The years will pass, and hearts will range,
You conquer Time, and Care, and Change.
Though Time doth still delight to shed
The dust on many a younger head;
Though Care, oft coming, hath the guile
From younger lips to steal the smile;
Though Change makes younger hearts wax cold,
And sells new loves for loves of old,
Time, Change, nor Care, hath learned the art
To fleck your hair, to chill your heart,
To touch your tresses with the snow,
To mar your mirth of long ago.
Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure,
Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure,
The love which flows from sacred springs,
In ‘old unhappy far-off things,’
From sympathies in grief and joy,
Through all the years of man and boy.

Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strung
When even this ‘brindled’ head was young
I bring, and later rhymes I bring
That flit upon as weak a wing,
But still for you, for yours, they sing!

Many of the verses and translations in this volume were published first in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872). Though very sensible that they have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I print them again because people I like have liked them. The rest are of different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of having been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College Lectures. I would gladly have added to this volume what other more or less serious rhymes I have written, but circumstances over which I have no control have bound them up with Ballades, and other toys of that sort.

It may be as well to repeat in prose, what has already been said in verse, that Grass of Parnassus, the pretty Autumn flower, grows in the marshes at the foot of the Muses’ Hill, and other hills, not at the top by any means.

Several of the versions from the Greek Anthology have been published in the Fortnightly Review, and the sonnet on Colonel Burnaby appeared in Punch. These, with pieces from other serials, are reprinted by the courteous permission of the Editors.

The verses that were published in Ballades and Lyrics, and in Ballads and Verses Vain (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York), are marked in the contents with an asterisk.

GRASS OF PARNASSUS

Pale star that by the lochs of Galloway,
   In wet green places ’twixt the depth and height
Dost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away,
   When now the moors have doffed the heather bright,
   Grass of Parnassus, flower of my delight,
How gladly with the unpermitted bay—
Garlands not mine, and leaves that not decay—
   How gladly would I twine thee if I might!

The bays are out of reach! But far below
   The peaks forbidden of the Muses’ Hill,
Grass of Parnassus, thy returning snow
   Between September and October chill
Doth speak to me of Autumns long ago,
   And these kind faces that are with me still.

DEEDS OF MEN

αειδε δ’ αρα κλέα ανδρων

TO

COLONEL IAN HAMILTON

To you, who know the face of war,
You, that for England wander far,
You that have seen the Ghazis fly
From English lads not sworn to die,
You that have lain where, deadly chill,
The mist crept o’er the Shameful Hill,
You that have conquered, mile by mile,
The currents of unfriendly Nile,
And cheered the march, and eased the strain
When Politics made valour vain,
Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,
We send our lays of Englishmen!

SEEKERS FOR A CITY

“Believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill visible to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed thither.. But the number and variety of the ways! For you know, There is but one road that leads to Corinth.”

Hermotimus (Mr Pater’s Version).

“The Poet says, dear city of Cecrops, and wilt thou not say, dear city of Zeus?”

M. Antoninus.

To Corinth leads one road, you say:
Is there a Corinth, or a way?
Each bland or blatant preacher hath
His painful or his primrose path,
And not a soul of all of these
But knows the city ’twixt the seas,
Her fair unnumbered homes and all
Her gleaming amethystine wall!

Blind are the guides who know the way,
The guides who write, and preach, and pray,
I watch their lives, and I divine
They differ not from yours and mine!

One man we knew, and only one,
Whose seeking for a city’s done,
For what he greatly sought he found,
A city girt with fire around,
A city in an empty land
Between the wastes of sky and sand,
A city on a river-side,
Where by the folk he loved, he died. ¹

Alas! it is not ours to tread
That path wherein his life he led,
Not ours his heart to dare and feel,
Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel;
Yet are we not quite city-less,
Not wholly left in our distress —
Is it not said by One of old,
Sheep have I of another fold?
Ah! faint of heart, and weak of will,
For us there is a city still!

Dear city of Zeus, the Stoic says, ²
The Voice from Rome’s imperial days,
In Thee meet all things, and disperse,
In Thee, for Thee, O Universe!
To me all’s fruit thy seasons bring,
Alike thy summer and thy spring;
The winds that wail, the suns that burn,
From Thee proceed, to Thee return.

Dear city of Zeus, shall we not say,
Home to which none can lose the way!
Born in that city’s flaming bound,
We do not find her, but are found.
Within her wide and viewless wall
The Universe is girdled all.
All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth,
All things that travail on the earth,
God’s will they work, if God there be,
If not, what is my life to me?

Seek we no further, but abide
Within this city great and wide,
In her and for her living, we
Have no less joy than to be free;
Nor death nor grief can quite appal
The folk that dwell within her wall,
Nor aught but with our will befall!

THE WHITE PACHA

Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave,
He perished with the folk he could not save,
And though none surely told us he is dead,
And though perchance another in his stead,
Another, not less brave, when all was done,
Had fled unto the southward and the sun,
Had urged a way by force, or won by guile
To streams remotest of the secret Nile,
Had raised an army of the Desert men,
And, waiting for his hour, had turned again
And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know
Gordon is dead, and these things are not so!
Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restore
Her trampled flag – for he loved Honour more —
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
He will not come again, whate’er our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed
From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings.
Nay, somewhere by the sacred River’s shore
He sleeps like those who shall return no more,
No more return for all the prayers of men —
Arthur and Charles – they never come again!
They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem:
Whate’er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream!

MIDNIGHT, JANUARY 25, 1886

To-morrow is a year since Gordon died!
   A year ago to-night, the Desert still
   Crouched on the spring, and panted for its fill
Of lust and blood. Their old art statesmen plied,
And paltered, and evaded, and denied;
   Guiltless as yet, except for feeble will,
   And craven heart, and calculated skill
In long delays, of their great homicide.

A year ago to-night ’twas not too late.
   The thought comes through our mirth, again, again;
Methinks I hear the halting foot of Fate
   Approaching and approaching us; and then
Comes cackle of the House, and the Debate!
   Enough; he is forgotten amongst men.

ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA

ON THE OFFER OF HELP FROM THE AUSTRALIANS AFTER THE FALL OF KHARTOUM

Sons of the giant Ocean isle
   In sport our friendly foes for long,
Well England loves you, and we smile
When you outmatch us many a while,
   So fleet you are, so keen and strong.

You, like that fairy people set
   Of old in their enchanted sea
Far off from men, might well forget
An elder nation’s toil and fret,
   Might heed not aught but game and glee.

But what your fathers were you are
   In lands the fathers never knew,
’Neath skies of alien sign and star
You rally to the English war;
   Your hearts are English, kind and true.

And now, when first on England falls
   The shadow of a darkening fate,
You hear the Mother ere she calls,
You leave your ocean-girdled walls,
   And face her foemen in the gate.

COLONEL BURNABY

συ δ’ εν στροφάλιγγι κονίης

κεισο μέγας μεγαλωστι, λελασμένος ιπποσυνάων

Thou that on every field of earth and sky
   Didst hunt for Death, who seemed to flee and fear,
How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie
   Slain in the Desert by some wandering spear:
‘Not here, alas!’ may England say, ‘not here
   Nor in this quarrel was it meet to die,
   But in that dreadful battle drawing nigh
To thunder through the Afghan passes sheer:

Like Aias by the ships shouldst thou have stood,
   And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight,
   The bulwark of thy people and their shield,
When Indus or when Helmund ran with blood,
   Till back into the Northland and the Night
   The smitten Eagles scattered from the field.’