POETRY.

SONNETS IN MY LIBRARY.

GIBBON'S "MEMOIRS."

I.

HE lived to learn ; to watch his knowledge grow ;

Nightly to question what advance precise Twelve hours had given to that tide of ice. If passionate, passionate only to lay low Soul-highness, polishing his word-gems slow As tides work pebbles smooth, until his nice

Sarcastic taste could say,—" Let this suffice!" Marvel not then that to love's creed his no He hiSs'd, and in the volume of his book

Suspected every lily for its whiteness, All large heart-poetry for lack of prose.

The Alpine majesty, the ample rose,

The novelties of God he could not brook,—

The love that is of love the essential Brightness.

u.

Wherefore his picture evermore was hued Over with colours, peradventure fine, But mix'd not for a Heav'n-conceived design.

A creed that like the sacred mountain stood Sunlighted depth or moonlit amplitude, Majestic, measureless, with trim tape-line Did he attempt, and scorned, being undivine, The excess divine, the tropic rain of God.

Faith's flowers mast die where heart-air is so chilly; Fair must seem false when love's so little kind, Denying love when love is nobly new.

The virgin's fingers fold a tarnish'd lily For those who scorn virginity. The blind Are proof against sweet proof that Heav'n is blue.

Yet with what art, tJaro' what enormous space, With what innumerous threads how deftly plaam'd,.

Silverly separate in the subtle hand, He winds the stories to their central place.

Nothing so false as may such art disgrace; But colours here deliberately wann'd, There as of fabled sunsets fading grand Upon grey gods of high pathetic face.

Faint thro' the laurel groves of Antioch The last hymn dies, and the earth's large regret Divinely wails tlu'o' many a dusk-gold lawn.

Then a stern symbol rises from the rock, The cross of Roman Syria grimly set Leafless, dim-lit in leaden-colour'd dawn.

WILLIAM DERRY AND RAPHOE-