University of Virginia Library

SONNETS AND EPIGRAMS.

AULETES: AN EPITAPH.

Stranger, I was a piper, and have blown
Fierce music in the faces of the foe;
Now underneath the marshes I lie low,
Here, where his thickest harvest Death hath mown.
The cane brakes in the waning of the moon
Murmur about me, quivering to and fro;
Louder the rattling through the ranks did go
Of the long spears that on the earth were strewn.
Not of a head averted and down looks
Was I, as to the feasts that morning chases,
Those who invite beneath the Egyptian star;
Their art the serpent from his coil unlaces,
But like the wind over the mountain brooks
Mine poured the exulting melodies of war.

CHAUCER.

When I remember how nor separate chance,
Nor restless traffic peopling many a shore,
Nor old tradition with innumerous lore,
But poets wrought our best inheritance;
Sweet words and noble; in their gai science
That England heard, and then for evermore
Loved as her own, and did with deeds adore;
I bless thee with a kindred heart, Provence:
For to thy tales, like waves that come and go,
Sat Chaucer listening with exulting ear;
And casting his own phrase in giant mould:
That still had charms for sorrow's gentlest tear,
Telling the story of Griselda's woe,
“Under the roots of Vesulus the cold.”

TO A FRIEND.

Dear Pollington, from those far eastern climes,
Over whose border I was hovering,
Once, as an eagle, whose uncertain wing
Turns backward from the Danube, and sublimes
His flight into a vision, scenes and times
Of travel-quickened thought to ours you bring;
Leading us by the Terek's Lesghian spring;
I, nothing in return can give, but rhymes.
But yet in these, o'erpassing time and tide,
Your name to Casbeck's spirit I commend;
To write it as a stream on his gaunt side,
Whose joyous southern windings may descend
To Teflis, or that sea by which abide,
Rivalling his, the shades of Demavend.

THE CRUCIFIX.

Caviller and captious, and too dull of soul
Inner or outer things to comprehend;
Whom that small wooden crucifix doth offend;
And water in its pine or beechen bowl;
By which, when bells for Ave Mary toll,
The peasant on these hills doth lowly bend;
Praying good angels will his house defend;
While o'er his sleeping head the planets roll.
Why railest at such ordinance? for thus
Did Augustine, and venerable Bede,
And saints whose names above doth Peter know.
Alien it may seem, so Time hath willed, to us;
But, when the emblem ye abjure, take heed,
Lest ye forget the inner meaning so.

ON AN INSCRIBED MONUMENT CONSISTING OF THE FIGURES OF HOPE AND CONTEMPLATION.

Yes, it is fit Carrara's snow white stone
With imaged thought should rise above the dead;
Or softly bow with pale ideal head,
Like cherished sorrow into beauty grown:
These are the forms that joy can look upon,
And then beyond them, like an angel sped;
Lovest thou rather the material bed
Of earthy death—or else—oblivion?
These was no death for that rejoicing spirit,
There should be no oblivion, gaze, so may
Noble and pure perchance thine own become:
Of one in heaven, who on the earth was near it,
The record this; but nothing doth it say;
For Hope and Contemplation both are dumb.