THE SEA-LIMITS. ONSIDER the sea's listless chime; BONS! Tune's self it is, inaudible, The murmur of the earth's own shell. Secret continuance sublime Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time. No quiet, which is death's,—it hath As the world's heart of rest and wrath, Last utterly, the whole sky stands, Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods; Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark! where the murmurs of thronged men Surge and smile back, and surge again,Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach And all mankind is thus at heart Not anything but what thou art : And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. VIOLETS. PIOLETS, shy violets! How many hearts with thee compare ! Ravish the enraptured air With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare! Violets, shy violets ! Human hearts to me shall be Viewless violets in the grass, And as I pass, Odours and sweet imagery Will wait on mine and gladden me ! GEORGE MEREDITH. THE APOLOGY. HINK me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen ; I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men. Tax not my sloth that I Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Chide me not, laborious band, For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought. There was never mystery But 'tis figured in the flowers; Was never secret history But birds tell it in the bowers. |