I
'BUT
where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.
II
'Because
I fear you,' he answered;--'because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair.'
III
'Oh
that,' she said, 'is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.'
--Elizabeth Barret Browning
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.--
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung
--Tennyson
Kamal
is out with twenty men to raise the Border side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
``Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?''
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar,
``If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
At dusk he harries the Abazai---at dawn he is into Borair,
But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tonuge of Jagai,
But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's
men.
--Rudyard Kipling
WHAT a twitter! what a tumult! what a
whirr of wheeling wings!
Birds of Passage hear the message which
the Equinoctial brings.
Birds of Passage hear the message and
beneath the flying clouds,
Mid the falling leaves of autumn, congregate
in clamorous crowds.
Shall they venture on the voyage? are
the nestlings fledged for flight;
Fit to face the fluctuant storm-winds
and the elemental night?
What a twitter! what a tumult! to the
wild wind's marching song
Multitudinous Birds of Passage round
the cliffs of England throng.
And o'er tempest-trodden Ocean, cloud-entangled
day and night,
Birds on birds, in corporate motion,
wing a commonwealth in flight.
Waves, like hollow graves beneath them,
hoarsely howling, yawn for prey;
And the welkin glooms above them shifting
formless, grey in grey.
And across the Bay of Biscay on undaunted
wing they flee,
Where mild seas move musically murmuring
of the Odyssey;
Where the gurgling whirlpools glitter
and by soft Circean Straits,
Fell Charybdis lies in ambush, and the
ravenous Scylla waits;
Where a large Homeric laughter lingers
in the echoing caves,
And in playful exultation Dolphins leap
from dimpling waves;
Where, above the fair Sicilian, flock-browsed,
flower-pranked meadows, looms
Ætna--hoariest of Volcanoes--ominously
veiled in fumes;
Where the seas roll blue and bluer, high
and higher arch the skies,
And as measureless as ocean new horizons
meet the eyes;
Where at night the ancient heavens bend
above the ancient earth,
With the young-eyed Stars enkindled
fresh as at their hour of birth;
Where old Egypt's desert, stretching
leagues on leagues of level land,
Gleams with threads of channelled waters,
green with palms on either hand;
Where the Fellah strides majestic through
the glimmering dourah plain,
And in rosy flames flamingoes rise from
rustling sugar-cane;--
On and on, along old Nilus, seeking still
an ampler light,
O'er its monumental mountains, Birds
of Passage take their flight.
Where the sacred Isle of Philæ,
twinned within the sacred stream,
Floats, like some rapt Opium-eater's
labyrinthine lotos dream,
Birds on birds take up their quarters
in each creviced capital,
In each crack of frieze and cornice,
in each cleft of roof and wall.
And within those twilight-litten, holy
halls of Death and Birth,
Even the gaily twittering swallows,
even the swallows, hush their breath.
And they cast the passing shadows of
their palpitating wings
O'er the fallen gods of Egypt and the
prostrate heads of Kings.
Even as shadows Birds of Passage cast
upon their onward flight
Have men's generations vanished, waned
and vanished into night.
--Mathilde Blind