joy

THE TURN
Brave infant of Saguntum, clear
Thy coming forth in that great year,
When the prodigious Hannibal did crown
His rage with razing your immortal town.
Thou looking then about,
Ere thou wert half got out,
Wise child, didst hastily return,
And mad'st thy mother's womb thine urn.
How summ'd a circle didst thou leave mankind
Of deepest lore, could we the centre find!

THE COUNTER-TURN

Did wiser nature draw thee back,

Wise men I hold those rakes of old
Who, as we read in antique story,
When lyres were struck and wine was poured,
Set the white Death's Head on the board-
Memento mori.

Love well! love truly! and love fast!
True love evades the dilatory.
Life's bloom flares like a meteor past;
A joy so dazzling cannot last
Memento mori.

Stop not to pluck the leaves of bay
That greenly deck the path of glory,
The wreath will wither if you stay,
So pass along your earnest way
Memento mori.

Nature feels the touch of noon;
   Not a rustle stirs the grass;
Not a shadow flecks the sky,
Save the brown hawk hovering nigh;
   Not a ripple dims the glass
   Of the wide lagoon.

Darkly, like an armed host
   Seen afar against the blue,
Rise the hills, and yellow-grey
Sleeps the plain in cove and bay,
   Like a shining sea that dreams
   Round a silent coast.

From the heart of these blue hills,
   Like the joy that flows from peace,
Creeps the river far below

to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that noble pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison

IT is not growing like a tree
   In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
   A lily of a day
   Is fairer far in May,
   Although it fall and die that night;
   It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

   Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,

A PAIR of lovers in the street!
I dare not mock: with reverence meet
My unforgetting heart I cheat.

Ah, God, spare me—so soon again
At the barred door to beat in vain,
And find their dalliance such fierce pain!

I, yearning up from Hell’s abyss,
See, dreaming through their worlds of bliss,
This Dante and his Beatrice!

For these the distant goal have won
For which God made the plasm and sun;
His patient labouring is done.

By the blue taper's trembling light,
No more I waste the wakeful night,
Intent with endless view to pore
The schoolmen and the sages o'er:
Their books from wisdom widely stray,
Or point at best the longest way.
I'll seek a readier path, and go
Where wisdom's surely taught below.

How deep yon azure dyes the sky!
Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,
While through their ranks in silver pride
The nether crescent seems to glide!
The slumb'ring breeze forgets to breathe,
The lake is smooth and clear beneath,

A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices
Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile,
Spreads its curious opinion
To a million merciful and sneering men,
While families cuddle the joys of the fireside
When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.
A newspaper is a court
Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried
By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market
Where wisdom sells its freedom
And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game
Where his error scores the player victory

Into her presence he gaily pranced,
A very fat spark, and a bit advanced.
With a Samson tread on the earth he trod,
He was stayed and gaitered, and fifty odd.

And she was a tulip just unfurled,
The sweetest thing in the motor world.

Her body was one of which poets dreamed;
Eighteen -- twenty, or so she seemed.

Her air was haughty, her spirit proud,
But properly governed, as all allowed.

"Pity," he said, "my sad condition;
My heart's in a state of advanced ignition.

My babe! my tiny babe! my only babe!
My single rose-bud in a crown of thorns!
My lamp that in that narrow hut of life,
Whence I looked forth upon a night of storm!
Burned with the lustre of the moon and stars!

My babe! my tiny babe! my only babe!
Behold the bud is gone! the thorns remain!
My lamp hath fallen from its niche -- ah, me!
Earth drinks the fragrant flame, and I am left
Forever and forever in the dark!

My babe! my babe! my own and only babe!
Where art thou now? If somewhere in the sky

"What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"


Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world),
Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand,
(Ah, Tom! ah, Tom! that was a sorry turn!)