would behold
Yet purer peaks, touched with unearthlier fire,
In sudden prospect virginally new;
But on the lone last height he sighs: "'Tis cold,
      And clouds shut out the view."

Ah, doom of mortals! Vexed with phantoms old,
Old phantoms that waylay us and pursue,—
Weary of dreams,—we think to see unfold
The eternal landscape of the Real and True;
And on our Pisgah can but write: "'Tis cold,
      And clouds shut out the view."

TO LORD TENNYSON

(WITH A VOLUME OF VERSE)

Master and mage, our prince of song, whom Time,
  In this your autumn mellow and serene,
  Crowns ever with fresh laurels, nor less green
Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime;
Heir of the riches of the whole world's rhyme,
  Dow'r'd with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien,
  With Arno's depth and Avon's golden sheen;
Singer to whom the singing ages climb,
Convergent;—if the youngest of the choir
  May snatch a flying splendour from your name
Making his page illustrious, and aspire
  For one rich moment your regard to claim,
Suffer him at your feet to lay his lyre
  And touch the skirts and fringes of your fame.

SKETCH OF A POLITICAL CHARACTER

(1885)

  There is a race of men, who master life,
Their victory being inversely as their strife;
Who capture by refraining from pursuit;
Shake not the bough, yet load their hands with fruit;
The earth's high places who attain to fill,
By most indomitably sitting still.
While others, full upon the fortress hurled,
Lay fiery siege to the embattled world,
Of such rude arts their natures feel no need;
Greatly inert, they lazily succeed;
Find in the golden mean their proper bliss,
And doing nothing, never do amiss;
But lapt in men's good graces live, and die
By all regretted, nobody knows why.

  Cast in this fortunate Olympian mould,
The admirable * * * * behold;
Whom naught could dazzle or mislead, unless
'Twere the wild light of fatal cautiousness;
Who never takes a step from his own door
But he looks backward ere he looks before.
When once he starts, it were too much to say
He visibly gets farther on his way:
But all allow, he ponders well his course—
For future uses hoarding present force.
The flippant deem him slow and saturnine,
The summed-up phlegm of that illustrious line;
But we, his honest adversaries, who
More highly prize him than his false friends do,
Frankly admire that simple mass and weight—
A solid Roman pillar of the State,
So inharmonious with the baser style
Of neighbouring columns grafted on the pile,
So proud and imperturbable and chill,
Chosen and matched so excellently ill,
He seems a monument of pensive grace,
Ah, how pathetically out of place!

  Would that some call he could not choose but heed—
Of private passion or of public need—
At last might sting to life that slothful power,
And snare him into greatness for an hour!

ART MAXIMS

Often ornateness
Goes with greatness;
Oftener felicity
Comes of simplicity.

Talent that's cheapest
Affects singularity.
Thoughts that dive deepest
Rise radiant in clarity.

Life is rough:
Sing smoothly, O Bard.
Enough, enough,
To have found life hard.

No record Art keeps
Of her travail and throes.
There is toil on the steeps,—
On the summits, repose.

THE GLIMPSE

Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track,
  Put my ignobler dreams to sudden shame,
Went your bright way, and left me to fall back
  On my own world of poorer deed and aim;

To fall back on my meaner world, and feel
  Like one who, dwelling 'mid some, smoke-dimmed town,—
In a brief pause of labour's sullen wheel,—
  'Scaped from the street's dead dust and factory's frown,—

In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll,
  Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky:
Then journeyed home, to carry in his soul
  The torment of the difference till he die.

THE BALLAD OF THE "BRITAIN'S PRIDE"

It was a skipper of Lowestoft
  That trawled the northern sea,
In a smack of thrice ten tons and seven,
  And the Britain's Pride was she.
And the waves were high to windward,
  And the waves were high to lee,
And he said as he lost his trawl-net,
  "What is to be, will be."

His craft she reeled and staggered,
  But he headed her for the hithe,
In a storm that threatened to mow her down
  As grass is mown by the scythe;
When suddenly through the cloud-rift
  The moon came sailing soft,
And he saw one mast of a sunken ship
  Like a dead arm held aloft.

And a voice came faint from the rigging—
  "Help! help!" it whispered and sighed—
And a single form to the sole mast clung,
  In the roaring darkness wide.
Oh the crew were but four hands all told,
  On board of the Britain's Pride,
And ever "Hold on till daybreak!"
  Across the night they cried.

Slowly melted the darkness,
  Slowly rose the sun,
And only the lad in the rigging
  Was left, out of thirty-one,
To tell the tale of his captain,
  The English sailor true,
That did his duty and met his death
  As English sailors do.

Peace to the gallant spirit,
  The greatly proved and tried,
And to all who have fed the hungry sea
  That is still unsatisfied;
And honour and glory for ever,
  While rolls the unresting tide,
To the skipper of little Lowestoft,
  And the crew of the Britain's Pride.

LINES

(WITH A VOLUME OF THE AUTHOR'S POEMS SENT TO M.R.C.)

Go, Verse, nor let the grass of tarrying grow
Beneath thy feet iambic. Southward go
O'er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until
Thou reach the summit of a suburb hill
To lettered fame not unfamiliar: there
Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair,
Who dwelleth in a world of old romance,
Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce.
Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago,
By northern stream and mountain, and where blow
Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day
One half thy fabric fain would rase away;
But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse,
Forgive thy better and forget thy worse.
Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among
More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;—
In Shakespeare's shadow thou shalt find a home,
Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome,
Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be,
Or won by Goethe's regal suavity,
Or with those masters hardly less adored
Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford;
And—like a mortal rapt from men's abodes
Into some skyey fastness of the gods—
Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine
Mayst for a moment dream thyself divine.

THE RAVEN'S