Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1005

 GEORGE LOUIS PALMELLA BUSSON DU MAURIER 805 Music

(AFTER SULLY PRUDHOMME)

KINDLY watcher by my bed, lift no voice in prayer, Waste not any words on me when the hour is nigh, Let a stream of melody but flow from some sweet player, And meekly will I lay my head and fold my hands to die.

Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling, The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.

Let them roll once more to me, and ripple in my hearing, Like waves upon a lonely beach where no craft anchoreth That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor

feeling, Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream

to death.

��WILLIAM MORRIS 806 Summer Dawn

PRAY but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips, Think but one thought of me up in the stars. The summer night waneth, the morning light slips

Faint and gray 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,

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