Ah, doom of mortals!  Vexed with phantoms old,
Old phantoms that waylay us and pursue,—­
Weary of dreams,—­we think to see unfold
The eternal landscape of the Real and True;
And on our Pisgah can but write:  “’Tis cold,
      And clouds shut out the view.”

TO LORD TENNYSON

(With A volume of verse)

Master and mage, our prince of song, whom Time,
  In this your autumn mellow and serene,
  Crowns ever with fresh laurels, nor less green
Than garlands dewy from your verdurous prime;
Heir of the riches of the whole world’s rhyme,
  Dow’r’d with the Doric grace, the Mantuan mien,
  With Arno’s depth and Avon’s golden sheen;
Singer to whom the singing ages climb,
Convergent;—­if the youngest of the choir
  May snatch a flying splendour from your name
Making his page illustrious, and aspire
  For one rich moment your regard to claim,
Suffer him at your feet to lay his lyre
  And touch the skirts and fringes of your fame.

SKETCH OF A POLITICAL CHARACTER

(1885)

There is a race of men, who master life,
Their victory being inversely as their strife;
Who capture by refraining from pursuit;
Shake not the bough, yet load their hands with fruit;
The earth’s high places who attain to fill,
By most indomitably sitting still. 
While others, full upon the fortress hurled,
Lay fiery siege to the embattled world,
Of such rude arts their natures feel no need;
Greatly inert, they lazily succeed;
Find in the golden mean their proper bliss,
And doing nothing, never do amiss;
But lapt in men’s good graces live, and die
By all regretted, nobody knows why.

Cast in this fortunate Olympian mould,
The admirable * * * * behold;
Whom naught could dazzle or mislead, unless
’Twere the wild light of fatal cautiousness;
Who never takes a step from his own door
But he looks backward ere he looks before. 
When once he starts, it were too much to say
He visibly gets farther on his way: 
But all allow, he ponders well his course—­
For future uses hoarding present force. 
The flippant deem him slow and saturnine,
The summed-up phlegm of that illustrious line;
But we, his honest adversaries, who
More highly prize him than his false friends do,
Frankly admire that simple mass and weight—­
A solid Roman pillar of the State,
So inharmonious with the baser style
Of neighbouring columns grafted on the pile,
So proud and imperturbable and chill,
Chosen and matched so excellently ill,
He seems a monument of pensive grace,
Ah, how pathetically out of place!

Would that some call he could not choose but heed—­
Of private passion or of public need—­
At last might sting to life that slothful power,
And snare him into greatness for an hour!