ENGLAND From Balder> HIS dear English land! This happy England, loud with brooks and birds, And bloomed from hill to dell: but whose best flowers Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart; In quiet grave-yards willowed seemly round, Through unremembered years, around whose base Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains, Lift their great virtues through all clouds of Fate To keep the gods above us! NOR AMERICA OR force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand Far, yet unsevered,- children brave and free And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream. THE AMY'S SONG OF THE WILLOW From Balder> HE years they come, and the years they go, All in the dew-fall and the rain. Down by the stream there be two sweet willows, Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,-One hale, one blighted, two wedded willows, All in the dew-fall and the rain. She is blighted, the fair young willow; - Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,-She hears the spring-blood beat in the bark; She hears the spring-leaf bud on the bough; But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow, The stream runs sparkling under the willow, Sometimes the wind lifts the bright stream to her, -Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,The false stream sinks, and her tears fall faster; Because she touched it her tears fall faster; Over the stream her tears fall faster, All in the sunshine or the rain. The years they come, and the years they go, And under mine eyes shines the bright life-river: Sweet sounds the spring in the hale green willow, But I bend blighted, the wan weeping willow, 4741 AUSTIN DOBSON (1840-) BY ESTHER SINGLETON FIRST thought it seems difficult to consider Austin Dobson as belonging to the Victorian period, so entirely is he saturated with the spirit of the eighteenth century. A careful study of his verse reveals the fact that the Georgian era, seen through the vista of his poetic imagination, is divested of all that is coarse, dark, gross, and prosaic. The mental atmosphere and the types and characters that he gives, express only beauty and charm. One approaches the poems of Austin Dob son as one stands before a rare collection of enamels, fan-mounts, jeweled snuff-boxes, and delicate carvings in ivory and silver; and after delighting in the beauty and finish of these graceful curios, passes into a gallery of paintings and water-colors, suggesting Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Meissonier, and Greuze. We also wander among trim boxhedges and quaint gardens of roses and bright hollyhocks; lean by sun-dials to watch the shadow of Time; and enjoy the sight of gay belles, patched and powdered and dressed in brocaded gowns and gypsy hats. Gallant beaux, such as are associated with Reynolds's portraits, appear, and hand them into sedan-chairs or lead them through stately minuets to the notes of Rameau, Couperin, and Arne. Just as the scent of rose-leaves, lavender, and musk rises from antique Chinese jars, so Dobson's delicate verse reconstructs a life AUSTIN DOBSON "Of fashion gone, and half-forgotten ways." He is equally at home in France. Nothing could be more sympathetic and exquisite than 'A Revolutionary Relic, The Curé's Progress,' 'Une Marquise,' and the 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' one of which is cited below. In the 'Vers de Société,' as well as his other poetry, Dobson fulfills all the requirements of light verse- charm, mockery, pathos, banter, and, while apparently skimming the surface, often shows us 4742 the strange depths of the human heart. He blends so many qualities that he deserves the praise of T. B. Aldrich, who says, "Austin Dobson has the grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is easily master of both in metrical art." Henry Austin Dobson, the son of Mr. George Clarisse Dobson, a civil engineer, was born in Plymouth, England, January 18th 1840. His early years were spent in Anglesea, and after receiving his education in Beaumaris, Coventry, and Strasburg, he returned to England to become a civil engineer. In 1856 he entered the civil service of Great Britain, and ever since that date he has held offices in the Board of Trade. His leisure was devoted to literature, and when Anthony Trollope first issued his magazine St. Paul's in 1868, he introduced to the public the verse of Austin Dobson. In 1873 his fugitive poems were published in a small volume entitled 'Vignettes in Rhyme' and 'Vers de Société.' This was followed in 1877 by 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and both books, with additional poems, were printed again in two volumes: 'Old World Idylls' (1883), and 'At the Sign of the Lyre' (1885). Mr. Dobson's original essays are contained in three volumes: 'Four Frenchwomen,' studies of Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, the Princess de Lamballe, and Madame de Genlis (1890), and Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (first series 1892, second series 1894), which touch upon a host of picturesque and fascinating themes. He has written also several biographies: of Hogarth, of Fielding, of Steele (1886), of Goldsmith (1888), and a 'Memoir of Horace Walpole' (1890). He has also written felicitous critical introductions to many new editions of the eighteenth-century classics. Austin Dobson has been most happy in breathing English life into the old poems of French verse, such as ballades, villanelles, roundels, and rondeaux; and he has also written clever and satirical fables, cast in the form and temper of Gay and Prior, with quaint obsolete affectations, redolent of the classic age of Anne. So serious is his attitude towards art, and so large his audience, that the hope expressed in the following rondeau will certainly be realized: IN AFTER days, when grasses high I shall not see the morning sky I shall not hear the night-wind sigh; I shall be mute, as all men must, |