III. And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Stock or stone Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe Long ago; Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame And that glory and that shame alike, the gold IV. Now, the single little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed the games. V. And I know-while thus the quiet-coloured eve To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught sol For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come. VI. But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then, All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each. VII. In one year they sent a million fighters forth And they built their gous a brazen pillar high As the sky, Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force Gold, of course. Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! The supreme value of love is a constantly recurring thought in the poems of our author. We shall meet it in its higher ranges in selections to come. Here we are still in the sphere of the mere earthly affection, with only the suggestion, in contrast with the transitoriness of earthly glory, of its indestructibility. No explanation seems needed, excepting perhaps to call attention to this, that the "little turret" in stanza 4 is not a bartizan, but a staircase turret, or it could not " mark the basement, whence a tower in ancient time sprang sublime." Observe, in each stanza, the striking contrast between the former and the latter half, so balanced that the poem might be divided into fourteen single or six double stanzas. There is not much of the descriptive in the poems of our author; he is the poet, not of Nature, but of Human Nature; but when he does touch landscape, as here, it is with the hand of a master. ALL that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw MY STAR. (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled : They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. The following sentence, from Walter Besant, in "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," well expresses the key-thought of this little gem of a poem: “So great is the beauty of human nature, even in its second rate or third rate productions, that love generally follows when one of the two, by confession or unconscious self-betrayal, stands revealed to the other." Compare also the closing stanzas of "One Word More," especially stanza 18. RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI. I. I KNOW a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie, II. Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look |