ENVOI*

In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird.

UPON A CHILD

Of such is the kingdom of heaven.
No glory that ever was shed
From the crowning star of the seven
That crown the north world's head,

No word that ever was spoken

Of human or godlike tongue, Gave ever such godlike token Since human harps were strung.

No sign that ever was given

To faithful or faithless eyes
Showed ever beyond clouds riven
So clear a Paradise.

Earth's creeds may be seventy times seven
And blood have defiled each creed:
If of such be the kingdom of heaven,
It must be heaven indeed.

A CHILD'S LAUGHTER
All the bells of heaven may ring,
All the birds of heaven may sing,
All the wells on earth may spring,
All the winds on earth may bring

All sweet sounds together;
Sweeter far than all things heard,
Hand of harper, tone of bird,
Sound of woods at sundawn stirr'd,
Welling water's winsome word,

Wind in warm wan weather,
One thing yet there is, that none
Hearing ere its chime be done
Knows not well the sweetest one
Heard of man beneath the sun,

Hoped in heaven hereafter;
Soft and strong and loud and light,
Very sound of very light

Heard from morning's rosiest height,
When the soul of all delight

Fills a child's clear laughter.
Golden bells of welcome roll'd
Never forth such notes, nor told

* L'envoi, or "the despatch," was the name formerly given to the closing lines of a ballade, containing an address to some prince, or poet's patron; see The Compleynt of Chaucer to his Purse, p. 62. In modern imitations, this address can be only a formula and is frequently omitted, the envoi being merely a summary, or an appended stanza completing the metrical scheme.

Hours so blithe in tones so bold, As the radiant mouth of gold

Here that rings forth heaven. If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale-why, then Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of seven.

A BABY'S DEATH*

I

A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul.

Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,
Not knowing beyond this blind world's girth
What things are writ in heaven's full scroll.

Our fruitfulness is there but dearth,
And all things held in time's control
Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth
A little soul.

II

The little feet that never trod
Earth, never strayed in field or street,
What hand leads upward back to God
The little feet?

A rose in June's most honied heat,
When life makes keen the kindling sod,
Was not so soft and warm and sweet.

Their pilgrimage's period

A few swift moons have seen complete
Since mother's hands first clasped and shod
The little feet.

III

The little hands that never sought
Earth's prizes, worthless all as sands,
What gift has death, God's servant, brought
The little hands?

We ask but love's self silent stands,
Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought
To search where death's dim heaven expands.

Ere this, perchance, though love knew nought,
Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,
Where hands of guiding angels caught

The little hands.

* From A Century of Roundels. Of the poem here given in part there are seven sections, each in the form of a roundel with regularly recurring refrain. The last three sections. however, vary in length of line, and being of a personal nature detract from the universal appeal of the first four.

sail

and strife,

In the long lyrical epic thus named. Swinburne tells again the story of Tristram and Iseult, which shares with that of Siegfried and Brunhild the distinction of being one of the

greatest love stories of the world. "The world of Swinburne," says Professor Woodberry, "is well symbolized by that Zodiac of the burning signs of love that he named in the prelude to Tristram of Lyonesse,-the signs of Helen, Hero, Alcyone, Iseult. Rosa mond, Dido. Juliet, Cleopatra, Francesca, Thisbe, Angelica, Guenevere; under the

heavens of these starry names the poet moves in his place apart and sees his visions of woe and wrath and weaves his dream of the

loves and the fates of men."

cease,

Past fear and hope, hath in it only peace. Yet of these lives inlaid with hopes and fears,

Spun fine as fire and jewelled thick with tears, These lives made out of loves that long since were,

Lives wrought as ours of earth and burning air, 230

Fugitive flame, and water of secret springs, And clothed with joys and sorrows as with wings,

Some yet are good, if aught be good, to save Some while from washing wreck and wrecking

wave.

Was such not theirs, the twain I take, and give
Out of my life to make their dead life live
Some days of mine, and blow my living breath
Between dead lips forgotten even of death?
So many and many ere me have given my twain
Love and live song and honey-hearted pain, 240 |
Whose root is sweetness and whose fruit is
sweet,

So many and with such joy have tracked their feet,

dream which did for him the office of the finer sort of memory, bringing its object to mind with a great clearness, yet, as sometimes happens in dreams, raised a little above itself, and above ordinary retrospect. The true aspect of the place, especially of the house there in which he had lived as a child, the fashion of its doors, its hearths, its windows, the very scent upon the air of it, was with him in sleep for a season; only, with tints more musically blent on wall and floor, and some finer light and shadow running in and out along its curves and angles, and with all its little carvings daintier. He awoke with a sigh at the thought of almost thirty years which lay between him and that place, yet with a flutter of pleasure still within him at the fair light, as if it were a smile, upon it. And it happened that this accident of his dream was just the thing needed for the beginning of a certain design he then had in view, the noting, namely, of some things in the story of his spirit-in that process of brain-building by which we are, each one of us, what we are. With the image of the place so clear and favourable upon him, he fell to thinking of himself therein, and how his thoughts had grown up to him. In that half-spiritualised house he could watch the better, over again, the gradual expansion of the soul which had

break,

Between the green and foam is fair to take For any sail the sea-wind steers for me From morning into morning, sea to sea.

WALTER PATER (1839-1894)

THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE*

As Florian Deleal walked, one hot afternoon, he overtook by the wayside a poor aged man, and, as he seemed weary with the road, helped him on with the burden which he carried, a certain distance. And as the man told his story, it chanced that he named the place, a little place in the neighbourhood of a great city, where Florian had passed his earliest years, but which he had never since seen, and, the

played on him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey.

The old house, as when Florian talked of it afterwards he always called it, (as all children do, who can recollect a change of home, soon enough but not too soon to mark a period in their lives) really was an old house; and an

element of French descent in its inmates

i Pater's fondness for participles partakes rather more of Latin than of English style. Note, too, the difficulty of resuming, in the close of this sentence, the grammatical subject of the beginning.

pure, unmixed