ENVOI* In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, UPON A CHILD Of such is the kingdom of heaven. No word that ever was spoken Of human or godlike tongue, Gave ever such godlike token Since human harps were strung. No sign that ever was given To faithful or faithless eyes Earth's creeds may be seventy times seven A CHILD'S LAUGHTER All sweet sounds together; Wind in warm wan weather, Hoped in heaven hereafter; Heard from morning's rosiest height, Fills a child's clear laughter. * L'envoi, or "the despatch," was the name formerly given to the closing lines of a ballade, containing an address to some prince, or poet's patron; see The Compleynt of Chaucer to his Purse, p. 62. In modern imitations, this address can be only a formula and is frequently omitted, the envoi being merely a summary, or an appended stanza completing the metrical scheme. Hours so blithe in tones so bold, As the radiant mouth of gold Here that rings forth heaven. If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale-why, then Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs a child of seven. A BABY'S DEATH* I A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul. Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll, Our fruitfulness is there but dearth, II The little feet that never trod A rose in June's most honied heat, Their pilgrimage's period A few swift moons have seen complete III The little hands that never sought We ask but love's self silent stands, Ere this, perchance, though love knew nought, The little hands. * From A Century of Roundels. Of the poem here given in part there are seven sections, each in the form of a roundel with regularly recurring refrain. The last three sections. however, vary in length of line, and being of a personal nature detract from the universal appeal of the first four. sail Through day and night of things alternative, 20 and strife, In the long lyrical epic thus named. Swinburne tells again the story of Tristram and Iseult, which shares with that of Siegfried and Brunhild the distinction of being one of the greatest love stories of the world. "The world of Swinburne," says Professor Woodberry, "is well symbolized by that Zodiac of the burning signs of love that he named in the prelude to Tristram of Lyonesse,-the signs of Helen, Hero, Alcyone, Iseult. Rosa mond, Dido. Juliet, Cleopatra, Francesca, Thisbe, Angelica, Guenevere; under the heavens of these starry names the poet moves in his place apart and sees his visions of woe and wrath and weaves his dream of the loves and the fates of men." flower; Next like a pale and burning pearl beyond The rose-white sphere of flower-named Rosamond5 Till story and song and glory and all things | Iseult, a light of blossom and beam and Yea, as warm night refashions the sere blood And thought remake their wan funereal fames, To fill the days up of his dateless year, A storm-star that the seafarers of love The lamp-like star of Hero for a lamp; 100 Signs the sweet head of Maytime; and for June moon Her signal sphere, whose Carthaginian pyre A star south-risen that first to music shone, 120 A blood-bright ruby; last save one light shines 4 Her story has been told by Malory. Tennyson (Idylls of the King. "The Last Tournament"), Arnold, Wagner, etc. 5 The "Fair Rosamond" of Henry II. See Scott's The Talisman and Woodstock. 6 Virgil: Aeneid, iv. 7 Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. 8 Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra. 9 Alluding to the story that after Phaethon's fatal Of swords and harps in heaven that ring it | And hers13 who made as God's own eyes to round, Last love-light and last love-song of the year 's, Tull of the sun, the sun-god which is love, For these too, these my lovers, these my twain, Sweep through the flameless fire of air that Before men's eyes incognisable God; Saw love and wrath and light and night and fire From heaven to heaven with thunder of wheels Live with one life and at one mouth respire, The shadow of death and shadow of life compel This, though his ear be sealed to all that live, Through semblances of heaven and false-faced | Be it lightly given or lothly, God must give. hell, We, as the men whose name on earth is none, Through dreams of light and dreams of dark- We too shall surely pass out of the sun; ness tost 210 Out of the sound and eyeless light of things, Wide as the naked world and shadowless, Clothed with light life and fruitful with light story told, went forward on his journey comlove, forted. And that night, like a reward for his With hopes that threaten, and with fears that pity, a dream of that place came to Florian, a cease, Past fear and hope, hath in it only peace. Yet of these lives inlaid with hopes and fears, Spun fine as fire and jewelled thick with tears, These lives made out of loves that long since were, Lives wrought as ours of earth and burning air, 230 Fugitive flame, and water of secret springs, And clothed with joys and sorrows as with wings, Some yet are good, if aught be good, to save Some while from washing wreck and wrecking wave. Was such not theirs, the twain I take, and give So many and with such joy have tracked their feet, dream which did for him the office of the finer sort of memory, bringing its object to mind with a great clearness, yet, as sometimes happens in dreams, raised a little above itself, and above ordinary retrospect. The true aspect of the place, especially of the house there in which he had lived as a child, the fashion of its doors, its hearths, its windows, the very scent upon the air of it, was with him in sleep for a season; only, with tints more musically blent on wall and floor, and some finer light and shadow running in and out along its curves and angles, and with all its little carvings daintier. He awoke with a sigh at the thought of almost thirty years which lay between him and that place, yet with a flutter of pleasure still within him at the fair light, as if it were a smile, upon it. And it happened that this accident of his dream was just the thing needed for the beginning of a certain design he then had in view, the noting, namely, of some things in the story of his spirit-in that process of brain-building by which we are, each one of us, what we are. With the image of the place so clear and favourable upon him, he fell to thinking of himself therein, and how his thoughts had grown up to him. In that half-spiritualised house he could watch the better, over again, the gradual expansion of the soul which had What should I do to follow? yet I too, break, Between the green and foam is fair to take For any sail the sea-wind steers for me From morning into morning, sea to sea. WALTER PATER (1839-1894) THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE* the law which makes the material objects about them so large an element in children's lives, it had actually become a part; inward and out250 ward being woven through and through each other into one inextricable texture-half, tint and trace and accident of homely colour and form, from the wood and the bricks; half, meres soul-stuff, floated thither from who knows how far. In the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving, and could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had As Florian Deleal walked, one hot afternoon, he overtook by the wayside a poor aged man, and, as he seemed weary with the road, helped him on with the burden which he carried, a certain distance. And as the man told his story, it chanced that he named the place, a little place in the neighbourhood of a great city, where Florian had passed his earliest years, but which he had never since seen, and, the played on him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey. The old house, as when Florian talked of it afterwards he always called it, (as all children do, who can recollect a change of home, soon enough but not too soon to mark a period in their lives) really was an old house; and an element of French descent in its inmates i Pater's fondness for participles partakes rather more of Latin than of English style. Note, too, the difficulty of resuming, in the close of this sentence, the grammatical subject of the beginning. When originally published in 1878 this essay pure, unmixed |