HESTER

WHEN maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try
With vain endeavour.

A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led

To think upon the wormy bed,
And her together.

Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flush'd her spirit:

I know not by what name beside

I shall it call: if 't was not pride,

It was a joy to that allied,

She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool;
But she was train'd in Nature's school;

Nature had blest her.

1803.

A waking eye, a prying mind;

A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind;
Ye could not Hester.

My sprightly neighbour! gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
Some summer morning,

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet forewarning?

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Charles Lamb.

TO THE SISTER OF ELIA

COMFORT thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile!

Again shall Elia's smile

Refresh thy heart, where heart can ache no more. What is it we deplore?

He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and

years,

Far worthier things than tears.

The love of friends without a single foe:
Unequalled lot below!

His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine;
For these dost thou repine?

He may have left the lowly walks of men;
Left them he has; what then?

Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes
Of all the good and wise?

Tho' the warm day is over, yet they seek
Upon the lofty peak

Of his pure mind the roseate light that glows
O'er death's perennial snows.

Behold him! from the region of the blest
He speaks: he bids thee rest.

1837.

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Walter Savage Landor.

MEMORIAL VERSES

GOETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb-

We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul

Had felt him like the thunder's roll.

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.

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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,

He read each wound, each weakness clear; 20

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.

And Wordsworth!-Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us-and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!

He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.

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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;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit 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.

Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
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!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.

1850.

Matthew Arnold.

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