That with the reigning taste 'tis vain to quarrel,
And Burns might teach his votaries to drink,

And Byron never meant to make them moral.
You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink

From lauding you and giving you the laurel;
The Germans too, those men of blood and iron,

Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron.
Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods!

Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit,
Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds,

Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit;
Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies' rods,

Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit;
Beholding whom, men think how fairer far

Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! {9}
LETTER--To Omar Khayyam

Wise Omar, do the Southern Breezes fling
Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring,

The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose,
The wild white Roses you were wont to sing?

Far in the South I know a Land divine, {10}
And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine,

And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows
Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine.

You were a Saint of unbelieving Days,
Liking your Life and happy in Men's Praise;

Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough,
Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways.

Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or Hell,
Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell,

Content to know not all thou knowest now,
What's Death? Doth any Pitcher dread the Well?

The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill,
Shall He torment them if they chance to spill?

Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast
Forth and forgotten,--and what will be will!

So still were we, before the Months began
That rounded us and shaped us into Man.

So still we SHALL be, surely, at the last,
Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban!

Ah, strange it seems that this thy common Thought -
How all Things have been, ay, and shall be nought -

Was ancient Wisdom in thine ancient East,
In those old Days when Senlac Fight was fought,

Which gave our England for a captive Land
To pious Chiefs of a believing Band,

A gift to the Believer from the Priest,
Tossed from the holy to the blood-red Hand! {11}

Yea, thou wert singing when that Arrow clave
Through Helm and Brain of him who could not save

His England, even of Harold Godwin's son;
The high Tide murmurs by the Hero's Grave! {12}

And THOU wert wreathing Roses--who can tell? -
Or chanting for some Girl that pleased thee well,

Or satst at Wine in Nashapur, when dun
The twilight veiled the Field where Harold fell!

The salt Sea-waves above him rage and roam!
Along the white Walls of his guarded Home

No Zephyr stirs the Rose, but o'er the Wave
The wild Wind beats the Breakers into Foam!

And dear to him, as Roses were to thee,
Rings the long Roar of Onset of the Sea;

The SWAN'S PATH of his Fathers is his Grave:
His Sleep, methinks, is sound as thine can be.

His was the Age of Faith, when all the West
Looked to the Priest for Torment or for Rest;

And thou wert living then, and didst not heed
The Saint who banned thee or the Saint who blessed!

Ages of Progress! These eight hundred Years
Hath Europe shuddered with her Hopes or Fears,

And now!--she listens in the Wilderness
To THEE, and half believeth what she hears!

Hadst THOU THE SECRET? Ah, and who may tell?
"An Hour we have," thou saidst; "Ah, waste it well!"

An Hour we have, and yet Eternity
Looms o'er us, and the Thought of Heaven or Hell!

Nay, we can never be as wise as thou,
O idle Singer 'neath the blossomed Bough.

Nay, and we cannot be content to die.
WE cannot shirk the Questions "Where?" and "How?"

Ah, not from learned Peace and gay Content
Shall we of England go the way HE went -

The Singer of the Red Wine and the Rose -
Nay, otherwise than HIS our Day is spent!

Serene he dwelt in fragrant Nashapur,
But we must wander while the Stars endure.

HE knew THE SECRET: we have none that knows,
No Man so sure as Omar once was sure!

LETTER--To Q. Horatius Flaccus
In what manner of Paradise are we to conceive that you, Horace, are

dwelling, or what region of immortality can give you such pleasures
as this life afforded? The country and the town, nature and men,

who knew them so well as you, or who ever so wisely made the best of
those two worlds? Truly here you had good things, nor do you ever,

in all your poems, look for more delight in the life beyond; you
never expect consolation for present sorrow, and when you once have

shaken hands with a friend the parting seems to you eternal.
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus

Tam cari capitis?
So you sing, for the dear head you mourn has sunk, for ever, beneath

the wave. Virgil might wander forth bearing the golden branch "the
Sibyl doth to singing men allow," and might visit, as one not wholly

without hope, the dim dwellings of the dead and the unborn. To him
was it permitted to see and sing "mothers and men, and the bodies

outworn of mighty heroes, boys and unwedded maids, and young men
borne to the funeral fire before their parent's eyes." The endless

caravan swept past him--"many as fluttering leaves that drop and
fall in autumn woods when the first frost begins; many as birds that

flock landward from the great sea when now the chill year drives
them o'er the deep and leads them to sunnier lands." Such things

was it given to the sacred poet to behold, and "the happy seats and
sweet pleasances of fortunate souls, where the larger light clothes

all the plains and dips them in a rosier gleam, plains with their
own new sun and stars before unknown." Ah, not frustra pius was

Virgil, as you say, Horace, in your melancholy song. In him, we
fancy, there was a happier mood than your melancholypatience.

"Not, though thou wert sweeter of song than Thracian Orpheus, with
that lyre whose lay led the dancing trees, not so would the blood

return to the empty shade of him whom once with dread wand, the
inexorable God hath folded with his shadowy flocks; but patience

lighteneth what heaven forbids us to undo."
Durum, sed levius fit patietia!

It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we are
pushed so often -

"With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair."