The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) ::

Come! breathe thou soft, or blow thou bold,
Thy coming be it kind or cold,
Thou soul of the heedless ocean wind,—
Little I rede, and little I reck,
Tho' the mast be snapp'd, and the dripping deck
Swept bare of whatever the billow can find,
If only thou wilt but blow from me,
And bury in yonder boiling sea,
This weight on my heart and mind!—

Welcome, you blasts that round me roar!
Welcome you hissing heaps of wave,
Whose heavy heads and shoulders hoar
Are now a mountain, and now a cave,
And now a foam-fleckt slumbrous floor
Of seething scum! True hearts, and brave,
Courage! The broad sea darkens before,
And the black storm follows us fast behind.
The day is dead in his dismal grave.
His dirge is chaunted by wave and wind.
We are rid at last of the hated shore,
Out of the reach of coward and slave,
And free of all bonds that bind.

136

Comrades, the night is long.
I will sing you an ancient song
Of a tale that was told
In the days of old,
Of a Baron brave and strong,
‘Who left his castled home,
When the cross was raised in Rome,
And swore on his sword
To fight for the Lord,
And the banners of Christendom.
To die or to overcome!
In hauberk of mail, and helmet of steel,
And armour of proof from head to heel,
Oh, where the foe that shall make him reel?
True knight on whose crest the cross doth shine!
They buckled his harness, brought him his steed—
A stallion black of the land's best breed—
Belted his spurs, and bade him God-speed
'Mid the Paynim in Palestine.
But the wife that he loved, when she pour'd him up
A last deep health in her golden cup,
Put poison into the wine.

‘So he rode till the land he loved grew dim,
And that poison began to work in him,—
Blithely chaunting his battle hymn;
And proudly tossing his noble crest;
Glad of the deeds to be done in the east,
And glad of the glory he goeth to win:
With his young wife's pictured beauty prest
To its treasured place on his harness'd breast,
And her poison'd wine within.

137

‘Alas! poor knight, poor knight!
For he carries the foe he cannot fight
In his own true breast shut up.
He hath pledged his life
To a faithless wife,
In the wine of a poison'd cup!’

Comrade, thy hand in mine!
While all is dark on the brine,
Pour me, no stinted flow
Of that fullhearted wine
Whose purple grape was aglow,
Ere my sire was born, or thine,
With a thousand fancies fine.
My friend, I care not now
If the wild night-wind should blow
Our bark beyond the poles:—
To drift thro' fire or snow,
Out of reach of all we know—
Cold heart, and narrow brow,
Smooth faces, sordid souls!
Lost, like some pale crew
Of Ophir's trading galleys,
On a witch's island! who
Wander the tamarisk alleys,
Where the heaven is blue,
And the soft sea too,
That murmurs among the valleys.

‘Perisht with all on board!’
So runs the vagrant fame—
Thy wife weds another lord,
My kinsmen forget my name,

138

While we wander out of sight,
Till the beard on the chin is white,
And scant are the curls on the head.
One dreams on poppy flowers,
Strewn for the bridal bed
Of some young witch: with showers
Of milkwhite manna, shed
Thro' dim enchanted bowers,
His drowsy lips are fed.
With ruin'd gods one dwells,
In caverns among the fells,
Where the lion and lynx lie dead,
And a single shadow tells
The reason why,—outspread
By the upas, dark and dread,
O'er the horrible silence of sultry dells
In Elephanta, the Red.

University of Virginia Library

ON THE SEA.