Love untold

2

Sings in silence, speaks in light
Shed from each fair feature, bright

Still from heaven, whence toward us, now
Nine years since, she deigned to bow
Down the brightness of her brow,
Deigned to pass through mortal birth :
Reverence calls her, here on earth,
Nine years old.

3

Love's deep duty,

10

15

Even when love transfigured grows

20

Worship, all too surely knows

How, though love may cast out fear,

Yet the debt divine and dear

Due to childhood's godhead here
May by love of man be paid
Never; never song be made
Worth its beauty.

Nought is all

4

Sung or said or dreamed or thought
Ever, set beside it; nought

All the love that man may give—

25

30

Love whose prayer should be, 'Forgive!'
Heaven, we see, on earth may live;
Earth can thank not heaven, we know,
Save with songs that ebb and flow,

35

No man dead, save haply one
Now gone homeward past the sun

Ever found such grace as might
Tune his tongue to praise aright
Children, flowers of love and light,
Whom our praise dispraises: we
Sing, in sooth, but not as he
Sang thanksgiving.

6

Hope that smiled,

Seeing her new-born beauty, made
Out of heaven's own light and shade,
Smiled not half so sweetly

Seeing the sun, afar above,

love,

Warm the nest that rears the dove,
Sees, more bright than moon or sun,
All the heaven of heavens in one
Little child.

40

45

50

Who may sing her?

Wings of angels when they stir

Make no music worthy her :

Sweeter sound her shy soft words

55

Here than songs of God's own birds

Whom the fire of rapture girds

Round with light from love's face lit :
Hands of angels find no fit

Gifts to bring her.

8

Babes at birth

Wear as raiment round them cast,
Keep as witness toward their past,
Tokens left of heaven; and each,
Ere its lips learn mortal speech,
Ere sweet heaven pass on pass reach,
Bears in undiverted eyes

Proof of unforgotten skies

Here on earth.

60

65

70

9

Quenched as embers

Quenched with flakes of rain or snow
Till the last faint flame burns low,
All those lustrous memories lie
Dead with babyhood gone by:
Yet in her they dare not die :
Others fair as heaven is, yet,

Now they share not heaven, forget:
She remembers.

A. C. SWINBURNE.

396

ODE

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams ;World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams :
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory :

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth ;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

75

80

5

10

15

20

A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible secming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,

25

30

Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart ;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.

35

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling ;
And the multitudes are enlisted

41

In the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of to-morrow, Are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we !

The glory about us clinging

Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing:

O men! it must ever be

45

50

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,

A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning

And the suns that are not yet high,

And out of the infinite morning

Intrepid you hear us cry

56

60

How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning

That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;

65

You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before :
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

A. W. E. 'O'SHAUGHNESSY.

71

397

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

W. E. HENLEY.