And seeming-solid walls of use Pour, Bacchus ! the remembering wine; LOSS AND GAIN. TIRTUE runs before the Muse, ; She is rapt, and doth refuse To wait a painter's will. V"And defies her skill Star-adoring, occupied, Virtue cannot bend her To parade her splendour. The bard must be with good intent No more his, but hers; Kneel with worshippers, Then, perchance, a sunny ray From the heaven of fire, His lost tools may overpay, And better his desire. MEROPS. W" HAT'care I, so they stand the same, Things of the heavenly mind, How long the power to give them name Tarries yet behind ? Thus far to-day your favours reach, O fair, appeasing presences ! And a thousand silences. Space, grants beyond his fated road No inch to the god of day; One word, no more, to say. THE HOUSE. TH 'HERE is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan; Slow and warily to choose Rafters of immortal pine, Or cedar incorruptible, Worthy her design. She threads dark Alpine forests Or valleys by the sea, Ere she can find a tree, She ransacks mines and ledges, And quarries every rock, For each eternal block. She lays her beams in music, In music every one, Which dances round the sun; That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, Outlive the newest stars. SAADI. TR REES in groves, Kine in droves, In ocean sport the scaly herds, Wedge-like cleave the air the birds, To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks, Browse the mountain sheep in flocks, Men consort in camp and town, But the poet dwells alone. God, who gave to him the lyre, Many may come, Though there come a million, Yet Saadi loved the race of men,- Be thou ware where Saadi dwells : Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach: Bard, when thee would Allah teach, And lift thee to his holy mount, He sends thee from his bitter fount Wormwood,-saying, 'Go thy ways, Drink not the Malaga of praise, But do the deed thy fellows hate, And compromise thy peaceful state; Smite the white breasts which thee fed, Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head Of them thou shouldst have comforted; For out of woe and out of crime Draws the heart. a lore sublime." And yet it seemeth not to me That the high gods love tragedy ; For Saadi sat in the sun, And thanks was his contrition ; For haircloth and for bloody whips, Had active hands and smiling lips; And yet his runes he rightly read, And to his folk his message sped. Sunshine in his heart transferred Lighted each transparent word, And well could honouring Persia learn What Saadi wished to say ; For Saadi's nightly stars did burn Brighter than Jami's day. Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot: “O gentle Saadi, listen not, Tempted by thy praise of wit, Or by thirst and appetite For the talents not thine own, To sons of contradiction. Never, son of eastern morning, Follow falsehood, follow scorning. Denounce who will, who will deny, And pile the hills to scale the sky; Let theist, atheist, pantheist, Define and wrangle how they list, Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,- |