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MEMORABILIA

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!

But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at

My starting moves your laughter!

I cross'd a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.

Robert Browning

THRENOS

O World! O Life! O Time!

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime?

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Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight:

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more - Oh, never more!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

TO MARGUERITE

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;

And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour —

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!

Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd salt, estranging sea.

Matthew Arnold

, Died

Tennyson, Born

CONSTANCY

Out upon it. I have loved
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.

Time shall moult away his wings,
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.

But the spite on't is, no praise
Is due at all to me;

Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.

Had it any been but she,

And that very face,

There had been at least ere this

A dozen dozen in her place.

Sir John Suckling

ON HIMSELF

A wearied pilgrim I have wander'd here,
Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year;
Long I have lasted in this world, 'tis true,
But yet those years that I have lived, but few.
Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell,
Lives not those years, but he that lives them well:
One man has reach'd his sixty years, but he
Of all those three-score has not lived half three:
He lives who lives to virtue; men who cast
Their ends for pleasure, do not live, but last.
Robert Herrick

GRACE FOR A CHILD

Here, a little child, I stand,
Heaving up my either hand:
Cold as paddocks though they be
Here I lift them up to Thee,

For a benison to fall

On our meat, and on us all. Amen.

Robert Herrick

A FAREWELL

My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever ;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever

One grand, sweet song.

Charles Kingsley

If

you

MAY MARGARET

be that May Margaret

That lived on Kendal Green,

Then where's that sunny hair of yours
That crowned you like a queen?
That sunny hair is dim, lad,

They said was like a crown
The red gold turned to gray, lad,
The night a ship went down.

If you be yet May Margaret,
May Margaret now as then,
Then where's that bonny smile of yours
That broke the hearts of men?

The bonny smile is wan, lad,

That once was glad as day —

And oh! 'tis weary smiling
To keep the tears away.

If you be yet May Margaret,
As yet you swear to me,

Then where's that proud, cold heart of yours
That sent your love to sea?

Ah, me! that heart is broken,

The proud, cold heart has bled

For one light word outspoken,

For all the love unsaid.

Then Margaret, my Margaret,
If all you say be true,

Your hair is yet the sunniest gold,
Your eyes the sweetest blue.
And dearer yet and fairer yet
For all the coming years
The fairer for the waiting,
The dearer for the tears!

Théophile Marzials

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