From age to age still plays the eternal child,
Nor heeds the eternal doom that followeth.
Ah, precious days of unreflecting breath!
There lay (so might we fancy) one who smiled
Though all life's paradox unreconciled,
Enjoying years the grown man squandereth.
And if his latest hour was touched with pain,
And some dim trouble crossed his childish brain,
He knew no fear, in death more blest than we.
And now from God's clear light he smiles again,
Not ill-content his mortal part to see
In such a spot, amid such company.
THE impatient starter waxeth saturnine.
"Is the bell cracked?" he cries. They make it sound:
And six tall lads break through the standers-round.
I watch with Mary while they form in line;
White-jerseyed all, but each with some small sign,
A broidered badge or shield with painted ground,
And one with crimson kerchief sash-wise bound;
I think we know that token, neighbor mine,
Willie, they call you best of nimble wights;
Yet brutal Fate shall whelm in slippery ways
Two soles at least. Will it be you she spites?
Ah well! 'Tis not so much to win the bays.
Uncrowned or crowned, the struggle still delights;
It is the effort, not the palm, we praise.
Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in!
The tired arms lie with every sinew slack
On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back,
And elbows apt to make the leather spin
Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,
In knavish hands a most unkindly knack;
But no guile shelters under this boy's black,
Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin.
Two minutes only. Conscious of a name,
The new man plants his weapon with profound
Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare.
Not loath, the rested lad resumes the game:
The flung ball takes one madding tortuous bound,
And the mid-stump three somersaults in air.
A FOOTBALL PLAYER.
IF I could paint you, friend, as you stand there,
Guard of the goal, defensive, open-eyed,
Watching the tortured bladder slide and glide
Under the twinkling feet; arms bare, head bare,
The breeze a-tremble through crow-tufts of hair;
Red-brown in face, and ruddier, having spied
A wily foeman breaking from the side;
Aware of him, of all else unaware;
If I could limn you, as you leap and fling
Your weight against his passage, like a wall;
Clutch him, and collar him, and rudely cling
For one brief moment till he falls
you fall:
My sketch would have what Art can never give —
Sinew and breath and body; it would live.
(From "Echoes from Theocritus.")
I AM the flute of Daphnis. On this wall
He nailed his tribute to the great god Pan,
What time he grew from boyhood, shapely, tall,
And felt the first deep ardors of a man.
Through adult veins more swift the songtide ran, -
A vernal stream where swollen torrents call
For instant ease in utterance. Then began
That course of triumph reverenced by all.
Him the gods loved, and more than other men
Blessed with the flower of beauty, and endowed
His soul of music with the strength of ten.
Now on a festal day I see the crowd
Look fondly at my resting-place, and when
I think whose lips have pressed me, I am proud.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE, an English poet and novelist, born at Liverpool, Jan. 20, 1866. He was educated at Liverpool College, and at the age of sixteen he entered the office of an accountant. While here he privately printed his first volume of poetry, "My Ladie's Sonnets" (1887). In 1891 he was engaged as literary critic for the London Star, for which he wrote under the pen-name "Logroller." He also joined the staff of the Speaker and of the Daily Chronicle. He has contributed much to the Nineteenth Century, the New Review, the Pall Mall Budget, and The Book of the Rhymers' Club. His works include, also, "Volumes in Folio" (1889); "The Book-Bills of Narcissus " (1889); "George Meredith " (1889); "English Poems" (1892); "Prose Fancies" (1894).
SUNSET IN THE CITY.
ABOVE the town a monstrous wheel is turning,
With glowing spokes of red;
Low in the West its fiery axle burning;
And lost amid the spaces overhead,
A vague white moth, the moon, is fluttering.
Above the town an azure sea is flowing,
'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand;
From opal into pearl the moon is growing,
Dropped like a shell upon the changing strand.
Within the town the streets grow strange and haunted,
And dark against the western lakes of green
The buildings change to temples, and unwonted
Shadows and sounds creep in where day has been.
GIVE me to clasp this earth with feeding roots like thine,
To mount yon heaven with such star-aspiring head,
Fill full with sap and buds this shrunken life of mine,
And from my boughs, oh! might such stalwart sons be shed.
With loving cheek pressed close against thy horny breast,
I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins;
Tingling with buds, thy great hands open toward the west,
To catch the sweetheart winds that bring the sister rains.
O winds that blow from out the fruitful mouth of God,
O rains that softly fall from His all-loving eyes,
You that bring buds to trees and daisies to the sod-
O God's best Angel of the Spring, in me arise.
WE mourn as though the great good song he gave
Passed with the singer's own informing breath :
Ah, golden book, for thee there is no grave,
Thine is a rhyme that shall not taste of death.
One sings a flower, and one a voice, and one
Screens from the world a corner choice and small,
Each toy its little laureate hath, but none
Sings of the whole: yea, only he sang all.
Fame loved him well, because he loved not Fame,
But Peace and Love, all other things before,
A man was he ere yet he was a name,
His song was much because his love was more.
AN EPITHALAMIUM.
SOMEWHERE safe-hidden away
In a meadow of mortals untrod,
I saw in my dreaming to-day
A wonderful flower of God;
Somewhere deep buried in air,
In a flashing abysm afar,
I came in my dreaming aware
Of the beam of a mystical star:
And I knew that each wonderful thing
Was the song that I never may sing.
Yet still it may be for my glory,
Though never the priesthood to bear,
To bend in the shrine of your story,
As the lowliest acolyte there;
And would that the rhyme I am bringing,
A censer incuriously wrought,
Might seem not too poor for the swinging,
Nor too simple the gums I have brought:
No marvel of gold-carven censer,
No frankincense fragrance or myrrh.
And O, it some light from the splendor
Of mystical Host might strike through These wreaths as they rise and transfigure Their gray to a glory for you,
A glory for you as the sunrise
Of the years that to-night have begun, What singer would sing for his song craft Boon richer than that I had won? What token to augur were given
More bright with the blessing of Heaven!
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