Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

Thyrsis and I: we still had Thyrsis It irked him to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country

then.

10

[blocks in formation]

yields,

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

With shivering heart the strife we saw

Of passion with eternal law;

And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said, Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head. Physician of the iron age,

Goethe has done his pilgrimage.

He took the suffering human race,

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

And against fear our breast to steel:
Others will strengthen us to bear
But who, ah! who will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly;
But who, like him, will put it by ?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!

He read each wound, each weakness clear; Sing him thy best! for few or none

And struck his finger on the place,

And said, Thou ailest here, and here!

He looked on Europe's dying hour

Of fitful dream and feverish power;

His eye plunged down the weltering strife, The turmoil of expiring life:

He said, The end is everywhere,

Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.

30

[blocks in formation]

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth:
Smiles broke from us, and we had ease; 50
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.

[blocks in formation]

Hear thy voice right, now he is gone.

RUGBY CHAPEL

NOVEMBER, 1857

COLDLY, sadly descends

The autumn evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of withered leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent; hardly a shout

From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the schoolroom windows; but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!
That word gloom to my mind
Brings thee back in the light
Of thy radiant vigor again.

In the gloom of November we passed
Days not dark at thy side;
Seasons impaired not the ray
Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear.
Such thou wast! and I stand
In the autumn evening, and think
Of bygone autumns with thee.

Fifteen years have gone round
Since thou aroseth to tread,
In the summer-morning, the road
Of death, at a call unforeseen,
Sudden. For fifteen years,
We who till then in thy shade
Rested as under the boughs
Of a mighty oak, have endured
Sunshine and rain as we might,

70

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »