CXX.

HOMERIC UNITY.

THE sacred keep of Ilion is rent

With shaft and pit; vague waters wander slow Through plains where Simois and Scamander went To war with gods and heroes,long ago: Not yet to dark Cassandra, lying low In rich Mycena, do the Fates relent; The bones of Agamemnon are a show, And ruined is his royal monument.

The awful dust and treasures of the Dead

Has Learning scattered wide; but vainly thee, Homer, she measures with her Lesbian lead,

And strives to rend thy songs: too blind is she To know the crown on thine immortal head

Of indivisible supremacy.

CXXI.

COLONEL BURNABY.

THOU that on every field of earth and sky

Didst hunt for Death-that seemed to flee and fear-How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie

Slain in the Desert by some wandering spear! "Not here," alas! may England say "not here Nor in this quarrel was it meet to die,

But in that dreadful battle drawing nigh,
To shake the Afghan passes strait and sheer."

Like Aias by the Ships shouldst thou have stood,
And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight,
The pillar of thy people and their shield,

Till Helmund or till Indus ran with blood,

And back, towards the Northlands and the Night, The stricken Eagles scattered from the field.

CXXII.

SOMETHING LOST.

How changed is Nature from the Time antique!
The world we see to-day is dumb and cold:
It has no word for us. Not thus of old
It won heart-worship from the enamoured Greek.
Through all fair forms he heard the Beauty speak;
To him glad tidings of the Unknown were told
By babbling runlets, or sublimely rolled
In thunder from the cloud-enveloped peak.
He caught a message at the oak's great girth,
While prisoned Hamadryads weirdly sang:
He stood where Delphi's Voice had chasm-birth,
And o'er strange vapour watched the Sibyl hang;
Or where, 'mid throbbings of the tremulous earth,
The caldrons of Dodona pulsed and rang.

CXXIII.

ON THE BEACH IN NOVEMBER.

My heart's Ideal, that somewhere out of sight
Art beautiful and gracious and alone,—

Haply, where blue Saronic waves are blown On shores that keep some touch of old delight,— How welcome is thy memory, and how bright,

To one who watches over leagues of stone These chilly northern waters creep and moan From weary morning unto weary night. O Shade-form, lovelier than the living crowd, So kind to votaries, yet thyself unvowed, So free to human fancies, fancy-free,

My vagrant thought goes out to thee, to thee, As wandering lonelier than the Poet's cloud, I listen to the wash of this dull sea.

CXXIV.

A THOUGHT FROM PINDAR.

(Nem. V.)

TWIN immortalities man's art doth give
To man: both fair; both noble; one supreme.
The sculptor beating out his portrait scheme
Can make the marble statue breathe and live;
Yet with a life cold, silent, locative;
It cannot break its stone-eternal dream,
Or step to join the busy human stream,
But dwells in some high fane a hieroglyph.
Not so the poet. Hero, if thy name
Lives in his verse, it lives indeed. For then
In every ship thou sailest passenger

To every town where aught of soul doth stir,
Through street and market borne, at camp and game,
And on the lips and in the hearts of men!