Fear no more the frown o' the great;

Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;

To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash

Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;

Thou hast finish'd joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

HERACLITUS

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were

dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears

to shed. I wept, as I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down

the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian

guest, A handful of gray ashes, long long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

WILLIAM CORY

SONNET

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste;

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to, woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before:

- But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

EASTER NIGHT

All night had shout of men and cry

Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky

On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,

But Life again, but Victory,

Were hushed within the dead of night,

The shutter'd dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone
He rose again behind the stone.

ALICE MEYNELL

THE SHIP

THERE was no song nor shout of joy

Nor beam of moon or sun,
When she came back from the voyage

Long ago begun;
But twilight on the waters

Was quiet and gray,
And she glided steady, steady and pensive,

Over the open bay.

Her sails were brown and ragged,

And her crew hollow-eyed,
But their silent lips spoke content

And their shoulders pride;
Though she had no captives on her deck,

And in her hold
There were no heaps of corn or timber
Or silks or gold.

J. C. SQUIRE

REAL PROPERTY

Tell me about that harvest field.

Oh! Fifty acres of living bread.

The colour has painted itself in my heart. The form is patterned in my head.

So now I take it everywhere;
See it whenever I look round;
Hear it growing through every sound,
Know exactly the sound it makes
Remembering, as one must all day,
Under the pavement the live earth aches.

Trees are at the farther end,
Limes all full of the drowsy bee:
So there must be a harvest field
Whenever one thinks of a linden-tree.

a

A hedge is round it, very tall,
Hazy and cool and breathing sweet.
Round paradise is such a wall,
And all the day, in such a way,
In paradise the wild birds call.

You only need to close your eyes And pass into your secret mind, And you'll be into paradise: ' I've learnt quite easily to find Some linden-trees and drowsy bees, A tall sweet hedge with the corn behind.

I will not have that harvest mown:
I'll keep the corn and leave the bread.
I've bought that field; it's now my own:

I've fifty acres in my head.
I take it as a dream to bed.
I carry it about all day....

a

Sometimes when I have found a friend
I give a blade of corn away.

HAROLD MONRO

TO MEADOWS

Ye have been fresh and green,

Ye have been filled with flowers; And ye the walks have been

Where maids have spent their hours.

Ye have beheld how they

With wicker arks did come To kiss and bear away

The richer cowslips home.

You've heard them sweetly sing,

And seen them in a round, Each virgin, like a Spring,

With honeysuckles crowned.

But now we see none here

Whose silvery feet did tread, And with dishevelled hair

Adorned this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent

Your stock, and needy grown,