Life, like the heavens, doth endless worlds contain;
   Each day’s a world where good or ill holds sway: 
   For through life’s spacious vistas as we stray
Hour after hour we sow with varying grain. 
Sown even to the wayside, down the plane
   Of Time thus passes every flying day—­
   Never, till Time’s brief seasons fade away
Into Eternity, to rise again. 
But ’neath the ripening rays of righteous fate,
To blade and ear the seed grows silently,
’Gainst that great day whose reapers angels are: 
When all Time’s hours before the Throne laid bare,
World heaped on world, shall for the sickle wait
Of endless death—­or immortality.

The Poets of Wales.

I.

Dear Cymru, mid thy mountains soaring high
   Dwells Genius, basking on thy quiet air,
   And heavenly shades, and solitude more rare,
And all wrapt round with fullest harmony
Of streams which fall afar.  Thus pleasantly
   ’Neath Nature their fit foster mother’s care,
   Thy children learn from infant hours to bear
And work the will of God.  Thy scenery
So varied-wild, so strangely sweet and strong,
Works on them and to music moulds their mind,
Till flows their fancy in poetic rills. 
The voice of Nature breathes in every song
And we may read therein thy features kind
As in some tarn that nestles ’neath thy hills.

II.

Thy fragrant breezes wander through the maze
   Of all their songs as through a woodland reach: 
   Their odes drop sweetness like the ripening peach
In laden orchards on late summer days. 
Their work is Nature’s own—­not theirs the praise
   By culture won which midnight studies teach. 
   Sounds the loud cataract in their sonorous speech,
And strikes the keynote of their tuneful lays. 
As to remotest ages in the past
We trace thy joyous story, more and more
Bards won high honour mid thy hills and vales. 
So, Cymru, while this world of ours shall last,
And Ocean echoing beat upon thy shore,
May poets never cease to sing for Wales!

The Lighthouse.

When night first spread her curtain o’er the deep,
   Firm based beneath the waves the lighthouse tower
   Rose to the clouds, and mariners once more
Blest the bright gleam that o’er them ward would keep. 
When rose the moon, the sea lay all asleep,
   It’s dreaming waves enfolded by the shore: 
   And founded on the rock, of iron its door,
The beacon flashed its light across the deep. 
Then rose the storm and lashed the waves until
They roared like wounded lions, and there raved
The elemental forces, shock on shock: 
And all the great sea’s batteries worked their will
That never more should ship through it be saved. 
The rising sun looked out and saw—­the Rock.