The Husband's Petition And deem not that a shadow Hath fallen across my love: Ah! Jane, how white they be!- Thou wilt not sure deny me When, hand in hand, we wandered By all we felt, unspoken, When 'neath the early moon, We sat beside the rivulet, In the leafy month of June; And by the broken whisper, That fell upon my ear, More sweet than angel-music, When first I woo'd thee, dear! By that great vow which bound thee And by the ring that made thee But bend thee to the task A BOILED SHEEP'S HEAD ON SUNDAY 455 William E. Aytoun. LINES WRITTEN AFTER A BATTLE BY AN ASSISTANT SURGEON OF THE NINETEENTH NANKEENS STIFF are the warrior's muscles, Will he excite his bile. A vein no longer bleeds- Compress'd, alas! the thorax, Not e'en a dose of borax Could make it throb again. All shatter'd too, his head: Still is the epiglottis The warrior is dead. Unknown. LINES ** **** ***** ADDRESSED TO ON THE 29TH OF SEPTEMBER, WHEN WE PARTED FOR THE LAST TIME I HAVE watch'd thee with rapture, and dwelt on thy charms, But thy life now depends on a frail silken thread, The Imaginative Crisis Sole being that cherish'd my poor troubled heart! 457 Thou know'st all its secrets-each joy and each grief; And in sharing them all thou did'st ever impart To its sorrows a gentle and soothing relief. The last of a long and affectionate race, As thy days are declining I love thee the more, For I feel that thy loss I can never replace That thy death will but leave me to weep and deplore. Unchanged, thou shalt live in the mem'ry of years, I cannot-I will not-forget what thou wert! While the thoughts of thy love as they call forth my tears, In fancy will wash thee once more-MY LAST SHIRT. Unknown. THE IMAGINATIVE CRISIS Он, solitude! thou wonder-working fay, Unknown. IX THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL ONE, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is; Surely, this is not that; but that is assuredly this. What, and wherefore, and whence: for under is over and under; If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without? Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover; Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over. One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two; Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true. Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew; One, whom we see not, is; and one, who is not, we see; Fiddle, we know, is diddle; and diddle, we take it, is dee. Algernon Charles Swinburne. Nephelidia NEPHELIDIA 4.59 FROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous moonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat? Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation, Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death; Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error, Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath. Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses Sweetens the stress of surprising suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh; Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses, "Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die." Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be, While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod; Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby, |