POETRY.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

WEEP, if ye have the power to weep,

All flowers of odorous and musical names

That haunt the woodland or the wave of Thames—

Weep, if ye have the power to weep, Let soft dews your quaint eyelids steep, Fling incense from your many-colour'd flames.

Mourn, if ye have the power to mourn, Glaciers and Alpine firs—ye too, sea-isles !— For he is gone who sang your primal smiles, Ere each was from the other torn, In those strange Summers unforlorn Ere ye were parted by the sad blue miles.

Spirits ! if joy perforce must dwell Where Arnold's graceful light upon you breaks, Goethe and all his golden-thoughted Greeks, If ye must hail such stranger well, At least amidst your asphodel

Let roll in silver up the shadowy creeks Some rippled tidings of our woe,—

For ah ! we miss the voice that nobly sings The central calm thro' all disquietings ; The far-off light that circles so The line of everlasting snow ; The beauty hidden in the heart of things.

And we in these cold April bowers, Since Laleham's sod enwrapp'd his hands and feet,

Are poorer by a stately presence sweet—

And miss thro' all the wealth of flow'rs The phrase that made them doubly ours, Poet of fields, of moons, of Marguerite.

Poet, in our poor flurried time, Of fine completeness and of lucid ease; Fair Master of old songs' superbest keys, Magician of the fetterless chime,

Free from the fatal sweets of rhyme, In Sophochian form and cadences,—

Poet of exquisite regret ; Of lines that aye on Time's confused height Out of the storm shall stand in stars of white ; Of thoughts in deepening distance set Perfect in pictured epithet

Touch'd with a pencil-tip of deathless light,—

Poet of high nntrodden snows, Of ocean's indefatigable roll, And of the everlasting human soul Hush'd in immutable repose, On whose white calm no gold or rose

Colours with change the pale immortal whole,—

If we miss sore in songs of thine One Name (which missing, so much more is miss'd), Breath more austerely pure lath never kiss'd Our fever'd brows than blows divine

Over thy lofty starlit line,—

All virgin pages somewhere whisper—Christ !

April, 1888. WILLIAM DERRY AND RAPHOE.