‘FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT’

That’s a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon,
  For, indeed, is’t so easy to know
Just how much we from others have taken,
  And how much our own natural flow?

Since your mind bubbled up at its fountain,
  How many streams made it elate,
While it calmed to the plain from the mountain,
  As every mind must that grows great?

While you thought ’twas You thinking as newly
  As Adam still wet with God’s dew,
You forgot in your self-pride that truly
  The whole Past was thinking through you.

Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger,
  With Truth’s nameless delvers who wrought
In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your
  Fine brain with the goad of their thought.

As mummy was prized for a rich hue
  The painter no elsewhere could find,
So ’twas buried men’s thinking with which you
  Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind.

I heard the proud strawberry saying,
  ‘Only look what a ruby I’ve made!’
It forgot how the bees in their maying
  Had brought it the stuff for its trade.

And yet there’s the half of a truth in it,
  And my Lord might his copyright sue;
For a thought’s his who kindles new youth in it,
  Or so puts it as makes it more true.

The birds but repeat without ending
  The same old traditional notes,
Which some, by more happily blending,
  Seem to make over new in their throats;

And we men through our old bit of song run,
  Until one just improves on the rest,
And we call a thing his, in the long run,
  Who utters it clearest and best.

AUSPEX

My heart, I cannot still it,
Nest that had song-birds in it;
And when the last shall go,
The dreary days, to fill it,
Instead of lark or linnet,
Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.

Had they been swallows only,
Without the passion stronger
That skyward longs and sings,—­
Woe’s me, I shall be lonely
When I can feel no longer
The impatience of their wings!

A moment, sweet delusion,
Like birds the brown leaves hover;
But it will not be long
Before their wild confusion
Fall wavering down to cover
The poet and his song.

THE PREGNANT COMMENT

Opening one day a book of mine,
I absent, Hester found a line
Praised with a pencil-mark, and this
She left transfigured with a kiss.

When next upon the page I chance,
Like Poussin’s nymphs my pulses dance,
And whirl my fancy where it sees
Pan piping ’neath Arcadian trees,
Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse,
Still young and glad as Homer’s verse. 
‘What mean,’ I ask, ’these sudden joys? 
This feeling fresher than a boy’s? 
What makes this line, familiar long,
New as the first bird’s April song? 
I could, with sense illumined thus,
Clear doubtful texts in AEeschylus!’