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The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.)

Selected and revised by the author. Copyright edition. In two volumes
Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (1831-1891)

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VOL. I.
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VOL. II.
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POEMS CLASSICAL, HISTORICAL, AND CHARACTERISTIC.
  
THE IDEAL WORLD.
  
KING SOLOMON AND THE MOUSE.
  
THE DEATH OF KING HACON.
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SIDE BY SIDE.
 I. 
I. (FRIEND AND FRIEND.)
 II. 
II. (MAN AND WIFE.)

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HOW THESE SONGS WERE MADE.

I

I sat low down, at midnight, in a vale
Mysterious with the silence of blue pines:
White-cloven by a snaky river-tail,
Uncoil'd from tangled wefts of silver twines.

II

Out of a crumbling castle, on a spike
Of splinter'd rock, a mile of changeless shade
Gorged half the landscape. Down a dismal dyke
Of black hills the sluiced moonbeams stream'd, and staid.

III

I pluck'd blue mugwort, livid mandrakes, balls
Of blossom'd nightshade, heads of hemlock, long
White grasses, grown by mountain pedestals,
To make ingredients fit, for many a song
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IV

Of fragrant sadness,—to embalm the Past—
The corpse-cold Past—that it should not decay;
But in dark vaults of Memory, to the last,
Endure unchanged: for in some future day

V

I will bring my new love to look at it
(Laying aside her gay robes for a moment)
That, seeing what love came to, she may sit
Silent awhile, and muse, but make no comment.
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