Читать книгу My Commonplace Book онлайн

70 страница из 124

Hope, whose eyes

Can sound the seas unsoundable, the skies

Inaccessible of eyesight; that can see

What earth beholds not, hear what wind and sea

Hear not, and speak what all these crying in one

Can speak not to the sun.

Swinburne (Thalassius).

AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF CHARITIE

In Virgo now the sultry sun did sheene, shine

And hot upon the meads did cast his ray;

The apple reddened from its paly green,

And the soft pear did bend the leafy spray;

The pied chelándry sang the livelong day; goldfinch

’Twas now the pride, the manhood of the year,

And eke the ground was decked in its most deft aumere. apparel

The sun was gleaming in the midst of day.

Dead-still the air, and eke the welkin blue,

When from the sea arose in drear array

A heap of clouds of sable sullen hue,

The which full fast unto the woodland drew,

Hiding at once the sunnès festive face,

And the black tempest swelled, and gathered up apace.

Beneath a holm, fast by a pathway-side holm-oak

Which did unto Saint Godwin’s convent lead,