PAST DAYS.

109

PAST DAYS.

THREE ROUNDELS.

I.

EAD and gone, the days we had together,

Round them, flown as flies the blown foam's feather, Dead and gone.

Where we went, we twain, in time foregone,
Forth by land and sea, and cared not whether,
If I go again, I go alone.

Bound am I with time as with a tether;

Thee perchance death leads enfranchised on,
Far from death-like life and changeful weather,
Dead and gone.

II.

Above the sea and sea-washed town we dwelt,
We twain together, two brief summers, free
From heed of hours as light as clouds that melt
Above the sea.

Free from all heed of aught at all were we,

Save chance of change that clouds or sunbeams dealt And gleam of heaven to windward or to lee.

The Norman downs with bright gray waves for belt
Were more for us than inland ways might be;
A clearer sense of nearer heaven we felt

Above the sea.

III.

Cliffs and downs and headlands which the forward.

hasting

Flight of dawn and eve empurples and embrowns, Wings of wild sea-winds and stormy seasons wasting Cliffs and downs,

These, or ever man was, were: the same sky frowns, Laughs, and lightens, as before his soul, forecast

ing

Times to be, conceived such hopes as time dis

crowns

These we loved of old: but now for me the blast

ing

Breath of death makes dull the bright small seaward

towns,

Clothes with human change these all but everlasting Cliffs and downs.

A. C. Swinburne.

ΤΗ

AT SEA.

'HE night is made for cooling shade,
For silence and for sleep;

And when I was a child, I laid

My hands upon my breast and prayed,
And sank to slumbers deep :

Child-like as then I lie to-night,

And watch my lonely cabin light.

AT SEA.

Each movement of the swaying lamp
Shows how the vessel reels,

As o'er her deck the billows tramp,
And all her timbers strain and cramp,
With every shock she feels.

It starts and shudders, while it burns,
And in its hingèd socket turns.

Now swinging slow, and slanting low,
It almost level lies;

And yet I know, while to and fro
I watch the seeming pendule go
With restless fall and rise,
The steady shaft is still upright,
Poising its little globe of light.

O hand of God! O lamp of peace!

O promise of my soul!

Though weak, and tossed, and ill at ease,
Amid the roar of smiting seas,

The ship's convulsive roll,
I own, with love and tender awe,
Yon perfect type of perfect law!

A heavenly trust my spirit calms,
My soul is filled with light:

The ocean sings his solemn psalms,
The wild winds chant: I cross my palms,

Happy as if, to-night,

Under the cottage roof, again

I heard the soothing summer rain.

7. T. Trowbridge.

TH

THOU GLORIOUS MIRROR!

HOU glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempests! in all time,

Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving,-boundless, endless, and sublime,—
The image of Eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible: even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made: each zone Obeys thee thou goest forth, dread, fathomless,

alone.

Byron.

A MYTH.

A

FLOATING, a floating

Across the sleeping sea,

All night I heard a singing bird

Upon the topmast tree.

"Oh, came you from the isles of Greece
Or from the banks of Seine?

Or off some tree in forests free

That fringe the western main ?"

"I came not off the old world,
Nor yet from off the new ;

But I am one of the birds of God

Which sing the whole night through."

"Oh, sing and wake the dawning!

Oh, whistle for the wind!

The night is long, the current strong,
My boat it lags behind."

DOVER BEACH.

"The current sweeps the old world,
The current sweeps the new;

The wind will blow, the dawn will glow,
Ere thou hast sailed them through."

DOVER BEACH.

THE sea is calm to-night;

113

C. Kingsley

The tide is full; the moon lies fair

Upon the Straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window: sweet is the night-air!
Only from the long line of spray

Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery: we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled ;