I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for
years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was
'ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 10

say.

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile-her look- her way
Of speaking gently, - for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day;'
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, and love so
wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore 11
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby.
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on through love's eternity.

In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour
'From thence into their ears.

The silver iterance! only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

God's will

devotes

XXII

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvèd point, What bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved, where the unfit,
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

XXVIII

II

My letters all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string

And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend; this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand — a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! this - the paper's light

Said, "Dear, I love thee"; and I sank and quailed

As if God's future thundered on my past: 10 This said, "I am thine" - and so its ink has

Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

go

For a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals:

Let them prove their living souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, 0
wheels!

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,

Spin on blindly in the dark.

100

Now tell the poor. young children, O my brothers,

To look up to Him and pray;

So the blessed One who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day.

They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us,

While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?

When we sob aloud, the human creatures

near us

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.

And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

110

Strangers speaking at the door : Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, Hears our weeping any more?

"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember; And at midnight's hour of harm, 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm.

We know no other words, except 'Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,

God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,

And hold both within His right hand which is strong.

I 20

'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

'Come and rest with me, my child.'

For they mind you of their angels in high places,

With eyes turned on Deity. "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,

Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath." 160

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain
For the reed which grows never more again
As the reed with the reeds of the river. 42

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

CAVALIER TUNES

I. MARCHING ALONG

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed1 Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,

Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 6

God for King Charles! Pym2 and such carles To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!

1 short-haired, Roundheads 2 Pym, Hampden, Hazelrig, Fiennes,, and Sir Harry Vane the younger were prominent Parliamentarians.