Poems of To-Day: an Anthology. Various

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        Sombre and rich, the skies;

        Great glooms, and starry plains.

        Gently the night wind sighs;

        Else a vast silence reigns.

        The splendid silence clings

        Around me: and around

        The saddest of all kings

        Crowned, and again discrowned.

        Comely and calm, he rides

        Hard by his own Whitehall:

        Only the night wind glides:

        No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

        Gone, too, his Court; and yet,

        The stars his courtiers are:

        Stars in their stations set;

        And every wandering star.

        Alone he rides, alone,

        The fair and fatal king:

        Dark night is all his own,

        That strange and solemn thing.

        Which are more full of fate:

        The stars; or those sad eyes?

        Which are more still and great:

        Those brows; or the dark skies?

        Although his whole heart yearn

        In passionate tragedy:

        Never was face so stern

        With sweet austerity.

        Vanquished in life, his death

        By beauty made amends:

        The passing of his breath

        Won his defeated ends.

        Brief life and hapless? Nay:

        Through death, life grew sublime.

        Speak after sentence? Yea:

        And to the end of time.

        Armoured he rides, his head

        Bare to the stars of doom:

        He triumphs now, the dead,

        Beholding London's gloom.

        Our wearier spirit faints,

        Vexed in the world's employ:

        His soul was of the saints;

        And art to him was joy.

        King, tried in fires of woe!

        Men hunger for thy grace:

        And through the night I go,

        Loving thy mournful face.

        Yet when the city sleeps;

        When all the cries are still:

        The stars and heavenly deeps

        Work out a perfect will.

          To the forgotten dead,

        Come, let us drink in silence ere we part.

        To every fervent yet resolvèd heart

        That brought its tameless passion and its tears,

        Renunciation and laborious years,

        To lay the deep foundations of our race,

        To rear its stately fabric overhead

        And light its pinnacles with golden grace.

          To the unhonoured dead.

          To the forgotten dead,

        Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein

        Of Fate and hurl into the void again

        Her thunder-hoofed horses, rushing blind

        Earthward along the courses of the wind.

        Among the stars, along the wind in vain

        Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed,

        And nothing, nothing of them doth remain.

          To the thrice-perished dead.

        Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away,

          (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)

        Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,

          An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.

        Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships,

          Wi' sailor-lads a-dancin' heel-an'-toe,

        An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin',

          He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.

        Drake he was a Devon man, an' ruled the Devon seas,

          (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)

        Rovin' tho' his death fell, he went wi' heart at ease,

          An' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.

        "Take СКАЧАТЬ