But the graveyard lies between, Mary, And my step might break your rest— For I've laid you, darling! down to sleep, With your baby on your breast. I'm very lonely now, Mary, For the poor make no new friends, Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary, When the trust in God had left my soul, I thank you for the patient smile I bless you for the pleasant word, I'm biddin' you a long farewell, They say there's bread and work for all, But I'll not forget old Ireland, Were it fifty times as fair! 575 576 And often in those grand old woods And the springin' corn, and the bright May morn, CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER [1808-1879] LETTY'S GLOBE WHEN Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, She patted all the world; old empires peep'd Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd, And while she hid all England with a kiss, SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON [1810-1886] THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND From the Irish A PLENTEOUS place is Ireland for hospitable cheer, Uileacan dubh O! Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley ear; Uileacan dubh O! There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand, And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fann'd, There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i' the yellow sand, On the fair hills of holy Ireland. Curl'd he is and ringleted, and plaited to the knee- Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea; And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand, For the fair hills of holy Ireland. Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground, The butter and the cream do wondrously abound; The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand, On the fair hills of holy Ireland. 577 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan, With the dragon-fly on the river. He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, High on the shore sat the great god Pan, 'And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river!), Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notch'd the poor dry empty thing In holes, as he sat by the river. 'This is the way,' laugh'd the great god Pan (Laugh'd while he sat by the river), 'The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed.' Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and painFor the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds of the river. 578 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE I I THOUGHT Once how Theocritus had sung "Guess now who holds thee?"—" Death," I said. But, there, The silver answer rang,-" Not Death, but Love." BUT only three in all God's universe Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce My sight from seeing thee,-that if I had died, The deathweights, placed there, would have signified Less absolute exclusion. "Nay" is worse From God than from all others, O my friend! UNLIKE are we, unlike, O princely Heart! |