THE year goes out in storm. The sky is full
Of vaporous turmoil; the Atlantic waves,
Convulsed and batter’d into tawny froth,
Welter upon the beach, or, thundering white,
Scale the black cliff, and ever fall rebuff’d.
To-night the spirits of air rage round this house,
And sometimes through the wafted curtain bow
My taper’s slender pyramid, whose light
Flickers on names of power, that live emboss’d
In jewels on great shrines (their wealthiest shrines
And durablest are here), with others, too,
This age keeps count of on her civic roll,
Scarce proudly enough, and humbly not enough, —
Amidst th’ antique and new perennial peers,
Thine, LANDOR. Ruffle not, ye wintry blasts,
That brow beneath its coronal, for Time’s
Unwearied breath may never thin a bud
The coronal upon that brow! Blow soft
Along the Vale of Springs whilst he is there!
Nor visit fiercely my unshelter’d door,
Who from this utmost edge, remote and rude,
Dare to that valley on your pinions waft
A hymnal greeting — ah, too wildly dare!
Were not the lower still the harsher judge.
Yet hear me, tempests! — as ye drown that toll,
Time’s footfall on the mystic boundary
That severs year from year — could such a wind
Blow out of any quarter of the heaven
As to lay ruin’d, worse than Nineveh,
The thrones where men of serpent forehead sit,
And eyes of smoky hell-spark, with their spur
Firm in the people’s neck; nor less indignant,
Shatter their chairs, whose white, angelic robes
Drape the hog-paunch, or lend the juggler sleeve —
Swift purifier! whirl them to the mud!
Ay, the Lord lives, and, therefore, down with ye!
Rotten impostors, down! Could such a wind
Blow out of any quarter of the heaven,
Content, my habitancy, like a twig,
Torn in the mighty tempest, would I crawl,
Shivering for shelter, or scoop out a cave
Among the creatures in the benty sand,
Or else need none.
Dark clouds are taking wing
Out of the wave continually. They fly
Over those heaps of benty sand, and moor,
And mountain, eastward, hurrying to the dawn;
There where a New Day and New Year roll up
In misty light. Eastward I look and hail
Thee, LANDOR, with the Year; inscrutable
In all its fates; and over all its fates
The throne of God, eternal, just, serene.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.
QUAM bene sermones scripsisti ab imagine dictos,
Vita in imaginibus sed patet usque tuis.
C. DELA PRYME.
FORTIOR est nemo quàm tu, generose Savagî!
Nemo est Romano dignior ore loqui.
Rugbæos igitur celebraberis inter alumnos
Quot sacer Aonia proluit amnis aqnâ.
S. B.