Sewed on soft saffron satin stuff,
With peacock feathers, purple-eyed,
Caught daintily on either side,
The gay coquette displays a puff:
Two blue eyes peep above the buff:
Two pinky pouting lips ... enough!
That cough means surely come and hide
Behind her fan.
The barque of Hope is trim and tough,
So out I venture on the rough,
Uncertain sea of girlish pride.
A breeze! I tack against the tide,-
Capture a kiss and catch a cuff,-
Behind her fan.
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.
AN ACROSTICAL VALENTINE.
(A. S. R.)
Fast in your heart, O rondeau rare,
Rich with the wealth of love, I dare,
Alas! to send, but not to sign,
Nestles my name. The fetters fine
Kissed by her lips may break,--beware
Delight is dizzy with despair.
Suppose she fain would answer,-there!
How shall she find this name of mine
Fast in your heart?
Enough if secrecy you swear:
Red lips can't solve the subtile snare
My tricksy muse weaves with her line:
And I am caught, vain Valentine!
N.B.-Say,-should she ask you where?
"_Fast in your heart._"
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.
WHEN TWILIGHT COMES.
When twilight comes and nature stills
The hum that haunts the dales and hills,
Dim shadows deepen and combine,
And Heaven with its crystal wine
The cups of thirsty roses fills.
Blithe birds with music-burdened bills
Hush for a space their tender trills,
And seek their homes in tree or vine
When twilight comes.
Soft melody the silence thrills,
Played by the nymphs along the rills;
And where the dew-kist grasses twine,
The toads and crickets tatoo fine
Drums to the fife of whip-poor-wills,
When twilight comes.
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.
COME, PAN, AND PIPE.
Come, Pan, and pipe upon the reed,
And make the mellow music bleed,
As once it did in days of yore,
Along the brook's leaf-tangled shore,
Through sylvan shade and fragrant mead.
On Hybla honey come and feed,--
To tempt the Fauns in dance to lead
The Dryads on the mossy floor,--
Come, Pan, and pipe!
To-day the ghosts,--Gold, Gain, and Greed,
The world pursues with savage speed:
Forgotten is your magic lore.
Oh, bring it back to us once more!
For simple, rustic song we plead:
Come, Pan, and pipe!
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.
AN OLD RONDO.
Her scuttle Hatt is wondrous wide,
All furrie, too, on every side,
Soe out she trippeth daintylie,
To let ye Youth full well to see
How fayre ye mayde is for ye Bryde.
A lyttle puffed, may be, bye Pryde,
She yett soe lovelye ys thatt I'd
A Shyllynge gyve to tye, perdie,
Her scuttle Hatt.
Ye Coales unto ye Scuttle slide,
Soe yn her Hatt wolde I, and hide
To steale some Kissestwo or three:
But synce She never asketh me,
Ye scornful Cynick doth deride
Her scuttle Hatt!
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.
A STREET SKETCH.
Upon the Kerb, a maiden neat--
Her hazel eyes are passing sweet--
There stands and waits in dire distress:
The muddy road is pitiless,
And 'busses thunder down the street!
A snowy skirt, all frills and pleat;
Two tiny, well-shod, dainty feet
Peep out, beneath her kilted dress,
Upon the Kerb.
She'll first advance and then retreat,
Half-frightened by a hansom fleet.
She looks around, I must confess,
With marvellous coquettishness!-
Then droops her eyes and looks discreet,
Upon the Kerb!
J. ASHBY STERRY.
DOVER.
On Dover Pier, brisk blew the wind,
The Fates against me were combined
For when I noticed standing there,
Sweet Some-one with the sunny hair-
To start I felt not much inclined.
Too late! I cannot change my mind,
The paddles move! I am resigned-
I only know I would I were
On Dover Pier.
I wonder--will the Fates be kind?
On my return, and shall I find
That grey-eyed damsel passing fair,
So bonny, blithe, and debonair,
The pretty girl I left behind?
On Dover Pier?
J. ASHBY STERRY.
HOMESICK.
'Mid Autumn Leaves, now thickly shed,
We wander where our paths o'erspread,
With yellow russet, red and sere:
The country's looking dull and drear,
The sky is gloomy overhead.
The equinoctial gales we dread,
The summer's gone, the sunshine's fled;
We've rambled far enough this year-
'Mid Autumn Leaves.
Though fast our travel-time has sped,
On London's flags we long to tread;
The latest laugh and chaff to hear,
To find the Club grown doubly dear;
Its gas burns bright, its fire glows red-
'Mid Autumn Leaves.
J. ASHBY STERRY.
IN BEECHEN SHADE.
In beechen shade the hours are sweet,
By mist-veiled morn or noonday heat
(And sweeter still when daylight dies)
So soft the wandering streamlet sighs
In passage musical and fleet.
Full drowsily the white lambs bleat,
And tinkling bell-notes faintly beat
The languid air where Lacon lies
In beechen shade.
And still, when day and even meet;
Selene strays with golden feet,
That gleam along the low blue skies
And paceth slow, with dreaming eyes
That seek the shepherds' dim retreat
'Mid beechen shade.
GRAHAM R. TOMSON.
THE GATES OF HORN.
The Gates of Horn are dull of hue
(If all our wise men tell us true).
No songs, they say, nor perfumed air
Shall greet the wistful pilgrim there,
No leaves are green, no skies are blue.
Yet he who will may find a clue
(Mid shadows steeped in opal dew)
To seek, and see them passing fair,
The Gates of Horn.
The man that goes not wreathed with rue,
Right lovely shapes his smile shall sue,
With red rose-garlands in their hair
And garments gay with gold and vair,
Full fain to meet him trooping through
The Gates of Horn.
GRAHAM R. TOMSON.
IF LOVE BE TRUE.
If love be true-not bought at mart-
Though night and darkness hide from view,
What harshest of harsh things can part
The loved-one from the lover's heart,
Or stay the dreams that flit thereto?
If love be true dreams need no chart
To gain the goal to which they're due;
For love will guide them with love's dart,
If love be true.
If love be true, if thou be true,
Sweet love, as fair thou surely art,
Night shall not hide your eyes of blue
From my heart's eyes the long night through;
Though in sweet sadness tears may start,
If love be true.
SAMUEL WADDINGTON.
THE COQUETTE.
This pirate bold upon love's sea
Will let no passing heart go free;
No barque by those bright eyes espied
May sail away o'er life's blue tide
Till all its treasure yielded be.
Her craft, the _Conquest_, waits for thee,
Where her swift rapine none may see;
From shadowing coves on thee will glide
This pirate bold.
Yet thou, if thou her power wouldst flee,
Go, feign thyself love's refugee,
And crave sweet shelter;-she'll deride
Thy piteous suit with scornful pride;
And thou, thou shalt escape in glee
This pirate bold.
SAMUEL WADDINGTON.
YES OR NO?
A Good man's love! Oh, prithee, stay,
Before you turn such gift away,
And write no unconsidered "No"
To him who proves he loves you so,
And humbly owns your regal sway.
For hearts may change, the wise folk say,
And as full oft the brightest ray
Fades in an hour, so too may go
A Good man's love.
Then pause awhile. This short delay
May gladden many an after-day.
Search well your heart, and if it show
True signs of love, bid pride bend low,
And take this great gift while you may--
A Good man's love!
G. WEATHERLY.
MY WINDOW BIRDS.
My window birds, I love to strew
With punctual hands the crumb for you,
Flying for comfort day by day
From frozen woodland and highway,
And bringing Christmas bills now due!
Fair creditors of every hue
Crimson and yellow, brown and blue,
Whate'er your thoughts, your coats are gay,
My window birds.
Your claims are neither small nor few,
Dated, when May-flowers drank the dew,
And on sweet pipes ye used to play,
Scattering full many a golden lay;
Now ye for wages mutely sue,
My window birds.
REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A.
SNOWDROPS AND ACONITES.
Silver and gold! The snowdrop white
And yellow blossomed aconite,
Waking from Winter's slumber cold,
Their hoarded treasures now unfold,
And scatter them to left and right.
Ah, with how much more rare delight
Upon my sense their colours smite
Than if my fingers were to hold
Silver and gold.
They bear the superscription bright
Of the great King of love and might,
Who stamped such beauty there of old
That men might learn, as ages rolled,
To trust in God, nor worship quite
Silver and gold.
REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A.
THE CHIFF-CHAFF'S MESSAGE, HEARD IN MARCH.
"Cheer up, cheer up!" it seems to say,
As lighting on some leafless spray,
It shakes its dissyllabic song,
And with small beak, but courage strong,
Charges the East-wind all the day.
"Soon will the Swallow round you play,
The Nightingale be on its way,
Blue skies and gladness come ere long,
Cheer up, cheer up!"
Such happy voice be mine, I pray,
Bleak hours to bless with sunny ray,
A comfort life's rough path among;
Be mine to lighten pain and wrong,
Still letting fall a hopeful lay--
Cheer up, cheer up!
REV. RICHARD WILTON, M.A.
"WHEN SUMMER DIES."
When Summer dies, the leaves are falling fast
In fitful eddies on the chilly blast,
And fields lie blank upon the bare hillside
Where erst the poppy flaunted in its pride,
And woodbine on the breeze its fragrance cast.
And where the hawthorn scattered far and wide
Its creamy petals in the sweet Springtide
Red berries hang, for birds a glad repast
When summer dies.
Gone are the cowslips and the daisies pied;
The swallow to a warmer clime hath hied;
The beech has shed its store of bitter mast,
And days are drear and skies are overcast,
But Love will warm our hearts whate'er betide
When summer dies.
ARTHUR G. WRIGHT.
MY LITTLE SWEETHEART.
Across the pew, with complaisance
And eyes that with Love's sunshine dance,
My little sweetheart smiles at me--
She is the only saint I see;
The sermon passes in a trance.
The painted figures gaze askance,
Down from their glassy vigilance,
On this our tender heresy
Across the pew.
Ah! little sweetheart, the romance
Of Life, with all its change and chance,
Is but a sealëd book to thee--
When opened, may its pages be
As fair and sweet as thy bright glance
Across the pew!
ARTHUR G. WRIGHT.
THREE ROUNDELS.
I.
Love, though I die, and dying lave
My soul in Lethe endlessly,
Losing all else, I still would save
--Love, though I die--
Thy living presence, touch and sigh,
All that the golden moments gave
To vanished hours of ecstasy.
Then make thou great and wide my grave,
So wide we two therein may lie;
For sense of thee my soul will crave,
Love, though I die.
II.
My lips refuse to take farewell of bliss,
Sweet Love! so sweet and false, I can but choose
To leave thee, only parting word and kiss
My lips refuse.
Fancy wears livery of a thousand hues,
So love in idleness may come to this!
And I must bring the thought to common use
That ever--save in memory--I shall miss
Thy short-lived tenderness-ever lose
All that has taught how dear a thing it is
My lips refuse.
III.
Other lips than yours intreat
Those I vowed in vanished hours,
Never Fate should force to greet
Other lips than yours.
Memory dulls, perchance, or sours
What was once so keenly sweet,
Being ours and only ours.
All the life and heart and heat,
All the soul that love outpours,
Dies upon the lips that meet
Other lips than yours.
D. F. BLOMFIELD.
A SINGING LESSON.
Far-fetched and dear bought, as the proverb rehearses,
Is good, or was held so, for ladies: but nought
In a song can be good if the turn of the verse is
Far-fetched and dear bought.
As the turn of a wave should it sound, and the thought
Ring smooth, and as light as the spray that disperses
Be the gleam of the words for the garb thereof wrought.
Let the soul in it shine through the sound as it pierces
Men's hearts with possession of music unsought;
For the bounties of song are no jealous god's mercies,
Far-fetched and dear bought.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
IN GUERNSEY.
(To Theodore Watts.)
I.
The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors,
Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay,
Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures
The heavenly bay.
O friend, shall time take even this away,
This blessing given of beauty that endures,
This glory shown us, not to pass but stay?
Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures
What memory, changed by love to sight, would say--
The word that seals for ever mine and yours,
The heavenly bay.
II.
My mother sea, my fortress, what new strand,
What new delight of waters, may this be,
The fairest found since time's first breezes fanned
My mother sea?
Once more I give me body and soul to thee,
Who hast my soul for ever: cliff and sand
Recede, and heart to heart once more are we.
My heart springs first and plunges, ere my hand
Strike out from shore: more close it brings to me,
More near and dear than seems my fatherland,
My mother sea.
Across and along, as the bay's breadth opens, and o'er us
Wild autumn exults in the wind, swift rapture and strong
Impels us, and broader the wide waves brighten before us
Across and along.
The whole world's heart is uplifted, and knows not wrong;
The whole world's life is a chant to the sea-tide's chorus;
Are we not as waves of the water, as notes of the song?
Like children unworn of the passions and toils that wore us,
We breast for a season the breadth of the seas that throng,
Rejoicing as they, to be borne as of old they bore us
Across and along.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
THE ROUNDEL.
A Roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
A roundel is wrought.
Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught--
Love, laughter, or mourning--remembrance of rapture or fear--
That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought.
As a bird's quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear--
Pause answers to pause, and again the same strain caught,
So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear,
A roundel is wrought.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
NOTHING SO SWEET.
Nothing so sweet in all the world there is
Than this-to stand apart in Love's retreat
And gaze at Love. There is as that, ywis,
Nothing so sweet.
Yet surely God hath placed before our feet
Some sweeter sweetness and completer bliss,
And something that shall prove more truly meet.
Soothly I know not:-when the live lips kiss
There is no more that our prayers shall entreat,
Save only Death. Perhaps there is as this
Nothing so sweet.
CHARLES SAYLE.
THE TRYSTING-TREE.
Meet me, love, where the woodbines grow
And where the wild rose smells most sweet;
And the breezes, as they softliest blow,
Meet;
Passing along through the field of wheat,
By the hedge where in spring the violets glow,
And the blue-bells blossom around one's feet;
Where latest lingers the drifted snow,
And the fir-tree grows o'er our trysting-seat,
Come-and your love, as long ago,
Meet.
CHARLES SAYLE.
A ROUNDEL OF REST.
If rest is sweet at shut of day
For tired hands and tired feet,
How sweet at last to rest for aye,
If rest is sweet!
We work or work not through the heat:
Death bids us soon our labours lay
In lands where night and twilight meet.
When the last dawns are fallen on grey
And all life's toils and ease complete,
They know who work, not they who play,
If rest is sweet.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
MORS ET VITA.
We know not yet what life shall be,
What shore beyond earth's shore be set;
What grief awaits us, or what glee,
We know not yet.
Still, somewhere in sweet converse met,
Old friends, we say, beyond death's sea
Shall meet and greet us, nor forget
Those days of yore, those years when we
Were loved and true,-but will death let
Our eyes the longed-for vision see?
We know not yet.
SAMUEL WADDINGTON.
RONDELS OF CHILDHOOD.
I.-WHEN CLARICE DIED.
When Clarice died, and it was told to me,
I only covered up my face, and sighed
To lose the world and cease to breathe or see,
When Clarice died.
She was my playmate, sweet, and thoughtful-eyed,
With curls, gold curls, that fluttered wild and free;
My child companion and most tender guide.
When Clarice died I wandered wearily
Down the mute grove where she was wont to hide,
And cast myself beneath her favourite tree,
When Clarice died.
BERNARD WELLER.
II.-IN A FAIRY BOAT.
In a fairy boat on a fairy sea,
All amber and gold, I used to float
When never a wind rose stormily;
In a fairy boat.
And sweet and sad like a white dove's note
Strange voices wakened my soul to glee,
And soft scents strayed from the violets' throat.
In a fairy boat I shall no more be,
For gloom has fallen on creek and moat,
And my tired soul's too heavy to flee
In a fairy boat.
BERNARD WELLER.
#The Sestina.#
"_La sextine en général sera l'expression d'une rêverie, dans
laquelle la même idée, les mêmes objets se représenteront
successivement à l'esprit avec des nuances diverses jouant et se
transformant par d'harmonieuses gradations._"
--DE GRAMONT.
SESTINA.
When from the portals of her paradise
Sweet Eve went forth an exile with sad heart,
She lingered at the thrice-barred gate in tears,
And to the guardian of that Eden fair,
As on her cheeks there came and went the rose,
She weeping mourned the harshness of her fate.
"O angel," cried she, "bitter is the fate
That drives me from this fairest paradise,
And bids me wear life's rue and not its rose!
Give me one flower to lay upon my heart
Before I wander through far lands less fair,
And drown all visions of my past in tears."
She ceased, but still flowed fast her silent tears
At memory of the waywardness of fate.
"Ah," thought she, "young I am, 'tis true, and fair,
But shall I find another paradise?"
Then turning once again with trembling heart,
She spake: "O angel, but a rose-one rose!"
Within the angel's breast compassion rose
At sight of her sad face and falling tears,
The while her beauty touched his tender heart,
And knowing well the misery of her fate,
He gave the flower, a rose of paradise,
Because she was so very young and fair.
And since that time there may be flowers as fair,
But they must all yield fealty to the rose,
The red, red rose that bloomed in paradise,
That Eve in exile watered with her tears,
The only blossom in her cheerless fate,
The one flower in the desert of her heart.
And into every mortal's life and heart
There come some time, in cloudy days or fair,
It matters not, to bless and light his fate
For one short space, the perfume of the rose;
And though the after years may bring but tears,
That moment's pleasure is of paradise.
O wondrous rose of love most passing fair,
Whate'er our fate in earthly paradise,
Grant that our tears be dewdrops in thy heart.
FLORENCE M. BYRNE.
LOVE'S GOING.
(Sestina.)
Love lies a-sleeping: maiden, softly sing,
Lest he should waken; pluck the falling rose
A-brushing 'gainst his cheek, her glowing heart
Ope'd to the sun's hot kisses-foolish thing,
To list the tale oft told!-but summer goes,
And all the roses' petals fall apart.
Love lies a-sleeping: let the curtains part
So that the breeze may lightly to him sing
A lullaby-the changeful breeze that goes
A-whispering through the grass, where'er it rose,
Where'er it listeth bound, a wilful thing,
Low murmuring sweets from an inconstant heart.
Love lies a-sleeping: press the pulsing heart
That beats against thy bosom: stand apart
And stay thine eager breath, lest anything
Should mar his rest-the songs that lovers sing,
The tale the butterfly tells to the rose,
The low wind to the grass, and onward goes.
Love lies a-sleeping: ah, how swiftly goes
The sweet delusion he hath taught thy heart,
Fair maiden, pressing to thy breast the rose
Whose sun-kiss'd petals sadly fall apart
With thy quick breath! That rhyme wouldst hear him sing
Which yesterday seem'd such a foolish thing?
Love lies a-sleeping: nay, for such a thing
Break not his slumber. See how sweetly goes
That smile across his lips, that will not sing
For very wilfulness. Love hath no heart!
If he should wake, these red-ripe lips would part
In laughter low to see this ravish'd rose.
Love lies a-sleeping: so the full-blown rose
Falls to the earth a dead unpitied thing;
The grasses 'neath the breeze deep-sighing part
And sway; and as thy warm breath comes and goes
In motion with the red tides of thy heart,
The song is hush'd which Love was wont to sing.
Love lies a-sleeping: thus in dreams he goes;
Strive not to waken him, but tell thy heart,
"Love lies a-sleeping, and he may not sing."
CHARLES W. COLEMAN, JUN.
SESTINA.
To F. H.
"'_Fra tutte il primo Arnoldo Daniello
Grand maestro d'amor._'"-PETRARCH.
In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose,
Arnaut, great master of the lore of love,
First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart;
For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang,
And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme,
And in this subtler measure hid his woe.
'Harsh be my lines,' cried Arnaut, 'harsh the woe,
My lady, that enthron'd and cruel rose,
Inflicts on him that made her live in rhyme!'
But through the metre spake the voice of Love,
And like a wild-wood nightingale he sang
Who thought in crabbed lays to ease his heart.
It is not told if her untoward heart
Was melted by her poet's lyric woe,
Or if in vain so amorously he sang.
Perchance through crowd of dark conceits he rose
To nobler heights of philosophic love,
And crowned his later years with sterner rhyme.
This thing alone we know: the triple rhyme,
Of him who bared his vast and passionate heart
To all the crossing flames of hate and love,
Wears in the midst of all its storm of woe,-
As some loud morn of March may bear a rose,-
The impress of a song that Arnaut sang.
'Smith of his mother-tongue,' the Frenchman sang
Of Lancelot and of Galahad, the rhyme
That beat so bloodlike at its core of rose,
It stirred the sweet Francesca's gentle heart
To take that kiss that brought her so much woe,
And sealed in fire her martyrdom of love.
And Dante, full of her immortal love,
Stayed his drear song, and softly, fondly sang
As though his voice broke with that weight of woe;
And to this day we think of Arnaut's rhyme
Whenever pity at the labouring heart
On fair Francesca's memory drops the rose.
Ah! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme!
The men of old who sang were great at heart,
Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose.
EDMUND GOSSE.
PULVIS ET UMBRA.
(A Sestina.)
Along the crowded streets I walk and think
How I, a shadow, pace among the shades,
For I and all men seem to me unreal:
Foam that the seas of God, which cover all
Cast on the air a moment, shadows thrown
In moving westward by the Moon of Death.
Oh, shall it set at last, that orb of Death?
May any morning follow? As I think,
From one surmise upon another thrown,
My very thoughts appear to me as shades-
Shades, like the prisoning self that bounds them all,
Shades, like the transient world, and as unreal.
But other hours there be when I, unreal,
When only I, vague in a conscious Death,
Move through the mass of men unseen by all;
I move along their ways, I feel and think,
Yet am more light than echoes, or the shades
That hide me, from their stronger bodies thrown.
And better moments come, when, overthrown
All round me, lie the ruins of the unreal
And momentary world, as thin as shades;
When I alone, triumphant over Death,
Eternal, vast, fill with the thoughts I think,
And with my single soul the frame of all.
Ah, for a moment could I grasp it all!
Ah, could but I (poor wrestler often thrown)
Once grapple with the truth, oh then, I think,
Assured of which is living, which unreal,
I would not murmur, though among the shades
My lot were cast, among the shades and Death.
"One thing is true," I said, "and that is Death,"
And yet it may be God disproves it all;
And Death may be a passage from the shades,
And films on our beclouded senses thrown;
And Death may be a step beyond the Unreal
Towards the Thought that answers all I think.
In vain I think. O moon-like thought of Death,
All is unreal beneath thee, uncertain all,
Dim moon-ray thrown along a world of shades.
A. MARY F. ROBINSON.
CUPID AND THE SHEPHERD.
(Sestina.)
One merry morn when all the earth was bright,
And flushed with dewy dawn's encrimsoning ray
A shepherd youth, o'er whose fair face the light
Of rosy smiles was ever wont to stray,
Roamed through a level grassy mead, bedight
With springtime blossoms, fragrant, fresh and gay.
But now, alas! his mood was far from gay;
And musing how the dark world would be bright
Could he but win his maiden's love, and stray
With her forever, basking in its light,
He saw afar, in morn's bright beaming ray,
A lissome boy with archer's arms bedight.
The boy shot arrows at a tree bedight
With red-winged songsters warbling sweet and gay
Amid the leaves and blossoms blooming bright.
He seemed an aimless, wandering waif astray,
And so the shepherd caught him, stealing light,
While from his eyes he flashed an angry ray.