CCII. EXPERIENCE. STEADILY burning like a lamp enshrined, The plague of fire and hail, in through the bars Not then for us in Western lands is it, Where every hour brings loads enough for years, Naked on contemplation's mat to sit; But woe to him who finds no time at all For questioning, who sleeps in a festive hall; Who finds no gains in long-remembered tears. WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. CCIII. SEEKING FORGETFULNESS. AND yet I am as one who looks behind, A traveller in a shadowed land astray, Close following, an hundred pairs of eyes Those once I was, which of them now am I? Not one, all alien, long abandoned masks, That in some witches' sabbath long since past, Did dance awhile in my life's panoply, And drank with me from out of the same flasks; Am I not rid of these, not even at last? CCIV. OZYMAN DIAS. I MET a traveller from an antique land GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX. CCV. A CHILL IN SUMMER. I WENT upon a meadow bright with gold His shrunken waters by a city old, Leaving large space of poisonous ooze between The herbage and his waves, which were not clean, And in the air there was a touch of cold. Then my thoughts troubled me, I knew not why; But everything seemed still, and nought at rest. The sun grew dim, the faint wind seemed to sigh, The pale blue seemed to shiver as unblest, White fleecy clouds came scudding up the sky, And turned to ashen darkness in the west. CCVI. BEAUT Y. BEAUTY still walketh on the earth and air: So if we are at all divinely souled, This beauty will unloose our bonds of care. 'Tis pleasant when blue skies are o'er us bending Within old starry-gated Poesy, To meet a soul set to no worldly tune, Like thine, sweet friend! Ah, dearer this to me Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon, Or noble music with a golden ending. |