passing Christmas merriment.
Yet through it all, one constant note
Chimes with the season's higher sense,
Love's influence unchanged remains,
Fragrant and sweet as frankincense.

Duty

What is a year that comes and goes
Unless it mark a noble deed?
We sow the seed
Of flower or weed:
Thrice happy he who leaves a rose.

What is a life in vainness spent,
That will not bear the common test,
When, laid to rest
In earth's cold breast,
We sleep at last, insentient?

What is a gift bestowed on man,
Unless he spreads abroad its light
And turns its might
To aid the right
And strives to do the best he can?

What matters it if all your toil
Thankless for ever must remain?
When by your pain
One soul will gain
Somewhat to calm its mortal coil.

Sonnets

Glastonbury

Beacon of Christian truth! across the years
Thy flame undying glows in Faith's clear sight,
As once the Holy Grail's effulgence bright
Shone on the pure in heart, the Saints' compeers,
Who knew no more life's bitterness and fears
But dwelt thenceforth upon a nobler height,
Rapt in the radiance of Redemption's light
That still to the elect of God appears.
Each Christmas sees, before thy ancient shrine,
Its sacred thorn burst into glorious flower,
Of Heaven's immortal life a constant sign,
Shown to mankind in graciousness benign,
To make eternal with enlightening power
The revelation of a truth divine.

Galileo

The medieval pomp and civic pride
Which once made Pisa famous, long have lain
Forgotten with her pageants brief and vain
That flashed inconstant on the Arno's tide.
But, toned to softened hues, her walls abide,
Enclosing baptistery, tower, and fane
Wherein yet swings the lamp with brazen chain
That marked the pendulum's time-measured stride
And though the centuries, in lengthening roll,
Show ever fainter through perspective time
The fame depicted in the mouldering scroll,
They cannot dim the shining aureole
Around Galileo's name. Each hourly chime
Proclaims the law that swung the girandole.

Stratford-on-Avon

The hushed repose of some fair temple's shade
Falls on the pilgrim when he treads the ways
Where first the world to Shakespeare's childish gaze
Disclosed its wonders when his footsteps strayed;
Where, fired with love, he roamed the forest glade,
Storing clear memories for other days;
And where, at last, acclaimed and crowned with bays,
He dropped the lyre no other hand has played.
Fame watches o'er the deathless poet's sleep,
Her fanfares echoing still their wild applause,
While sweet Melpomene and Thalia weep,
For theirs no more the grandest flight that soars,
But lower planes where smaller spirits sweep,
Whose whispers sound like waves on distant shores.

To a Daffodil

Bright messenger of life renewed and love,
Joy fills thy golden chalice to the brim,
Fit symbol of the sacred seraphim
Who with their blazing phalanx headlong drove
The Star of Morning from his seat above,
Scattering celestial sparks through voidness dim,
To fall upon our planet's curving rim
And bloom as thy fair flowers in mead and grove.
As victory's anthem stirred the heavenly choir,
Awaking rapture in triumphant praise,
So thou in spring dost mortal souls inspire
With new-born hope and consecrated fire,
Reflected glory from ethereal rays,
To make divine the human heart's desire.

The Appian Way

Road of the dead! whose stately avenue
Of ruined tombs reveals the glorious past,
When proud patrician chariots rolling fast
And litters borne by slaves of ebon hue
Breasted the throng that ever thicker grew
And onward hurried where the portal vast
Showed praetor, tribune and plebeian massed
With traders from afar beyond the blue.
Road of the dead! thy voices haunted me,
Once as I lingered on a starlit night,
Seeing thy restless ghosts in fantasy:
And Peter paused again in act to flee:
With downcast eyes and pale with sudden fright,
Then whispered low: "Quo vadis Domine?"

Note.—Tradition has it that Peter in a moment of weakness fled to escape martyrdom, but was turned back by a vision of his Master. The little church of Quo vadis Domine on the Appian Way commemorates this.

From the Fields

The village chime drifts on the summer breeze,
In softened cadence o'er expanses green,
Across the river, winding slow between
Broad fields of clover where marauding bees
Lighten their toil with murmured harmonies,
Whilst corn in rolling waves of verdant sheen
Lends rhythmic movement to the rural scene
And sighs responsive to the wind-stirred trees.
The mingled voices, like a poet's rhyme,
Link with their music pensiveness and joy:
Yet each has meaning in its wayward time:
The wind of freedom sings in every clime,
The bee, that labour's sweetness cannot cloy,
And life is measured by the warning chime.

Vénus de Milo

Immortal beauty, touched by fire divine
That glows as in thy pristine days, I see
The white-robed priests and virgins joyfully
Bearing their gifts of honey, flowers and wine,
With sounding reed and timbrel, to thy shrine,
Whilst thou, impassive, waitest the decree
Of heaven, to speak with cold solemnity
That which unfolds a deity's design.
Gone are the gods and heroes of the past
To shine in distant stars with pallid gleam,
Subdued and faint beyond the darkness vast,
Their power forgot, their glory overcast;
Yet thou remainest in thy grace supreme
And fadeless splendour that was ne'er surpassed.

Fire

To man primeval, the bright god of day
Seemed lord of all things, and he bent the knee,
To adoration moved unconsciously;
And lo! the instinct which had made him pray,
Showed him the mystic fire that latent lay
Within the drying branches of the tree
And brought the earth, in all its purity,
The essence of the sun's benignant ray.
Of Nature's elements the most refined,
Free from pollution and corruption dire,
Art thou, O strong and changeless spirit kind.
Unfailing source of good, thou wast designed
To be the first, man's reverence to inspire,
And light the pathway of his groping mind.

FINIS