CHARLES (TENNYSON) TURNER
THE SPARROW AND THE DEW-DROP.
HEN to the birds their morning meal I threw,
Beside one perky candidate for bread
There flashed and winked a tiny drop of dew,
But while I gazed, I lost them,-both had fled;
His careless tread had struck the blade-hung tear,
And all its silent beauty fell away,
And left, sole relic of the twinkling sphere,
A sparrow's dabbled foot upon a spray ;
Bold bird that did'st efface a lovely thing
Before a poet's eyes! I've half a mind,
Could I but single thee from out thy kind,
To mulct thee in a crumb; a crumb to thee
Is not more sweet than that fair drop to me;
Fie on thy little foot and thrumming wing!
THE pigeons fluttered fieldward, one and all,
I saw the swallows wheel, and soar, and dive,
The little bees hung poised before the hive,
Even Partlet hoised herself across the wall:
I felt my earth-bound lot in every limb,
And, in my envious mood, I half-rebelled,
When lo! an insect crossed the page I held,
A little helpless minim, slight and slim ;
Ah! sure, there was no room for envy there,
But gracious aid and condescending care;
Alas! my pride and pity were misspent,
The atom knew his strength, and rose in air!
My gout came tingling back, as off he went:
A wing was opened at me everywhere!
THE SEASIDE,
IN AND OUT OF THE SEASON.
IN summer-time it was a paradise
Of mountain, frith, and bay, and shining sand; Our outward rowers sang towards the land, Followed by waving hands and happy cries;
By the full flood the groups no longer roam;
And when, at ebb, the glistening beach grows wide,
No barefoot children race into the foam,
But passive jellies wait the turn of tide.
Like some forsaken lover, lingering there,
The boatman stands; the maidens trip no more
With loosened locks; far from the billows' roar
The Mauds and Maries knot their tresses fair,
Where not a foam-flake from the enamoured shore
Comes down the sea-wind on the golden hair.
OUR NEW CHURCH CLOCK.
HENCEFORWARD shall our time be plainly read—
Down in the nave I catch the twofold beat
Of those full-weighted moments overhead;
And hark! the hour goes clanging down the street
To the open plain! How sweet at eventide
Will that clear music be to toil-worn men!
Calling them home, each to his own fire-side;
How sweet the toll of all the hours till then!
The cattle, too, the self-same sound shall hear,
But they can never know the power it wields
O'er human hearts, that labour, hope, and fear;
Our village-clock means nought to steed or steer;
The call of Time will share each twinkling ear
With summer flies and voices from the fields !
CHARLES (TENNYSON) TURNER
THE FELLED OAK:
GRASBY VICARAGE. SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1874.
HEN the storm felled our Oak, and thou, fair Wold,
Wert seen beyond it, we were slow to take
The lesson taught; for our old neighbour's sake
We found thy distant presence wan and cold,
And gave thee no warm welcome, for whene'er
We tried to dream him back into the place
Where once he stood, the giant of his race,
'Twas but to lift an eye and thou wert there,
His sad remembrancer, the monument
That told us he was gone.
Thy beauty with our loss so long and well,
That in all future grief we may foretell
Some lurking good behind each seeming ill,
Beyond each fallen tree some fair blue hill.
OR SOME IRREGULARITIES IN A FIRST LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY.
WHEN Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a coloured sphere
Of the wide Earth, that she might mark and know
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old Empires peeped
Between her baby-fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers; how she leaped,
And laughed, and prattled, in her pride of bliss!
But when we turned her sweet unlearnèd eye
On our own Isle, she raised a joyous cry,
'O yes! I see it, Letty's home is there!'
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION.
WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound,
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round.
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air :
But if I did it,—as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
ELIZABETH
BARRETT
BROWNING
HEN some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay
The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one
Did leave me dark before the natural sun,
And I astonied fell, and could not pray,-
A thought within me to myself did say,
'Is God less God, that thou art left undone ?
Rise, worship, bless him, in this sackcloth spun,
As in that purple !'-But I answered, Nay!
What child his filial heart in words can loose
If he behold his tender father raise
The hand that chastens sorely? can he choose
But sob in silence with an upward gaze?—
And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,
Discerns in speechless tears both prayer and praise.
ELIZABETH
BARRETT
BROWNING
LL are not taken; there are left behind
Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind:
But if it were not so-if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring,
Where dust to dust' the love from life disjoined,
And if, before those sepulchres unmoving
I stood alone, (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth)
Crying 'Where are ye, O my loved and loving?'-
I know a Voice would sound, 'Daughter, I AM.
Can I suffice for HEAVEN and not for earth?'
HAVE been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see,
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped,—and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I!
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
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