Not oversweet or overgrand
Your poems, Horace, hence your stand
Firm in the hearts of men: and few
Have gained a place so clearly due,
Since Death with unrelenting hand,
Took you, H. F.
C. H. Lüders.
LOVE IN LONDON.
In London town men love and hate,
And find Death tragic soon or late,
Just in the old unreasoning way,
As if they breathed the warmer day
In Athens when the gods were great.
Mine is the town by Thames's spate,
And so it chanced I found my fate,
One of my fates, that is to say—
In London town.
The whole world comes to those who wait;
Mine came and went with one year's date.
Pity it made so short a stay!
The sweetest face, the sweetest sway
That ever Love did consecrate
In London town.
Justin Huntly McCarthy.
SLEEP.
O happy sleep! that bear'st upon thy breast
The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest,
Draw near me through the stillness of this place
And let thy low breath move across my face,
As faint winds move above a poplar's crest.