusiasm, of investing all he touched with a mysterious charm, the charm of wide and accurate knowledge illuminated by feeling and emotion. He rebuked ignorance in a way which communicated the desire to know. There are many men alive who trace the fruit and flower of their intellectual life to his generous and free-handed sowing. But in spite of the fact that the work of a teacher of boys was intensely congenial to him, that he loved generous boyhood, and tender souls, and awakening minds with all his heart, he was not wholly in the right place as an instructor of youth. With all his sympathy for what was weak and immature, he was yet impatient of dullness, of stupidity, of caution; much that he said was too mature, too exalted for the cramped and limited minds of boyhood. He was sensitive to the charm of eager, high-spirited, and affectionate natures, but he had also the equable, just, paternal interest in boys which is an essential quality in a wise schoolmaster. Yet he was apt to make favourites; and though he demanded of his chosen pupils and friends a high intellectual zeal, though he was merciless to all sloppiness and lack of interest, yet he forfeited a wider influence by his reputation for partiality, and by an obvious susceptibility to grace of manner and unaffected courtesy. Boys who did not understand him, and whom he did not care to try to understand, thought him simply fanciful and eccentric. It is perhaps to be regretted that unforeseen difficulties prevented his being elected Tutor of his old College, and still more that in 1860 he was passed over in favour of Kingsley, when the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, submitted his name to the Queen for the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge. Four men were suggested, of whom Blakesley and Venables refused the post. Sir Arthur Helps was set aside, and it would have been offered to Johnson, if the Prince Consort had not suggested Kingsley. Yet Johnson would hardly have been in his right place as a teacher of young men. He would have been, on the one hand, brought into contact with more vigorous and independent minds, capable of appreciating the force and width of his teaching, and of comprehending the quality and beauty of his enthusiasms. But, on the other hand, he was too impatient of any difference of opinion, and, though he loved equal talk, he hated argument. And after all, he did a great work at Eton; for nearly a quarter of a century he sent out boys who cared eagerly and generously for the things of the mind.

A second attempt was made, in 1869, to get him appointed to the history professorship, but Seeley was considered to have a better claim. Writing to a friend on the subject, Johnson said: "I am not learned. I don't care about history in the common meaning of the word."

It is astonishing to see in his Diaries the immense trouble he took to awaken interest among his pupils. He was for ever trying experiments; he would read a dozen books to enable him to give a little scientific lecture, for he was one of the first to appreciate the educational value of science; he spent money on chemical apparatus, and tried to interest the boys by simple demonstrations. His educational ideals can best be seen in an essay full of poetical genius, on the education of the reasoning faculties, which he contributed to the "Essays on a Liberal Education," edited in 1867 by F. W. Farrar. Any one who wishes to understand Johnson's point of view, should study this brilliant and beautiful discourse. It is not only wise and liberal, but it is intensely practical, besides containing a number of suggestive and poetical thoughts.

He loved his Eton life more and more every year. As with Eumelus of Corinth, "dear to his heart was the muse that has the simple lyre and the sandals of freedom." He took refuge, as it became clear to him that his wider ambitions could not be realised, that he would not set the mark he might have set upon the age, in a "proud unworldliness," in heightened and intensified emotion. He made many friendships. He taught, as the years went on, as well or better than ever; he took great delight in the society of a few pupils and younger colleagues; but a shadow fell on him; he began to feel his strength unequal to the demands upon it; and he made a sudden resolution to retire from his Eton work.

He had taken some years before, as a house for his holidays, Halsdon, a country place near his native Torrington, which belonged to his brother, Archdeacon Wellington Furse of Westminster, who had changed his name from Johnson to Furse, on succeeding to the property of an uncle. Here he retired, and strove to live an active and philosophical life, fighting bravely with regret, and feeling with sensitive sorrow the turning of the sweet page. He tried, too, to serve and help his simple country neighbours, as indeed he had desired to do even at Eton, by showing them many small, thoughtful, and unobtrusive kindnesses, just as his father had done. But he lived much, like all poetical natures, in tender retrospect; and the ending of the bright days brought with it a heartache that even nature, which he worshipped like a poet, was powerless to console. But he loved his woods and sloping fields, and the clear river passing under its high banks through deep pools. It served to remind him sadly of his beloved Thames, the green banks fringed with comfrey and loosestrife, the drooping willows, the cool smell of the weedy weir; of glad hours of light-hearted enjoyment with his boy-companions, full of blithe gaiety and laughter.

After a few years, he went out to Madeira, where he married a wife much younger than himself, Miss Rosa Caroline Guille, daughter of a Devonshire clergyman; and at Madeira his only son was born, whom he named Andrew, because it was a name never borne by a Pope, or, as he sometimes said, "by a sneak." He devoted himself at this time to the composition of two volumes of a "Guide to Modern English History." But his want of practice in historical writing is here revealed, though it must be borne in mind that it was originally drawn up for the use of a Japanese student. The book is full of acute perceptions, fine judgments, felicitous epigrams--but it is too allusive, too fantastic; neither has it the balance and justice required for so serious and comprehensive a task. At the same time the learning it displays is extraordinary. It was written almost without books of reference, and out of the recollections of a man of genius, who remembered all that he read, and considered reading the newspaper to be one of the first duties of life.

Cory's other writings are few. Two little educational books are worth mentioning: a book of Latin prose exercises, called _Nuces_, the sentences of which are full of recondite allusions, curious humour, and epigrammatic expression; and a slender volume for teaching Latin lyrics, called _Lucretilis_, the exercises being literally translated from the Latin originals which he first composed. _Lucretilis_ is not only, as Munro said, the most Horatian verse ever written since Horace, but full of deep and pathetic poetry. Such a poem as No. xxvii., recording the abandoning of Hercules by the Argonauts, is intensely autobiographical. He speaks, in a parable, of the life of Eton going on without him, and of his faith in her great future:

"sed Argo Vela facit tamen, aureumque

"Vellus petendum est. Tiphys ad hoc tenet Clavum magister; stat Telamon vigil, Stat Castor in prora, paratus Ferre maris salientis ictus."

After some years in Madeira, he came back to England and settled in Hampstead; his later days were clouded with anxieties and illness. But he took great delight in the teaching of Greek to a class of girls, and his attitude of noble resignation, tender dignity, and resolute interest in the growing history of his race and nation is deeply impressive. He died in 1892, on June II, of a heart-complaint to which he had long been subject.

In person William Cory was short and sturdy; he was strong and vigorous; he was like the leader whom Archilochus desired, "one who is compact of frame, showing legs that bend outward, standing firm upon his feet, full of courage." He had a vigorous, massive head, with aquiline nose, and mobile lips. He was extraordinarily near-sighted, and used strong glasses, holding his book close to his eyes. He was accustomed to bewail his limited vision, as hiding from him much natural beauty, much human drama; but he observed more closely than many men of greater clearness of sight, making the most of his limited resources. He depended much upon a hearing which was preternaturally acute and sensitive, and was guided as much by the voice and manner, as by the aspect of those among whom he lived. He had a brisk, peremptory mode of address, full of humorous mannerisms of speech. He spoke and taught crisply and decisively, and uttered fine and feeling thoughts with a telling brevity. He had strong common sense, and much practical judgment.

He was intensely loyal both to institutions and friends, but never spared trenchant and luminous criticisms, and had a keen eye for weakness in any shape. He was formidable in a sense, though truly lovable; he had neither time nor inclination to make enemies, and had a generous perception of nobility of character, and of enthusiasms however dissimilar to his own. He hankered often for the wider world; he would have liked to have a hand in politics, and to have helped to make history. He often desired to play a larger part; but the very stirrings of regret only made him throw himself with intensified energy into the work of his life. He lived habitually on a higher plane than others, among the memories of great events, with a consciousness of high impersonal forces, great issues, big affairs; and yet he held on with both hands to life; he loved all that was tender and beautiful. He never lost himself in ambitious dreams or abstract speculations. He was a psychologist rather than a philosopher, and his interest and zest in life, in the relationships of simple people, the intermingling of personal emotions and happy comradeships, kept him from ever forming cynical or merely spectatorial views of humanity. He would have been far happier, indeed, if he could have practised a greater detachment; but, as it was, he gathered in, like the old warrior, a hundred spears; like Shelley he might have said--

"I fall upon the thorns of life; I bleed."

His is thus a unique personality, in its blending of intense mental energy with almost passionate emotions. Few natures can stand the strain of the excessive development of even a single faculty; and with William Cory the qualities of both heart and head were over-developed. There resulted a want of balance, of moral force; he was impetuous where he should have been calm, impulsive where he should have been discreet. But on the other hand he was possessed of an almost Spartan courage; and through sorrow and suffering, through disappointment and failure, he bore himself with a high and stately tenderness, without a touch of acrimony or peevishness. He never questioned the love or justice of God; he never raged against fate, or railed at circumstance. He gathered up the fragments with a quiet hand; he never betrayed envy or jealousy; he never deplored the fact that he had not realised his own possibilities; he suffered silently, he endured patiently.

And thus he is a deeply pathetic figure, because his great gifts and high qualities never had full scope. He might have been a great jurist, a great lawyer, a great professor, a great writer, a great administrator; and he ended as a man of erratic genius, as a teacher in a restricted sphere, though sowing, generously and prodigally, rich and fruitful seed. With great poetical force of conception, and a style both resonant and suggestive, he left a single essay of high genius, a fantastic historical work, a few books of school exercises. A privately printed volume of Letters and Journals reveals the extraordinary quality of his mind, its delicacy, its beauty, its wistfulness, its charm. There remains but the little volume of verse which is here presented, which stands apart from the poetical literature of the age. We see in these poems a singular and original contribution to the poetry of the century. The verse is in its general characteristics of the school of Tennyson, with its equable progression, its honied epithets, its soft cadences, its gentle melody. But the poems are deeply original, because they, combine a peculiar classical quality, with a frank delight in the spirit of generous boyhood. For all their wealth of idealised sentiment, they never lose sight of the fuller life of the world that waits beyond the threshold of youth, the wider issues, the glory of the battle, the hopes of the patriot, the generous visions of manhood. They are full of the romance of boyish friendships, the echoes of the river and the cricket field, the ingenuous ambitions, the chivalry, the courage of youth and health, the brilliant charm of the opening world. These things are but the prelude to, the presage of, the energies of the larger stage; his young heroes are to learn the lessons of patriotism, of manliness, of activity, of generosity, that they may display them in a wider field. Thus he wrote in "A Retrospect of School Life":--

"Much lost I; something stayed behind, A snatch, maybe, of ancient song. Some breathings of a deathless mind, Some love of truth, some hate of wrong.

And to myself in games I said, 'What mean the books? can I win fame I would be like the faithful dead, A fearless man, and pure of blame.'"

Then, too, there are poems of a sombre yet tender philosophy, of an Epicureanism that is seldom languid, of a Stoicism that is never hard. In this world, where so much is dark, he seems to say, we must all clasp hands and move forwards, shoulder to shoulder, never forgetting the warm companionship in the presence of the blind chaotic forces that wave their shadowy wings about us. We must love what is near and dear, we must be courageous and tender-hearted in the difficult valley. The book is full of the passionate sadness of one who feels alike the intensity and the brevity of life, and who cannot conjecture why fair things must fade as surely as they bloom.

The poems then reflect a kind of Platonic agnosticism; they offer no solution of the formless mystery; but they seem rather to indicate the hope that, in the multiplying of human relationship, in devotion to all we hold dear, in the enkindling of the soul by all that is generous and noble and unselfish, lies the best hope of the individual and of the race. Uncheered by Christian hopefulness, and yet strong in their belief in the ardours and passions of humanity, these poems may help us to remember and love the best of life, its days of sunshine and youth, its generous companionships, its sweet ties of loyalty and love, its brave hopes and ardent impulses, which may be ours, if we are only loving and generous and high-hearted, to the threshold of the dark, and perhaps beyond.

ARTHUR C. BENSON.

DESIDERATO

Oh, lost and unforgotten friend,
Whose presence change and chance deny;
If angels turn your soft proud eye
To lines your cynic playmate penned,

Look on them, as you looked on me,
When both were young; when, as we went
Through crowds or forest ferns, you leant
On him who loved your staff to be;

And slouch your lazy length again
On cushions fit for aching brow
(Yours always ached, you know), and now

As dainty languishing as then,
Give them but one fastidious look,
And if you see a trace of him
Who humoured you in every whim,

Seek for his heart within his book:
For though there be enough to mark
The man's divergence from the boy,
Yet shines my faith without alloy

For him who led me through that park;
And though a stranger throw aside
Such grains of common sentiment,
Yet let your haughty head be bent

To take the jetsom of the tide;
Because this brackish turbid sea
Throws toward thee things that pleased of yore,
And though it wash thy feet no more,

Its murmurs mean: "I yearn for thee."
The world may like, for all I care,
The gentler voice, the cooler head,
That bows a rival to despair,

And cheaply compliments the dead;
That smiles at all that's coarse and rash,
Yet wins the trophies of the fight,
Unscathed, in honour's wreck and crash,

Heartless, but always in the right;.
Thanked for good counsel by the judge
Who tramples on the bleeding brave,
Thanked too by him who will not budge
From claims thrice hallowed by the grave.

Thanked, and self-pleased: ay, let him wear
What to that noble breast was due;
And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare
Go through the homeless world with you.

MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH

You promise heavens free from strife,
Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
But sweet, sweet is this human life,
So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;
Your chilly stars I can forego,
This warm kind world is all I know.

You say there is no substance here,
One great reality above:
Back from that void I shrink in fear,
And child-like hide myself in love:
Show me what angels feel. Till then,
I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires
From faltering lips and fitful veins
To sexless souls, ideal quires,
Unwearied voices, wordless strains:
My mind with fonder welcome owns
One dear dead friend's remembered tones.

Forsooth the present we must give
To that which cannot pass away;
All beauteous things for which we live
By laws of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why
I clasp them, is because they die.

HERACLITUS

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

IOLE

I will not leave the smouldering pyre:
Enough remains to light again:
But who am I to dare desire
A place beside the king of men?

So burnt my dear Ochalian town;
And I an outcast gazed and groaned.
But, when my father's roof fell down,
For all that wrong sweet love atoned.

He led me trembling to the ship,
He seemed at least to love me then;
He soothed, he clasped me lip to lip:
How strange, to wed the king of men.

I linger, orphan, widow, slave,
I lived when sire and brethren died;
Oh, had I shared my mother's grave, .
Or clomb unto the hero's side!

That comrade old hath made his moan;
The centaur cowers within his den:
And I abide to guard alone
The ashes of the king of men.

Alone, beneath the night divine--
Alone, another weeps elsewhere:
Her love for him is unlike mine,
Her wail she will not let me share.

STESICHORUS

Queen of the Argives, (thus the poet spake,)
Great lady Helen, thou hast made me wise;
Veiled is the world, but all the soul awake,
Purged by thine anger, clearer far than eyes.

Peep is the darkness; for my bride is hidden,
Crown of my glory, guerdon of my song:
Preod is the vision; thou art here unbidden,
Mute and reproachful, since I did thee wrong.

Sweetest of wanderers, grievest thou for friends
Tricked by a phantom, cheated to the grave?
Woe worth the God, the mocking God, that sends
Lies to the pious, furies to the brave.

Pardon our falsehood: thou wert far away,
Gathering the lotus down the Egypt-water,
Wifely and duteous, hearing not the fray,
Taking no stain from all those years of slaughter:

Guiltless, yet mournful. Tell the poets truths;
Tell them real beauty leadeth not to strife;
Weep for the slain, those many blooming youths:
Tears such as thine might bring them back to life.

Dear, gentle lady, if the web's unthreaded,
Slander and fable fairly rent in twain,
Then, by the days when thou wert loved and wedded,
Give me, I pray, my bride's glad smile again.

The lord, who leads the Spartan host,
Stands with a little maid,
To greet a stranger from the coast
Who comes to seek his aid.

What brings the guest? a disk of brass
With curious lines engraven:
What mean the lines? stream, road, and pass,
Forest, and town, and haven.

"Lo, here Choaspes' lilied field:
Lo, here the Hermian plain:
What need we save the Doric shield
To stop the Persian's reign?

Or shall barbarians drink their nil
Upon the slopes of Tmolus?
Or trowsered robbers spoil at will
The bounties of Pactolus?

Salt lakes, burnt uplands, lie between;
The distant king moves slow;
He starts, ere Smyrna's vines are green,
Comes, when their juices flow.

Waves bright with morning smoothe thy course,
Swift row the Samian galleys;
Unconquered Colophon sounds to horse
Up the broad eastern valleys.

Is not Apollo's call enough,
The god of every Greek?
Then take our gold, and household stuff;
Claim what thou wilt, but speak."

He falters; for the waves he fears,
The roads he cannot measure;
But rates full high the gleam of spears
And dreams of yellow treasure.

He listens; he is yielding now;
Outspoke the fearless child:

"Oh, father, come away, lest thou
Be by this man beguiled."
Her lowly judgement barred the plea,
So low, it could not reach her.

The man knows more of land and sea,
But she's the truer teacher.
I mind the day, when thou didst cheat
Those rival dames with answer meet;

When, toiling at the loom,
Unblest with bracelet, ring, or chain,
Thou alone didst dare disdain
To toil in tiring-room.

Merely thou saidst: "At set of sun
My humble taskwork will be done;
And through the twilight street
Come back to view my jewels, when
Pattering through the throng of men
Go merry schoolboys' feet."

CAIUS GRACCHUS

They came, and sneered: for thou didst stand!
The web well finished up, one hand
Laid on my yielding shoulder:
The sternest stripling in the land
Grasped the other, boldly scanned
Their faces, and grew bolder:

And said: "Fair ladies, by your leave
I would exhort you spin and weave
Some frugal homely cloth.
I warn you, when I lead the tribes
Law shall strip you; threats nor bribes
Shall blunt the just man's wrath."

How strongly, gravely did he speak!
I shivered, hid my tingling cheek
Behind thy marble face;
And prayed the gods to be like him,
Firm in temper, lithe of limb,
Right worthy of our race.

Oh, mother, didst thou bear me brave?
Or was I weak, till, from the grave
So early hollowed out,
Tiberius sought me yesternight,
Blood upon his mantle white,
A vision clear of doubt?

What can I fear, oh mother, now?
His dead cold hand is on my brow;
Rest thou thereon thy lips:
His voice is in the night-wind's breath,
"Do as I did," still he saith;
With blood his finger drips.

ASTEROPE

Child of the summer cloud, upon thy birth,--
And thou art often born to die again,--
Follow loud groans, that shake the darkening earth,
And break the troublous sleep of guilty men.

Thou leapest from the thinner streams of air
To crags where vapours cling, where ocean frets;
No cave so deep, so cold, but thou art there,
Wrath in thy smile, and beauty in thy threats.

The molten sands beneath thy burning feet
Run, as thou runnest, into tubes of glass;
Old towers and trees, that proudly stood to meet
The whirlwind, let their fair invader pass.

The lone ship warring on the Indian sea
Bursts into splinters at thy sudden stroke;
Siberian mines fired long ago by thee
Still waste in helpless flame and barren smoke.

Such is thy dreadful pastime, Angel-queen,
When swooping headlong from the Armament
Thou spreadest fear along the village green,
Fear of the day when gravestones shall be rent.

And we that fear remember not, that thou,
Slewest the Theban maid, who vainly strove
To rival Juno, when the lover's vow
Was kept in wedlock by unwilling Jove.

And we forget, that when Oileus went
From the wronged virgin and the ruined fane,
When storms were howling round "Repent, Repent,"
Thy holy arrow pierced the spoiler's brain.

To perish all the proud! but chiefly he,
Who at the tramp of steeds and cymbal-beat
Proclaimed, "I thunder! Why not worship me?"
And thou didst slay him for his counterfeit.

A DIRGE

Naiad, hid beneath the bank
By the willowy river-side,
Where Narcissus gently sank,
Where unmarried Echo died,
Unto thy serene repose
Waft the stricken Anteros.

Where the tranquil swan is borne,
Imaged in a watery glass,
Where the sprays of fresh pink thorn
Stoop to catch the boats that pass,
Where the earliest orchis grows,
Bury thou fair Anteros.

Glide we by, with prow and oar:
Ripple shadows off the wave,
And reflected on the shore,
Haply play about the grave.
Folds of summer-light enclose
All that once was Anteros.

On a flickering wave we gaze,
Not upon his answering eyes:
Flower and bird we scarce can praise,
Having lost his sweet replies:
Cold and mute the river flows
With our tears for Anteros.

AN INVOCATION

I never prayed for Dryads, to haunt the woods again;
More welcome were the presence of hungering, thirst-
ing men,
Whose doubts we could unravel, whose hopes we
could fulfil,
Our wisdom tracing backward, the river to the rill;
Were such beloved forerunners one summer day
restored,
Then, then we might discover the Muse's mystic hoard.

Oh dear divine Comatas, I would that thou and I
Beneath this broken sunlight this leisure day might lie;
Where trees from distant forests, whose names were
strange to thee,
Should bend their amorous branches within thy reach
to be,
And flowers thine Hellas knew not, which art hath
made more fair,
Should shed their shining petals upon thy fragrant
hair.

Then thou shouldst calmly listen with ever-changing
looks
To songs of younger minstrels and plots of modern
books,
And wonder at the daring of poets later born,
Whose thoughts are unto thy thoughts as noon-tide is
to morn;
And little shouldst thou grudge them their greater
strength of soul,
Thy partners in the torch-race, though nearer to the
goal.

As when ancestoral portraits look gravely from the walls
Uplift youthful baron who treads their echoing
halls;
And whilst he builds new turrets, the thrice ennobled
heir
Would gladly wake his grandsire his home and feast
to share;
So from AEgean laurels that hide thine ancient urn
I fain would call thee hither, my sweeter lore to learn.

Or in thy cedarn prison thou waitest for the bee:
Ah, leave that simple honey, and take thy food from
me.
My sun is stooping westward. Entranced dreamer,
haste;
There's fruitage in my garden, that I would have thee
taste.
Now lift the lid a moment; now, Dorian shepherd,
speak:
Two minds shall flow together, the English and the
Greek.

ACADEMUS

Perhaps there's neither tear nor smile,
When once beyond the grave.
Woe's me: but let me live meanwhile
Amongst the bright and brave;

My summers lapse away beneath
Their cool Athenian shade:
And I a string for myrtle-wreath,
A whetstone unto blade;

I cheer the games I cannot play;
As stands a crippled squire
To watch his master through the fray,
Uplifted by desire.

I roam, where little pleasures fall,
As morn to morn succeeds,
To melt, or ere the sweetness pall,
Like glittering manna-beads.

The wishes dawning in the eyes,
The softly murmured thanks;
The zeal of those that miss the prize
On clamorous river-banks;

The quenchless hope, the honest choice,
The self-reliant pride,
The music of the pleading voice
That will not be denied;

The wonder flushing in the cheek,
The questions many a score,
When I grow eloquent, and speak
Of England, and of war--

Oh, better than the world of dress
And pompous dining, out,
Better than simpering and finesse
Is all this stir and rout.

I'll borrow life, and not grow old;
And nightingales and trees
Shall keep me, though the veins be cold,
As young as Sophocles.

And when I may no longer live,
They'll say, who know the truth,
He gave whatever he had to give
To freedom and to youth.

PROSPERO

Farewell, my airy pursuivants, farewell.
We part to-day, and I resign
This lonely island, and this rocky cell,
And all that hath been mine.

"Ah, whither go we? Why not follow thee,
Our human king, across the wave,
The man that rescued us from rifted tree,
Bleak marsh, and howling cave."

Oh no. The wand I wielded then is buried,
Broken, and buried in the sand.
Oh no. By mortal hands I must be ferried
Unto the Tuscan strand.

You came to cheer my exile, and to lift
The weight of silence off my lips:
With you I ruled the clouds, and ocean-drift,
Meteors, and wandering ships.

Your fancies glinting on my central mind
Fell off in beams of many hues,
Soft lambent light. Yet, severed from mankind,
Not light, but heat, I lose.

I go, before my heart be chilled. Behold,
The bark that bears me waves her flag,
To chide my loitering. Back to your mountain-hold,
And flee the tyrant hag.

Away. I hear your little voices sinking
Into the wood-notes of the breeze:
I hear you say: "Enough, enough of thinking;
Love lies beyond the seas."

AMATURUS

Somewhere beneath the sun,
These quivering heart-strings prove it,
Somewhere there must be one
Made for this soul, to move it;

Some one that hides her sweetness
From neighbours whom she slights,
Nor can attain completeness,
Nor give her heart its rights;

Some one whom I could court
With no great change of manner,
Still holding reason's fort,
Though waving fancy's banner;

A lady, not so queenly
As to disdain my hand,
Yet born to smile serenely
Like those that rule the land;

Noble, but not too proud;
With soft hair simply folded,
And bright face crescent-browed,
And throat by Muses moulded;

And eyelids lightly falling
On little glistening seas,
Deep-calm, when gales are brawling,
Though stirred by every breeze:

Swift voice, like flight of dove
Through minster arches floating,
With sudden turns, when love
Gets overnear to doting;

Keen lips, that shape soft sayings
Like crystals of the snow,
With pretty half-betrayings
Of things one may not know;

Fair hand, whose touches thrill,
Like golden rod of wonder,
Which Hermes wields at will
Spirit and flesh to sunder;

Light foot, to press the stirrup
In fearlessness and glee,
Or dance, till finches chirrup,
And stars sink to the sea.

Forth, Love, and find this maid,
Wherever she be hidden:
Speak, Love, be not afraid,
But plead as thou art bidden;

And say, that he who taught thee
His yearning want and pain,
Too dearly, dearly bought thee
To part with thee in vain.

MORTEM, QUAE VIOLAT SUAVI A PELLIT AMOR

The plunging rocks, whose ravenous throats
The sea in wrath and mockery fills,
The smoke, that up the valley floats,
The girlhood of the growing hills;

The thunderings from the miners' ledge,
The wild assaults on nature's hoard,
The peak, that stormward bares an edge
Ground sharp in days when Titans warred;

Grim heights, by wandering clouds embraced
Where lightning's ministers conspire,
Grey glens, with tarn and streamlet laced,
Stark forgeries of primeval fire;

These scenes may gladden many a mind
Awhile from homelier thoughts released,
And here my fellow-men may find
A Sabbath and a vision-feast.

I bless them in the good they feel;
And yet I bless them with a sigh:
On me this grandeur stamps the seal
Of tyrannous mortality.

The pitiless mountain stands so sure,
The human breast so weakly heaves;
That brains decay, while rocks endure,
At this the insatiate spirit grieves.

But hither, oh ideal bride!
For whom this heart in silence aches,
Love is unwearied as the tide,
Love is perennial as the lakes;

Come thou. The spiky crags will seem
One harvest of one heavenly year,
And fear of death, like childish dream,
Will pass and flee, when thou art here.

TWO FRAGMENTS OF CHILDHOOD

When these locks were yellow as gold,
When past days were easily told,
Well I knew the voice of the sea,
Once he spake as a friend to me.

Thunder-roarings carelessly heard,
Once that poor little heart they stirred.
Why, oh, why?
Memory, Memory!
She that I wished to be with was by.

Sick was I in those misanthrope days
Of soft caresses, womanly ways;
Once that maid on the stairs I met,
Lip on brow she suddenly set.

Then flushed up my chivalrous blood
Like Swiss streams in a midsummer flood.
Then, oh, then,
Imogen, Imogen!
Hadst thou a lover, whose years were ten.

WAR MUSIC

One hour of my boyhood, one glimpse of the past,
One beam of the dawn ere the heavens were o'ercast.

I came to a castle by royalty's grace,
Forgot I was bashful, and feeble, and base.
For stepping to music I dreamt of a siege,
A vow to my mistress, a fight for my liege.
The first sound of trumpets that fell on mine ear
Set warriors around me and made me their peer.
Meseemed we were arming, the bold for the fair,
In joyous devotion and haughty despair:
The warders were waiting to draw bolt and bar,
The maidens attiring to gaze from afar:

I thought of the sally, but not the retreat,
The cause was so glorious, the dying so sweet.

I live, I am old, I return to the ground:
Blow trumpets, and still I can dream to the sound.

NUBENTI

Though the lark that upward flies
Recks not of the opening skies,
Nor discerneth grey from blue,
Nor the rain-drop from the dew:
Yet the tune which no man taught
So can quicken human thought,
That the startled fancies spring
Faster far than voice or wing.

And the songstress as she floats
Rising on her buoyant notes,
Though she may the while refuse
Homage to the nobler Muse,
Though she cannot truly tell
How her voice hath wrought the spell,
Fills the listener's eyes with tears,
Lifts him to the inner spheres.

Lark, thy morning song is done;
Overhead the silent sun
Bids thee pause. But he that heard
Such a strain must bless the bird.
Lady, thou hast hushed too soon
Sounds that cheered my weary noon;
Let met, warned by marriage bell,
Whisper, Queen of Song, farewell.

WORDS FOR A PORTUGUESE AIR

They're sleeping beneath the roses;
Oh, kiss them before they rise,
And tickle their tiny noses,
And sprinkle the dew on their eyes.
Make haste, make haste;
The fairies are caught;
Make haste.

We'll put them in silver cages,
And send them full-drest to court,
And maids of honour and pages
Shall turn the poor things to sport.
Be quick, be quick;
Be quicker than thought;
Be quick.

Their scarfs shall be pennons for lancers,
We'll tie up our flowers with their curls,
Their plumes will make fans for dancers,
Their tears shall be set with pearls.
Be wise, be wise,
Make the most of the prize;
Be wise.

They'll scatter sweet scents by winking,
With sparks from under their feet;
They'll save us the trouble of thinking,
Their voices will sound so sweet.
Oh stay, oh stay!
They're up and away;
Oh stay!

ADRIENNE AND MAURICE

(Words For The Air Commonly Called "Pestal")

I.

Fly, poor soul, fly on,
No early clouds shall stop thy roaming;
Fly, till day be gone,
Nor fold thy wings before the gloaming.
He thou lov'st will soon be far beyond thy flight,
Other lands to light,
Leaving thee in night.
Let no fear of loss thy heavenly pathway cross;
Better then to lose than now.