TWO SONNETS.

KEATS.

O purblind world! Not seldom in the years

You find your hero in some man despised,

Some martyr whom you slew, too lightly prized,

And bathe the corse in vain unheeded tears.

Too late your wisdom; for the lost one hears

No longer or contumely or praise:

On kinder death in weariness he lays

His head, forgetting all that life endears.

And this one, on whose lips the altar coal

Of inspiration burned; within whose soul

The fire of the eternal lived, and wrought

Your baser dross to bars of golden thought;

Oh, how you scorned him! Now, in reverent wise,

The weakest murmur of his lips you prize.

And thou, strong soul in a weak body pent,

Spirit of Keats! It was not thine to know

In thy brief span the joy, the generous glow

Of common praise and common wonderment.

But wearying until the clarion breath,

The voice of fame, should fix thy name among

Immortals, came the murmur soft as song,

As sad as thine—the summoning of death.

O sorrow that the deaf world would not hear

Such music, the enchantment of all time,

Until the singer, leaving the sublime,

The orphic song half sung, had fled its sphere!

Too late, too late, our tardy honours now,

Wreathing vain laurel on thy calm dead brow.

George L. Moore.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.