I saw how all the trembling ages past,
Moulded to her by deep and deeper breath,
Near'd to the hour when Beauty breathes her last
And knows herself in death.

T. STURGE MOORE

b. 1870

874.

A Duet

LOWERS nodding gaily, scent in air,
Flowers posied, flowers for the hair,
Sleepy flowers, flowers bold to stare-
'O pick me some!'

'Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum, Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper Come, Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb"O let me hear.'

6

Eyes so black they draw one trembling near, Brown eyes, caverns flooded with a tear,

Cloudless eyes, blue eyes so windy clear'O look at me!

Kisses sadly blown across the sea,
Darkling kisses, kisses fair and free,
Bob-a-cherry kisses 'neath a tree-
'O give me one!'

Thus sang a king and queen in Babylon.

875.

FRANCIS THOMPSON

The Poppy

SUMMER set lip to earth's bosom bare,

1859-1907

And left the flush'd print in a poppy there;
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puff'd it to flapping flame.

With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughter'd sank,
And dipp'd its cup in the purpurate shine
When the eastern conduits ran with wine.

Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinkèd gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,

With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.

A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide ;

But between the clasp of his hand and hers

Lay, felt not, twenty wither'd years.

She turn'd, with the rout of her dusk South hair, And saw the sleeping gipsy there;

And snatch'd and snapp'd it in swift child's whim, With-Keep it, long as you live! '—to him.

And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres, Trembled up from a bath of tears;

And joy, like a mew sea-rock'd apart,

Toss'd on the wave of his troubled heart.

For he saw what she did not see,
That-as kindled by its own fervency-
The verge shrivell'd inward smoulderingly :

And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers
He knew the twenty wither'd years—
No flower, but twenty shrivell❜d years.

'Was never such thing until this hour,'
Low to his heart he said; 'the flower
Of sleep brings wakening to me,
And of oblivion memory.'

'Was never this thing to me,' he said, 'Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!' And again to his own heart very low: 'O child! I love, for I love and know;

'But you, who love nor know at all
The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall,
Where some rise early, few sit long:
In how differing accents hear the throng
His great Pentecostal tongue;

'Who know not love from amity,
Nor my reported self from me;
A fair fit gift is this, meseems,

You give this withering flower of dreams.

'O frankly fickle, and fickly true,

Do you know what the days will do to you? To your Love and you what the days will do, O frankly fickle, and fickly true?

'You have loved me, Fair, three lives-or days: 'Twill pass with the passing of my face. But where I go, your face goes too,

To watch lest I play false to you.

'I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover, Knowing well when certain years are over You vanish from me to another;

Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.

'So, frankly fickle, and fickly true!
For my brief life-while I take from you
This token, fair and fit, meseems,

For me this withering flower of dreams.'

The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,
Heavy with dreams, as that with bread :
The goodly grain and the sun-flush'd sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.

I hang 'mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper

The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper!

Love! love! your flower of wither'd dream
In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem,
Shelter'd and shut in a nook of rhyme,
From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.

Love! I fall into the claws of Time:
But lasts within a leavèd rhyme

All that the world of me esteems

My wither'd dreams, my wither'd dreams.

HENRY CUST

1861-1917

876.

Non Nobis

OT unto us, O Lord,

NOT

Not unto us the rapture of the day,

The peace of night, or love's divine surprise,

High heart, high speech, high deeds 'mid honouring eyes; For at Thy word

All these are taken away.

Not unto us, O Lord:

To us thou givest the scorn, the scourge, the scar,
The ache of life, the loneliness of death,

The insufferable sufficiency of breath;

And with Thy sword

Thou piercest very far.

Not unto us, O Lord:

Nay, Lord, but unto her be all things given—
My light and life and earth and sky be blasted—
But let not all that wealth of love be wasted:
Let Hell afford

The pavement of her Heaven!