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Poems

Год написания книги
2017
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'Twas your own hand hung the cage door open,
Mother, and your pretty bird is flown.

    BP. ALEXANDER.

EPITAPH

("Il vivait, il jouait.")

{Bk. III. xv., May, 1843.}

He lived and ever played, the tender smiling thing.
What need, O Earth, to have plucked this flower from blossoming?
Hadst thou not then the birds with rainbow-colors bright,
The stars and the great woods, the wan wave, the blue sky?
What need to have rapt this child from her thou hadst placed him by —
Beneath those other flowers to have hid this flower from sight?

Because of this one child thou hast no more of might,
O star-girt Earth, his death yields thee not higher delight!
But, ah! the mother's heart with woe for ever wild,
This heart whose sovran bliss brought forth so bitter birth —
This world as vast as thou, even thou, O sorrowless Earth,
Is desolate and void because of this one child!

    NELSON K. TYERMAN.

ST. JOHN

("Un jour, le morne esprit.")

{Bk. VI. vii., Jersey, September, 1855.}

One day, the sombre soul, the Prophet most sublime
At Patmos who aye dreamed,
And tremblingly perused, without the vast of Time,
Words that with hell-fire gleamed,

Said to his eagle: "Bird, spread wings for loftiest flight —
Needs must I see His Face!"
The eagle soared. At length, far beyond day and night,
Lo! the all-sacred Place!

And John beheld the Way whereof no angel knows
The name, nor there hath trod;
And, lo! the Place fulfilled with shadow that aye glows
Because of very God.

    NELSON R. TYERMAN.

THE POET'S SIMPLE FAITH

You say, "Where goest thou?" I cannot tell,
And still go on. If but the way be straight,
It cannot go amiss! before me lies
Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that
Suffices me; I break the bounds; I see,
And nothing more; believe, and nothing less.
My future is not one of my concerns.

    PROF. E. DOWDEN.
    I AM CONTENT.

("J'habite l'ombre.")

{1855.}

True; I dwell lone,
Upon sea-beaten cape,
Mere raft of stone;
Whence all escape
Save one who shrinks not from the gloom,
And will not take the coward's leap i' the tomb.

My bedroom rocks
With breezes; quakes in storms,
When dangling locks
Of seaweed mock the forms
Of straggling clouds that trail o'erhead
Like tresses from disrupted coffin-lead.

Upon the sky
Crape palls are often nailed
With stars. Mine eye
Has scared the gull that sailed
To blacker depths with shrillest scream,
Still fainter, till like voices in a dream.

My days become
More plaintive, wan, and pale,
While o'er the foam
I see, borne by the gale,
Infinity! in kindness sent —
To find me ever saying: "I'm content!"

LA LÉGENDE DES SIÈCLES.

CAIN

("Lorsque avec ses enfants Cain se fût enfui.")
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