The Household Book of Poetry

DEAR friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near, in woe and weal;
Oh, loved the most when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;

Known and unknown, human, divine!
Sweet human hand and lips and eye,
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine!

Strange friend, past, present, and to be, Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold I dream a dream of good, And mingle all the world with thee.

THY voice is on the rolling air;

I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair. What art thou, then? I cannot guess; But though I seem in star and flower To feel thee, some diffusive power,

I do not therefore love thee less:

My love involves the love before;

My love is vaster passion now;

Though mixed with God and nature thou,

I seem to love thee more and more.

Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice,
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
! shall not lose thee, though I die.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE PASSAGE.

MANY a year is in its grave,
Since I crossed this restless wave;
And the evening, fair as ever,
Shines on ruin, rock, and river.
Then in this same boat beside

Sat two comrades old and tried-
One with all a father's truth,
One with all the fire of youth.

One on earth in silence wrought,
And his grave in silence sought;
But the younger, brighter form
Passed in battle and in storm.

THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.

Made a man's eyes friends with delicious The first slight swerving of the heart,

tears;

Restored me, loved me, put me on a par
With his great self. How can I pay Jaffar?"

Haroun, who felt that on a soul like this
The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss,
Now deigned to smile, as. one great lord of

fate

Might smile upon another half as great,

He said, "Let worth grow frenzied if it will;
The caliph's judgment shall be master still.
Go, and since gifts so move thee, take this gem,
The richest in the Tartar's diadem,
And hold the giver as thou deemest fit!"
"Gifts!" cried the friend; he took, and
holding it

That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,

Or say it in too great excess.

The very tones in which we spake

181

Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips,
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,

The flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
We thought of wrecks upon the main,~

High toward the heavens, as though to meet Of ships dismasted, that were hailed

his star,

Exclaimed, "This, too, I owe to thee, Jaffar!"

LEIGH HUNT.

THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.

WE sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,

The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,— The light-house,—the dismantled fort,— The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,

Descending, filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight

Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,

Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,

When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again;

And sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames,--
The ocean, roaring up the beach,—
The gusty blast,—the bickering flames,--
All mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part

Of fancies floating through the brain,The long-lost ventures of the heart,

That sends no answers back again.

Oh flames that glowed! Oh hearts that
yearned!

They were indeed too much akin-
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed
within.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

QUA CURSUM VENTUS.

As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay

With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail, at dawn of day

Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried:

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,

And all the darkling hours they plied; Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side;

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions,

Brave barks! In light, in darkness too! Through winds and tides one compass guides-- In my days of childhood, in my joyful school

STANZAS

то

AUGUSTA.

183

ΤΟ

Too late I stayed-forgive the crime-
Unheeded flew the hours:
How noiseless falls the foot of time
That only treads on flowers!

And who with clear account, remarks
The ebbings of his glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?

Ah! who to sober measurement
Time's happy swiftness brings,
When birds of paradise have lent
Their plumage to his wings?

ROBERT WILLIAM SPENCER

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.

[BYRON TO HIS SISTER.]

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

As when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain-it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not con-

temn

They may torture, but shall not subdue meT is of thee that I think-not of them. Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake,

Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 't was not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one-
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun;
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past which hath perished

Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all.

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wild waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

LORD BYRON.

WE HAVE BEEN FRIENDS TOGETHER. -
WE have been friends together,
In sunshine and in shade;

Since first beneath the chestnut-trees

In infancy we played.

But coldness dwells within thy heart-
A cloud is on thy brow;
We have been friends together-
Shall a light word part us now?
We have been gay together;

We have laughed at little jests;
For the fount of hope was gushing,

Warm and joyous, in our breasts.
But laughter now hath fled thy lip,
And sullen glooms thy brow;
We have been gay together-

Shall a light word part us now?
We have been sad together-

We have wept, with bitter tears, O'er the grass-grown graves, where slum bered

The hopes of early years.

BOOKS TO READ, AND OLD FRIENDS TO CON- The Holye Book by which we live and die.

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