LOVE AND BEAUTY.
EVEN tho’ love were done, shall we complain
If in the world there’s hidden loveliness
Born of that love, and not a lost caress
But makes us poorer to the common gain?
This beauty may adorn with deeper stain
The cool first jonquil, or with light redress
The vision of a star, and thus confess
That love, though lost, is never lost in vain.
And if for others we have lit this flame,
While us the gloom invests of dying embers,
Being so separate, your heart remembers,
As mine, the world before the wonder came,
For that sweet change we spent our hearts in heaven,
Thus briefly won, thus lost, and thus forgiven.
WAR VERSE.
V. D. F.
(Ave atque Vale.)
YOU from Givenchy, since no years can harden
The beautiful dead, when holy twilight reaches
The sleeping cedar and the copper beeches,
Return to walk again in Wadham Garden.
We, growing old, grow stranger to the College,
Symbol of youth, where we were young together,
But you, beyond the reach of time and weather,
Of youth in death for ever keep the knowledge.
We hoard our youth, we hoard our youth, and fear it,
But you, who freely gave what we have hoarded,
Are with the final goal of youth rewarded
The road to travel and the traveller’s spirit.
And, therefore, when for us the stars go down,
Your star is steady over Oxford Town.
ENGLAND.
DEAR English heart, the open waterways,
The sea that is aware of liberty,
And your great ships, her servitors, the sea
Deep, as your depths, saying of pomp and blaze,
“These things are not for us,” since other days
Return, and when the flag is shaken free,
Cold captains, Drake and Nelson, watch with thee,
Whose eyes, of boastings cleared and empty praise,
Beyond the wrecked armadas find the soul
That unto battle brings our captains’ test:
“Triumph is good, but honour still is best.
Conquest of what is evil, and no goal
Of self-advancement. For the world set free
The ships of England keep the English sea.”