Short Poems

" No more!" I said to Love. " No more!
I scorn your baby-arts to know!
Not now am I as once of yore;
My brow the Sage's line can show!"
" Farewell!" he laughed. " Farewell! I go!"
And clove the air with fluttering track.
" Farewell!" he cried far off; — but lo!
He sent a Parthian arrow back!

Apollo made, one April day,
A new thing in the rhyming way;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear,
Then M OMUS gave a touch satiric,
And it became a " London Lyric."

Is it to kindest Friend I send
This nosegay gathered new?
Or is it more to Critic sure, —
To Singer clear and true?
I know not which, indeed, nor need;
All Three I found — in You.

In the duo of Love
There is little libretto;
There are few rhymes but " dove"
In the duo of Love;
Yet we prize it above
All our Epic falsetto; —
In the duo of Love
There is little libretto.

To Heaven's high peace let him depart,
And with him go the minstrel art.

Nautarum jussu se praecipitavit Arion
In mare cantator funeris ipse sui:
Delapsum recipit gelidis amplexibus aequor,
Fatorumque ferax undaque et unda tumet.
Sed Delphinus adest, — sed adest secumque salutem
Attulit et vati et squamea terga dedit
O hominum feritas! O mollia corda ferarum,

Here, after sailing far, I, Madoc, lie,
Of Owain Gwynedd lawful progeny:
The verdant land had little charms for me;
From earliest youth I loved the dark-blue sea.
God in his head the Muse instill'd,
And from his head the world he fill'd.

Gone, gone are thy gates, Dinas Bran on the height!
Thy warders are blood-crows and ravens, I trow;
Now no one will wend from the field of the fight
To the fortress on high, save the raven and crow.

Chester ale, Chester ale! I could ne'er get it down,
'Tis made of ground-ivy, of dirt, and of bran,
'Tis as thick as a river below a huge town!
'Tis not lap for a dog, far less drink for a man.

Death somehow doth not seem to be a thing
To me of terror and of shuddering,
But just a gateway opening upon
New fields, new scenes, and new ideas anon —
Or if 'tis not, who holds it blessing cheap
To lie at rest in peaceful, dreamless, sleep?