Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops,
Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:
Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise,
Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.
Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree
Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.
Here may life on death or death on life be painted.
Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!

Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,

I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; Streaming like the flag-reed South-West blown; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: All seem to know what is for heaven alone.

George Eliot

1819-1880

"O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE"

(1867)

Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exiguum.- Cicero, ad Att., XII. 18

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirr'd to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, fail'd, and agoniz'd
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv'd;
Its discords, quench'd by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobb'd religiously in yearning song,
That watch'd to ease the burthen of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must he,

And what may yet be better,-saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shap'd it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mix'd with love,-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gather'd like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread forever.

This is life to come,
Which martyr'd men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffus'd,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

Alfred Austin

1835

LONGING

(From Soliloquies in Song, 1882)

I.

The hill slopes down to the valley, the stream runs down to the sea,

And my heart, my heart, O far one! sets and strains towards thee.

But only the feet of the mountain are felt by the rim of the plain,

And the source and soul of the hurrying stream reach not the calling main.

II.

The dawn is sick for the daylight, the morning yearns for the noon,

And the twilight sighs for the evening star and the rising of the moon.

But the dawn and the daylight never were seen in the self-same skies,

And the gloaming dies of its own desire when the moon and the stars arise.

III.

The Springtime calls to the Summer, "Oh, mingle your life with mine,"

And Summer to Autumn 'plaineth low, “Must the harvest be only thine?"

But the daffodil dies when the swallow comes, ere the leaf is the blossom fled;

And when Autumn sits on her golden sheaves, then the reign of the rose is dead.

IV.

And hunger and thirst, and wail and want, are lost in the empty air,

And the heavenly spirit vainly pines for the touch of the earthly fair.

And the hill slopes down to the valley, the stream runs down to the sea,

And my heart, my heart, O far one! sets and strains towards thee.

SONNETS

WRITTEN IN MID-CHANNEL

(From the same)

I.

Now upon English soil I soon shall stand,
Homeward from climes that fancy deems more fair;
And well I know that there will greet me there
No soft foam fawning upon smiling strand,
No scent of orange-groves, no zephyrs bland,
But Amazonian March, with breast half bare
And sleety arrows whistling through the air,
Will be my welcome from that burly land.
Yet he who boasts his birthplace yonder lies,
Owns in his heart a mood akin to scorn

For sensuous slopes that bask 'neath Southern skies,
Teeming with wine and prodigal of corn,

And, gazing through the mist with misty eyes,
Blesses the brave bleak land where he was born.

II.

And wherefore feels he thus? Because its shore
Nor conqueror's foot 1 r despot's may defile,

But Freedom walks unarmed about the isle,

And Peace sits musing beside each man's door.
Beyond these straits, the wild-beast mob may roar,
Elsewhere the veering demagogue beguile:

We, hand in hand with the Past, look on and smile, And tread the ways our fathers trod before.

What though some wretch, whose glory you may trace
Past lonely hearths and unrecorded graves,

Round his Sword-sceptre summoning swarms of slaves,
Menace our shores with conflict or disgrace,—
We laugh behind the bulwark of the waves,
And fling the foam defiant in his face.

Matthew Arnold

1822-1888

TO MARGUERITE

(From Switzerland, 1857)

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,

Across the sounds and channels pour