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LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
_All rights reserved_
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PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
* * * * *
TO
E. M. S.
* * * * *
_Primâ dicta mihi_, _summâ dicenda Camenâ_.
* * * * *
The years will pass, and hearts will range,
_You_ conquer Time, and Care, and Change.
Though Time doth still delight to shed
The dust on many a younger head;
Though Care, oft coming, hath the guile
From younger lips to steal the smile;
Though Change makes younger hearts wax cold,
And sells new loves for loves of old,
Time, Change, nor Care, hath learned the art
To fleck your hair, to chill your heart,
To touch your tresses with the snow,
To mar your mirth of long ago.
Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure,
Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure,
The love which flows from sacred springs,
In ‘old unhappy far-off things,’
From sympathies in grief and joy,
Through all the years of man and boy.
Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strung
When even this ‘brindled’ head was young
I bring, and later rhymes I bring
That flit upon as weak a wing,
But still for you, for yours, they sing!
* * * * *
MANY of the verses and translations in this volume were published first
in _Ballads and Lyrics of Old France_ (1872). Though very sensible that
they have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I
print them again because people I like have liked them. The rest are of
different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of
having been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College
Lectures. I would gladly have added to this volume what other more or
less serious rhymes I have written, but circumstances over which I have
no control have bound them up with _Ballades_, and other toys of that
sort.
It may be as well to repeat in prose, what has already been said in
verse, that Grass of Parnassus, the pretty Autumn flower, grows in the
marshes at the foot of the Muses’ Hill, and other hills, not at the top
by any means.
Several of the versions from the Greek Anthology have been published in
the _Fortnightly Review_, and the sonnet on Colonel Burnaby appeared in
_Punch_. These, with pieces from other serials, are reprinted by the
courteous permission of the Editors.
The verses that were published in _Ballades and Lyrics_, and in _Ballads
and Verses Vain_ (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York), are marked in the
contents with an asterisk.