Threatens to break, to dissolve.
-Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else of the myriads who fill

That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they shall stray; in the rocks
Stagger for ever in vain,

Die one by one in the waste.

Then, in such hour of need

Of your fainting, dispirited race,

Ye, like angels, appear,

Radiant with ardour divine!

Beacons of hope, ye appear!

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190

Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.

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Ye alight in our van! at your voice,
Panic, despair, flee away.

Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, re-inspire the brave!

Order, courage, return,

Eyes rekindling, and prayers,

Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the City of God.

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REQUIESCAT

STREW on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;

Ah, would that I did too!

Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,

In mazes of heat and sound,

But for peace her heart was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin'd, ample spirit,

It flutter'd and fail'd for breath.

To-night it doth inherit

The vasty hall of death.

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ΙΟ

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A VICTORIAN MISCELLANY

It is more difficult to make a satisfactory selection from the minor poets of the Victorian era than from those of any previous period. That age is still too recent for us to pass a final judgment upon its work. Time alone can show whether a poem which pleased its day is a true classic, and the verdict of time has not yet been rendered on Victorian poetry. This is especially true in regard to the minor poets.

There are, moreover, special difficulties in the way of making a selection from the poetry of this age, which shall fall within the limits set by the purpose of this book. In the first place, the age was, perhaps, the most complex and multiform in English history, and this characteristic has been reflected in its literature. There has been no dominant form of poetry, such as the drama of Elizabeth's reign or the satire and didactic poetry of the Augustan age. The poets of the Victorian era ranged over all the forms of their art; they tried their hands at the epic, the drama, and the lyric; they wrote noble philosophic, didactic, and elegiac poems. It is quite impossible, therefore, for a short selection, such as must here be made, to reflect with any degree of adequacy the complex character of Victorian verse.

There is also another difficulty: the Victorian age was a period of intense self-consciousness in art. And along with this self-consciousness went an increasing struggle for originality, for the new word, the new image, the new rhythm. As a result, the greater part of Victorian poetry demands, more than that of other periods, a trained literary taste for its appreciation. But the purpose of this book is not so much to gratify the cultivated literary taste as to awaken an interest in poetry; and the simplicity and directness

of expression which may be relied on to awaken such an interest are conspicuously absent in many fine and characteristic poems of the Victorian age.

The poems gathered in this miscellany must of necessity, then, represent only certain aspects of the age. One of its striking characteristics was the revival of the short narrative poem, the modern ballad. The lyric note, too, which rang with such force and passion in the preceding age, from Burns to Byron, is heard on every side in the poetry of this period. And if the Victorian lyrics lack the fresh charm of the Elizabethan or the careless grace of the Cavalier songs, they have a beauty of their own, perhaps even more tender and more human. This miscellany, then, attempts for the most part to represent only the songs and ballads of the Victorian age. Some, at least, of the poems gathered here are such as the world, we may well believe, will not willingly let die.

TWENTY YEARS HENCE

TWENTY years hence my eyes may grow
If not quite dim, yet rather so,

Yet yours from others they shall know
Twenty years hence.

Twenty years hence, though it may hap

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That I be called to take a nap

In a cool cell where thunder clap

Was never heard,

There breathe but o'er my arch of grass,

A not too sadly sighed 'Alas!'

And I shall catch ere you can pass

That winged word.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

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ROSE AYLMER

AH! what avails the sceptred race,
Ah! what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and of sighs

I consecrate to thee.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

MACAULAY

THE dreamy rhymer's measur'd snore
Falls heavy on our ears no more;
And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of womankind
Who win their battles like their loves,

In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achiev'd the crowning work
When they have truss'd and skewer'd a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,
And stalks among the statelier dead.
He rushes on, and hails by turns
High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns,
And shows the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were,
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

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