University of Virginia Library

FOUR POETS.

1. DANTE.

DANTE, old dreamer, born a son of solitude
Thou wast; among thy kind thy spirit found no mate
Nor ever cared to call a truce with tyrant Fate.
Though, like the forest king, thine hours of milder mood
Thou hadst, thou wast, as he, a hermit stern and rude
Nor mightst, for vantage sake, thy thought dissimulate.
Unmeasured in thy love, relentless in thy hate,
Foredoomed thou wast to dwell and die in strangerhood.
Even as the Bedouin, born a wanderer of the waste,
If aught with men thou hadst to mell, 'twas but by chance.
Earth, Hell and Heaven thou knew'st, yet everywhere misplaced,
Save in thy dream, thou wast, and in the loveless lands
Of solitary thought. There only, thy stern glance
Tells us, at home thou wast, in Exile's sterile sands.

2. HEINRICH HEINE.

A KNIGHT himself he of the Holy Ghost
Styled; on his helm the dove, the Spirit's bird,
Sat, so he deemed, and ordered all his word.
Natheless, mistaken was he in his boast.
No Jew was ever of that haughty host
Counted: no Jew was ever, from the herd
That for thought's sake might sever or preferred
The costlier Less unto the coarser Most.
A higher rank and title yet he wore
And holier than this of his belief.
Nay, he a knight was of the Bleeding Heart;
For passion held in him the highest part
And on his breast for cognisance he bore
The blazon of the soul afire with grief.

3. LECONTE DE LISLE.

THE Arab, following where his camel strays,
Whiles on some nameless oasis, that lies
Deep in the Lybian deserts, island-wise,
Chancing at eve, stands stricken with amaze;
For there, high-reared against the Western rays,
Under the pearl and gold and emerald skies,
Facing the sunset with unfaltering eyes,
A vast majestic figure sits at gaze.
Over the known worlds and the worlds unknown,
Outstraining to the lands beyond the light,
Still with rapt eyes it scans the sunset-bars;
And on the Bedouin passes with the night,
Leaving the eternal statue to its lone
Eternal dream beneath the eternal stars.

4. WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.

(ob. July 11, 1903.)

A FIGHTER ever, mid the bullets' hum
Foremost and fiercest in the battle's press;
In love still strenuous and in hate no less;
Men shall his whims, his mettle humoursome,
Born of perfervidum ingenium,
Condone, which over often very stress
Caused him confound with song the effortless
And take for trumpet-thunder dub of drum;
His phrase that would have made Quintilian frown,
His slaughter of the written word, with noun
Confusing adjective, as “naught” with “nought;”
For that pretence and shams he still abhorred,
Still in the darkling days for England fought
And sang the song of justice and the Sword.