FREDERICK W. H. MYERS. CXLVII. HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT. No breath is on the glimmering ocean-floor, Earth and her folk and all their phantasies. Then half asleep in the great sound I seem Lost in the starlight, dying in a dream Where overmastering Powers abolish me,Drown, and thro' dim euthanasy redeem My merged life in the living ocean-stream And soul-environing of shadowy sea. CXLVIII. SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW. THEY do but grope in learning's pedant round As if such shapes and modes, which come and go, Had aught of Truth or Life in their poor show, To sway or judge, and skill to sain or wound. Son of immortal seed, high-destined man! Know thy dread gift,—a creature, yet a cause: Each mind is its own centre, and it draws Home to itself, and moulds in its thought's span, All outward things, the vassals of its will, Aided by Heaven, by earth unthwarted still. JOHN NICHOL. CXLIX. SAN SEBASTIAN. THE Atlantic rolls around a fort of Spain : In the red days of siege, and terraced squares, And bright eyes gleaming through the veil of night, And feet that climb the long cathedral stairs So softly; every sight and sound recalls CL. LONDON. DIM miles of smoke behind-I look before, Through looming curtains of November rain, Till eyes and ears are weary with the strain : Amid the glare and gloom, I hear the roar Of life's sea, beating on a barren shore. Terrible arbiter of joy and pain! A thousand hopes are wrecks of thy disdain ; A thousand hearts have learnt to love no more. Over thy gleaming bridges, on the street That ebbs and flows beneath the silent dome, Life's pulse is throbbing at a fever heat. City of cities-battlefield and home Of England's greatest, greatly wear their spoils, Thou front and emblem of an Empire's toils. JOHN NICHOL. CLI. CROWNED. TO I THOUGHT to track a world-disdaining Light, Honoured and wise, his days unruffled run I was his homager, and shall remain, Through chance of time and change, his debtor still: But the old days can never come again Of love in exile knit, whose memories will Shine on the way, though shrinking throngs disown, That lies for me across the seas alone. |