Unto thy guidance from this hour; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of Truth thy bondman let me live. William Wordsworth 253 COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE SEPTEMBER 3, 1802 E ARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by This City now doth, like a garment, wear All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. William Wordsworth 54 'PEAK low to me, my Savior, low and sweet SPEAK From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, 255 Let my tears drop like amber while I go Elizabeth Barrett Browning CROSSING THE BAR1 UNSET and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. Alfred Tennyson 1 Reprinted with the permission of The Macmillan Company. IV REFLECTIVE, DESCRIPTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life -WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 56. RUBAIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM OF Ages of Progress! These eight hundred years To thee and half believeth what she hears! Hadst thou the Secret? Ah, and who may tell? Looms o'er us, and the thought of Heaven or Hell! Nay, we can never be as wise as thou, O idle singer 'neath the blossomed bough. We cannot shirk the questions "Where?” and “How?” 1 The text is that of the fifth edition. Though ostensibly a translation, e poem as a whole is more properly regarded as an original production veloped from suggestions furnished by the Persian poet. (See the troduction to The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam, by John Payne.) The aterial contained in the notes is mainly derived from Fitzgerald's mmentary, which without further acknowledgment is freely transcribed paraphrased; from Nathan Haskell Dole's multivariorum edition of e Rubáiyát; and from the work by John Payne which is referred to The epigraph, for which the present editors are responsible, is printed through special arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons. ove. |