A FOREST WALK A LOVELY Sky, a cloudless sun, A wind that breathes of leaves and flowers, O'er hill, through dale, my steps have run To the cool forest's shadowy One of the paths all round that wind, bowers; Traced by the browsing herds, I choose, And sights and sounds of human kind In Nature's lone recesses lose: The beech displays its marbled bark, The spruce its green tent stretches wide, While scowls the hemlock grim and dark, The maple's scalloped dome beside. All weave on high a verdant roof That keeps the very sun aloof. Making a twilight soft and green Within the columned, vaulted scene. Sweet forest-odors have their birth From the clothed boughs and teeming earth; Where pine-cones dropped, leaves piled and dead Long tufts of grass, and stars of fern, With many a wild flower's fairy inn, A thick, elastic carpet spread: Here, with its mossy pall, the trunk, Resolving into soil, is sunk; There, wrenched but lately from its throne By some fierce whirlwind circling past, Its huge roots massed with earth and stone, One of the woodland kings is cast. As though to hoard it for the haunt- Its The moonlight calls to this, their Of fluted wreath, beaded beneath with drops richest brown; the wild-rose spreads its breast Of delicate pink, and the o'erhanging fir Has dropped its dark, long cone. SIR JOHN SUCKLING. CONSTANCY. OUT upon it! I have loved Time shall moult away his wings, Ere he shall discover In the whole wide world again, But the spite on't is, no praise Is due at all to me; Love with me had made no stays, Had it any been but she And that very face, There had been at least, ere this, Quit, quit for shame, this will not move, This cannot take her; If of herself she will not love, I PRITHEE SEND ME BACK MY I PRITHEE send me back my heart, Yet now I think on't, let it lie, To find it were in vain; WHY SO PALE AND WAN, FOND Why should two hearts in one breast LOVER? WHY SO pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move Looking ill prevail? Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Will, when speaking well can't win lie, And yet not lodge together? ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. IN MEMORY OF BARRY CORNWALL. IN the garden of death, where the singers whose names are deathless, One with another make music unheard of men, Where the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long breathless, And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or change again, Who comes now crowned with the blossom of snow-white years? What music is this that the world of the dead men hears? Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey, Whose name in our ears and our fathers' ears was sweet, Blest for the years' sweet sake that were filled and brightened, As a forest with birds, with the fruit and the flower of his song; For the souls' sake blest that heard, and their cares were lightened, For the hearts' sake blest that have fostered his name so long; By the living and dead lips blest that have loved his name, And clothed with their praise and crowned with their love for fame. Ah, fair and fragrant his fame as flowers that close not, That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by night, As a thought in the heart shall increase when the heart's self knows not, The same year calls, and one goes hence with another, FROM "A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER." As sweet desire of day before the day, As dreams of love before the true love born, The ghost arisen of May before the May * Sydney Dobell died the same year. |