And our hosts undaunted stood- On darkness grew the daylight, On your banner bright unfurled In your keeping lay the safety of the lands; And ye held and raised them all in your dauntless hearts and hands! But when the warrior dieth, His comrades in the war, With arms reversed and muffled drums, Follow his funeral car: They show the banners taken, They tell his battles won, And after him lead his masterless steed, While peals the minute-gun. Amid the noblest of the land We lay the sage to rest, And give the bard an honoured place, And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings Along the emblazoned wall. This was the truest warrior This the most gifted poet That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher Traced with his golden pen, On the deathless page, truths half so sage As he wrote down for men. And had he not high honour,— And the dark rock-pines,like tossing plumes, And God's own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave? In that strange grave without a name, And stand with glory wrapt around On the hills he never trod, And speak of the strife that won our life With the Incarnate Son of God. O lonely grave in Moab's land! Speak to these curious hearts of ours, He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep :0: MATTHEW ARNOLD. ISEULT OF BRITTANY, AFTER TRISTAN'S DEATH. AND is she happy? Does she see unmoved The days in which she might have lived and loved Slip, without bringing bliss, slowly away, One after one, to-morrow like to-day? Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will: Is it this thought that makes her mien so still, Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet, So sunk,- -so rarely lifted save to meet Her children's? She moves slow; her voice alone Has yet an infantine and silver tone,But even that comes languidly; in truth, She seems one dying in a mask of youth. And now she will go home, and softly lay Her laughing children in their beds, and play Awhile with them before they sleep; and then She'll light her silver lamp, which fisher men, Dragging their nets through the rough waves afar Along this iron coast, know like a star, And take her broidery-frame, and there she 'll sit Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it, Her work away, and let her fingers rove Across the shaggy brows of Tristan's hound, Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground; Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes Fixed, her slight hands clasped on her lap; then rise, And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told Her rosary beads of ebony tipped with gold, Then to her soft sleep; and to-morrow 'll be To-day's exact repeated effigy. Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall; The children, and the gray haired seneschal, Her women, and Sir Tristan's aged hound Are there the sole companions to be found. But these she loves; and noisier life than this She would find ill to bear, weak as she is. She has her children too, and night and day Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play, The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore, The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails, These are to her dear as to them; the tales With which this day the children she beguiled She gleaned from Breton grandames when a child In every hut along this sea-coast wild. She herself loves them, and, when they are told, Can forget all to hear them, as of old. Dear saints! it is not sorrow, as I hear, Not suffering, that shuts up eye and ear To all which has delighted them before, And lets us be what we were once no more. No; we may suffer deeply, yet retain Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, By what of old pleased us, and will again. No 'tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air our spirits are upcurled Until they crumble, or else grow like steelWhich kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power-this can avail, By drying up our joy in everything, To make our former pleasures all seem stale. This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit Of passion, which subdues our souls to it, Till for its sake alone we live and moveCall it ambition, or remorse, or loveThis too can change us wholly, and make seem All that we did before shadow and dream. POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. REST. IS NOT short pain well borne that brings long ease? And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave? Sleep after toil,-port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please. OUR WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH. IF any strength we have, it is to ill, But all the good is God's, both power and eke the will. IN vain he seeks that, having, cannot hold. AN AGED MAN. THERE they do find that godly agèd sire, With snowy locks adown his shoulders shed; As hoary frost with spangles doth attire The mossy branches of an oak half dead. |