| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | Renunciants | | By Edward Dowden (1843–1913) |
| | | SEEMS not our breathing light? | |
| Sound not our voices free? | |
| Bid to Life’s festal bright | |
| No gladder guests there be. | |
| |
| Ah stranger, lay aside | 5 |
| Cold prudence! I divine | |
| The secret you would hide, | |
| And you conjecture mine. | |
| |
| You too have temperate eyes, | |
| Have put your heart to school, | 10 |
| Are proved. I recognize | |
| A brother of the rule. | |
| |
| I knew it by your lip, | |
| A something when you smiled, | |
| Which meant ‘close scholarship, | 15 |
| A master of the guild’. | |
| |
| Well, and how good is life! | |
| Good to be born, have breath, | |
| The calms good, and the strife, | |
| Good life, and perfect death. | 20 |
| |
| Come, for the dancers wheel, | |
| Join we the pleasant din | |
| —Comrade, it serves to feel | |
| The sackcloth next the skin. | | | | |
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