Blest!--but more blest, whom Summer's heat, Whom Spring's impulsive stir and beat, Have taught no feverish lure; Whose Muse, benignant and serene, Still keeps his Autumn chaplet green Because his verse is pure! Lie calm, O white and laureate head! Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead, Since from the voiceless grave, Thy voice shall speak to old and young While song yet speaks an English tongue By Charles' or Thamis' wave! CHARLES GEORGE GORDON. "Rather be dead than praised," he said, That hero, like a hero dead, In this slack-sinewed age endued With more than antique fortitude! "Rather be dead than praised!" Shall we, Who loved thee, now that Death sets free Thine eager soul, with word and line Profane that empty house of thine? Nay,--let us hold, be mute. Our pain Will not be less that we refrain; And this our silence shall but be A larger monument to thee. VICTOR HUGO. He set the trumpet to his lips, and lo! The clash of waves, the roar of winds that blow, The strife and stress of Nature's warring things, Rose like a storm-cloud, upon angry wings. He set the reed-pipe to his lips, and lo! The wreck of landscape took a rosy glow, And Life, and Love, and gladness that Love brings Laughed in the music, like a child that sings. Master of each, Arch-Master! We that still Wait in the verge and outskirt of the Hill Look upward lonely--lonely to the height Where thou has climbed, for ever, out of sight! ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. EMIGRAVIT, OCTOBER VI., MDCCCXCII. Grief there will be, and may, When King Apollo's bay Is cut midwise; Grief that a song is stilled, Grief for the unfulfilled Singer that dies. Not so we mourn thee now, Not so we grieve that thou, MASTER, art passed, Since thou thy song didst raise, Through the full round of days, E'en to the last. Grief there may be, and will, When that the Singer still Sinks in the song; When that the winged rhyme Fails of the promised prime, Ruined and wrong. Not thus we mourn thee--we-- Not thus we grieve for thee, MASTER and Friend; Since, like a clearing flame, Clearer thy pure song came E'en to the end. Nay--nor for thee we grieve E'en as for those that leave Life without name; Lost as the stars that set, Empty of men's regret, Empty of fame. Rather we count thee one Who, when his race is run, Layeth him down, Calm--through all coming days, Filled with a nation's praise, Filled with renown. FABLES OF LITERATURE AND ART. THE POET AND THE CRITICS. If those who wield the Rod forget, 'Tis truly--_Quis custodiet?_