Better it were, thou sayest, to consent;
Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent ;
Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable sure,
The unlovely lovely, and the filthy pure;
In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll,
And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul.
Nay, better far to mark off thus much air,
And call it Heaven: place bliss and glory there;
Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky,
And say, what is not, will be by-and-by.
It seems no work of man's creative hand,
By labour wrought as wavering fancy plann'd,
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine
Where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a Minster fane,
That crowns the hill, and consecrates the plain;
But rosy-red as if the blush of dawn
That first beheld them were not yet withdrawn.
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
Which man deemed old two thousand years ago,
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
A rose-red city half as old as Time.
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 1819-1875
"O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee."
The Western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.
The creeping tide crept up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The blinding mist came down, and hid the land-
And never home came she.
"Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-
A tress of golden hair,
A drowned maiden's hair,
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee."
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel, crawling foam,
The cruel, hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee
That last drear mood
Of envious sloth, and proud decrepitude;
No faith, no art, no king, no priest, no God;
While round the freezing founts of life in snarling
Crouched on the bareworn sod,
Babbling about the unreturning spring,
And whining for dead gods, who cannot save,
The toothless systems shiver to their grave.
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey:
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you,
For every day.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make Life, Death, and that vast For-Ever
One grand sweet song.
THE MADONNA DELL' ACQUA
Around her shrine no earthly blossoms blow,
No footsteps fret the pathway to and fro,
No sign nor record of departed prayer,
Print of the stone, nor echo of the air,
Worn by the lip, nor wearied by the knee-
Only a deeper silence of the sea:
For there, in passing, pause the breezes bleak,
And the foam fades and all the waves are weak:
The pulse-like oars in softer fall succeed,
The black prow falters through the wild sea-weed,
Where twilight-borne the minute thunders reach
Of deep-mouthed surf that bays by Lido's beach.
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