No More Learning

once again
The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell:
Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
These helpless hands. ' She spoke, and suddenly,
Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him,
Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
Hell's boatman lists he pass the watery bar.

JAMES RHOADES


_119 a_

ONCE a slender silvan reed
Answered all my shepherd's need;
Once to farmer lads I told
All the lore of field and fold:
Well they liked me, for the soil
Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.
Ah! who am I, 'mid war's alarms,
To 'sing the hero and his arms'?

H. W. G.


_121_

I give first the version of Conington--an excellent specimen of his
skill and its limitations; and I add Pope's imitation--a piece as
graceful as anything he wrote:

THINK not those strains can e'er expire,
Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar
Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre
I sing with arts unknown before.
Though Homer fill the foremost throne,
Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,
And fierce Alcaeus holds his own
With Pindar and Simonides.
The songs of Teos are not mute,
And Sappho's love is breathing still:
She told her secret to the lute,
And still its chords with passion thrill.
Not Sparta's queen alone was fired
By broidered robe and braided tress,
And all the splendours that attired
Her lover's guilty loveliness:
Not only Teucer to the field
His arrows brought, not Ilion
Beneath a single conqueror reeled:
Not Crete's majestic lord alone,
Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown:
Not Hector first for child and wife,
Or brave Deiphobus, laid down
The burden of a manly life.
Before Atrides men were brave,
But ah!
oblivion dark and long
Has locked them in a tearless grave,
For lack of consecrating song.
'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,
What difference? _You_ shall ne'er be dumb,
While strains of mine have voice and breath:
The dull neglect of days to come
Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours
Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
When Fortune smiles and when she lowers:
To greed and rapine still severe,
Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
A consul not of one brief year,
But oft as on the judgement-seat
You bend the expedient to the right,
Turn haughty eyes from bribes array,
Or bear your banners through the fight,
Scattering the foeman's firm array.
The lord of countless revenues
Salute not him as happy: no,
Call him the happy who can use
The bounty that the gods bestow,
Can bear the load of poverty,
And tremble not at death, but sin:
No recreant he when called to die
In cause of country or of kin.

J. CONINGTON.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of Truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay--

Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Caesar was, or Newton, named;
Those raised new empires o'er the earth,
And these new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.

POPE.


_124_

ANGEL of Love, high-thronëd in Cnidos,
Regent of Paphos, no more repine:
Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us
Visit our soberly censëd shrine.

Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,
Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste
The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,
And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.

H. W.