Let it live then-ay, till when? Earth passes, all is lost

In what they prophesy, our wise meu,
Sun-flame or sunless frost,

And deed and song alike are swept
Away, and all in vain

As far as man can see, except

The man himself remain;
And tho', in this lean age forlorn,

Too many a voice may cry
That man can have no after-morn,
Not yet of those am I.
The man remains, and whatsoe❜er

He wrought of good or brave Will mould him thro' the cycle-year That dawns behind the grave.

III

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

All the charm of all the Muses

often flowering in a lonely word;

IV

Poet of the happy Tityrus

piping underneath his beechen bow

ers;

Poet of the poet-satyr

whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

V

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying

in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea;

VI

of Sermione (the Latin Sirmio), where Catullus had his country house, is about three miles and a half to the east of Desenzano. There are some slight remains of an ancient building on the edge of the lake, said to belong to the poet's villa; and on a hill near by are fragments of Roman baths.

Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!

So they row'd, and there we landed - 'O venusta Sirmio !'

There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

Came that Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless woe,

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,

'Frater Ave atque Vale - as we wander'd to and fro

Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below

Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

HELEN'S TOWER

[Written at the request of my friend, Lord Dufferin.]

Inscribed on the walls of a tower erected in 1860 by the Earl of Dufferin on his estate near Belfast, as a tribute to his mother, the late Countess of Gifford, and named after her. The fourth line refers to a poetical inscription on the tower, written by Lady Gifford to her

son.

Later, in 1861, 'Helen's Tower' was privately printed by Lord Dufferin. It was also printed in Good Words' for January, 1884, before it appeared in the 'Tiresias' volume.

HELEN'S TOWER, here I stand,
Dominant over sea and land.
Son's love built me, and I hold
Mother's love in letter'd gold.
Love is in and out of time,
I am mortal stone and lime.
Would my granite girth were strong
As either love, to last as long!
I should wear my crown entire
To and thro' the Doomsday fire,
And be found of angel eyes
In earth's recurring Paradise.

Gladstone (who had appointed him to the office in 1880) on the Irish Bill. Tennyson himself said, in 1892: 'I love Mr. Gladstone, but hate his present Irish policy.'

O PATRIOT Statesman, be thou wise to know

The limits of resistance, and the bounds
Determining concession; still be bold
Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn;
And be thy heart a fortress to maintain
The day against the moment, and the year
Against the day; thy voice, a music heard
Thro' all the yells and counter-yells of
feud

And faction, and thy will, a power to make
This ever-changing world of circumstance,
In changing, chime with never-changing
Law.

HANDS ALL ROUND

Now somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan,

Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know This earth has never borne a nobler

man.

EPITAPH ON CAXTON

IN ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER

Fiat Lux (his motto)

THY prayer was 'Light-more Lightwhile Time shall last!'

Thou sawest a glory growing on the night,

But not the shadows which that light would cast,

Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light.

TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

The Duke was an intimate friend of Tennyson, and visited him occasionally at Aldworth. This poem was probably suggested by the course of the Duke in resigning the Privy Seal in 1881, on account of his disagreement with