BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1192, 29 July 1911, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW.

THE MIST. I fall—l fold /Pho hill, the wold, In ciosely clinging, cool embraces; I bathe the lifted flower-faces, I spread the lawn with fairy laces And show all Nature filmy-stoled. ■■• \ 11. I foam—l float, A wraith-likq boat Among the mere-side's long, lush-grasses; In torn and fringy-fltittering masses, I glide adown the birchen passes— A gray old Lear iu tattered coat. 111. ! 1 wind—l \ireathe A lattice—breathe Botween its bars—presage the morningStir Beauty with ?. fine, faint warning— Leave pearls, her mignonette adorning— Then steal down vines to the bed beneath. IV. »' I creep—l crawl Bylichened wall. And through a mournful iron grating, To where the Dead Ho stilly waiting; 4s one that is blind, each graven slating I.trapefortheifianiio where iny! tears shall .fall. •• —Anna Cleveland Cheney, in "By tho Sea." ■ THEEE DWELT A KNIGHT IN BABYLON. There dwelt a knight in Babj'lon, Lady, lady! ■'■ As brave as ever, battle won, Lady, lady, lady, lady! As bravo as ever battle won; But now he's (lead and past and gone. The earth his sad, sad heart upon; 0,-lady, lady, lady, lady! There dwelt a maid in Babylon, Lady, lady! As fair as ever sun; shone on, Lady, lady, lady, lady! As fair as ever sun shone on, But she that brave knight's heart had won And broken, as all maids have done; ' 0, lady, lady, lady, lady! Too late she pined in woeful hour. Lady, lady;-!; And rued in grief her wasted power, Lady, lady,' lady, lady! And rued'too. late the wooing hour, When lips'were red and lovo had power, And sighed and died in lonely bower: 0, lady, lady, lady, lady! 0, take you warning by those gone, Lady, lady! That maid and knight in Babylon.; Lady, lady, lady, lady! 0,- take you warning by their woe, Who sighed and died so ions ago; And hreak.no heart by crying, No. .0, lady, lady, lady, lady! —Wilfred Campbell in the ; . ' "Westminster Gazette." ■ TENEBKAE. ;'.' Scene: Victoria Street. The short day wanes, the sunset fills the sky . With distant flare of pyre or festival, Tho town is amber, bronze, chalcedony. Th 6 windows Hash upon the upper wall. But as.a grave laid open, down below, In ii grey shadow the groy people mov*. Suddenly, from a towe.r amid the glow, The great bell tolls above, And in the mastering sound Tile trivial clamors of the day are drowned.

Remember ye tho head, Whose hidden graves ye tread, Whoso words are dumb, whose dust is

iblown abroad. 0, soon to join tho thronging shadowy horde, Unchronicled, unseen, unpitied, l'ray for tho dead! ' .

Tho sun if quenched,'the lighted windows close, *And blank as dead men's faces stand tho walls, l ■; Peal upon peal, with Tinging passionate blows,

Upon the iron town their hammer falls. It seems to shatter our low skies, and

bring v Tho stars beyond the smoke before our sight, The silence that engulphs our questioning, The challenge of the night, Our dust-bound souls to rend, • Crying: 'Remember, God, the darkness and the end.

Remember ye the head, 0 hearts uucomforted!. From sin and aspiration and despair, Secular momentary coTe, — - Turn, turn your souls, whither their souls are sped, Pray for tie dead! . 1 —Lucy Lyttelton in the "Nation." THE MAKING OP BIRDS. God made Him bifds in a pleasant humour; Tired of planets and suns was He. Hβ said: "I will add a glory to Summer, Gifts for My creature banished from Hβ lad a thought, and it set Him smiling, Of the shape of a bird and its glancing head, ' Its dainty air and its grace beguiling: "I will make feathers," the Lord God said. He made the robin, He made the swallow, His deft hands moulding the shape to His. mood: The thrusl and lark and the finch to * follow, . ' And laughed to see that' His work was good. —Katherine Tynan, in the "Vineyard."

, COLERIDGE ON HAZLITT.

A letter from "Coleridge's Biographia Epis.ioiarii":— My dear Wedgwood,

_ 1 reached home on yesterday noon. William llazlitt is a thinking; ob-cryaiit, original man; of great power as a painter of cnaracter-portraits, and fare more in the manner of the old painters than any living artist, but the objects must be before him. He has no imaginative memory; so much for his.intellectual;. His manners aro to ninety-nine in one hundred singularly repulsive; brow-hanging; shoe-contemplating— strange. Sharp seemed to like him, but. Sharp saw him only lor half an hour, and that walking. He is, 1 verily believe, kindly natural: :s very iond of, attentive to, and patient with children, but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an irritable pride. With all this there is much good "in him. He is disinterested; an enthusiastic lover of tl.-i great men who, have been before us. H< Fays things that are his own; and thou"h from habitual.shyness, and tho outside <,? bear skin, at/least of misanthropy, he is strangely contused and dark in his conversation, and delivers himself of almost all his conceptions with a Forceps, yet ho says more than any man I ever know (you yoursolf only excepted) of that which is his own, ill a way of his own; and oftentimes when he has warmed his mind ond the juics is come out. and spread over his spirits, ho will gallop for half an hour together, with real eloquence He sends) well-feathered thoughts straight forward to tho mark with a twang of the bow-string. If you could rrcninmcjid him as a portrait painter, I should be glad. To be your companion, he is, in my opinion, utterly unfit. His own health is fitful.

I have written as I ought to do: to you most freely. You know me, both head and hf.irt, and I will make what deductions your reasons may dictate to me. I can think of no other person (for your travelling companion)—what wonder? For the last years, I have been shy of all new acquaintance.

To livo beloved is all I need, And when I love, I love indeed. I never had any ambition, and now I trust I have almost as little vanity.

For fivo months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken the paper with thu intention to write to you many times, but. it has been ono blank feeling—one blank idcnless feeling. I had nothin? to say—could say nothing. How dearly I love yon. my very dreams made lcnown to' me. I will not trouble you with tho gloomy talo of my health. Wheu

I am awake, by patience, employment effort of mind, and walking, .[ can keep tho Fiend'at arm's length, but tho night l's my Hell!—sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four, I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-icreams have almost made nip,- a nuisance in. my own house. Dreams with me are, no shadows, but the very calamities of my life. . . .

In the hope of drawing the gout, )' gout, it should be, into my. foot, I walked previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 2G3 miles, in tight days, with no unpleasant fatigue; and if I could do yon any service by coming to. town, and "there were no coaches, I would undertake to be with you on fcot in seven days. I must have strength somewhere. My head is indcfafigably strong; my limbs 100 are strong: but acid or not ank\, gout or not gout, something there is in my stomach. . . . To diversify this dusky letter. 1 will write an Epitaph, which I composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I 'was dying. To the b:st of my recollection I have not altered a word:

Here sleeps at length poor Col. and with

out screaming Who died, as ho had always lived, a

dreaming; Shot dead, while sleeping, by. the gout

within, , . Alone, and all unknown, at h nbro in

an Inn, It was Tuesday night last, at the Black Bull. .Edinburgh. . Yours, dear \\edgwood gratefully, and most affectionately, •' \ • S; 'T.- COLERIDGE.