Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/98



So take these kindly, even though there be

Some notes that unto other lyres belong,

Stray echoes from the elder sons of song;

And think how from its neighbouring native sea

The pensive shell doth borrow melody.

I would not do the lordly masters wrong

By filching fair words from the shining throng

Whose music haunts me as the wind a tree.

Lo, when a stranger in soft Syrian glooms

Shot through with sunset, treads the cedar dells,

And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells

Far down by where the white-haired cataract booms,

He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells,

Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes.

comes the fierce north-easter, bound

About with clouds and racks of rain,

And dry, dead leaves go whirling round

In rings of dust, and sigh like pain

Across the plain.

Now twilight, with a shadowy hand

Of wild dominionship, doth keep

Strong hold of hollow straits of land,

And watery sounds are loud and deep

By gap and steep.

Keen, fitful gusts, that fly before

The wings of storm when day hath shut

Its eyes on mountains, flaw by flaw,

Fleet down by whistling box-tree butt,

Against the hut.

And, ringed and girt with lurid pomp,

Far eastern cliffs start up, and take

Thick steaming vapours from a swamp

That lieth like a great blind lake,

Of face opaque.