(After Richepin.)

Light has flown! Through the grey The wind's way The sea's moan Sound alone! For the day These repay And atone!

Scarce I know, Listening so To the streams Of the sea, If old dreams Sing to me!

BION.

The wail of Moschus on the mountains crying The Muses heard, and loved it long ago; They heard the hollows of the hills replying, They heard the weeping water's overflow; They winged the sacred strain--the song undying, The song that all about the world must go,-- When poets for a poet dead are sighing, The minstrels for a minstrel friend laid low.

And dirge to dirge that answers, and the weeping For Adonais by the summer sea, The plaints for Lycidas, and Thyrsis (sleeping Far from "the forest ground called Thessaly"),-- These hold thy memory, Bion, in their keeping, And are but echoes of the moan for thee.

SAN TERENZO.

(The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the wreck of the Don Juan.)

Mid April seemed like some November day, When through the glassy waters, dull as lead, Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead, Slipped down the curved shores of the Spezian bay, Rounded a point,--and San Terenzo lay Before us, that gay village, yellow and red, With walls that covered Shelley's homeless head,--His house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.

The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again. Deep in the ilex woods we wandered free, When suddenly the forest glades were stirred With waving pinions, and a great sea bird Flew forth, like Shelley's spirit, to the sea!

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

ἐπει καὶ τοῡτον ὀΐομαι ἀθανατοισιν ἔυχεσται· Πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ' ἄνθρωποι. OD. III. 47.

"Once Cagn was like a father, kind and good, But He was spoiled by fighting many things; He wars upon the lions in the wood, And breaks the Thunder-bird's tremendous wings; But still we cry to Him,--We are thy brood-- O Cagn, be merciful! and us He brings To herds of elands, and great store of food, And in the desert opens water-springs."

So Qing, King Nqsha's Bushman hunter, spoke, Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair, When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air: And suddenly in each man's heart there woke A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.

HOMER.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea, With all the notes of music in its tone, With tides that wash the dim dominion Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast; Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore, As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.

RONSARD.

Master, I see thee with the locks of grey, Crowned by the Muses with the laurel-wreath; I see the roses hiding underneath, Cassandra's gift; she was less dear than they. Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay, The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath, Hast sung thine answer to the songs that breathe Through ages, and through ages far away.

And thou hast heard the pulse of Pindar beat, Known Horace by the fount Bardusian! Their deathless line thy living strains repeat, But ah, thy voice is sad, thy roses wan, But ah, thy honey is not cloying sweet, Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.