Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)

To Tacæa

TO-MORROW, brightest-eyed of Avon’s train,

To-morrow thou art slavelike bound and sold,

Another’s and another’s; haste away,

Winde through the willows, dart along the path,

It nought avails thee, nought our plaint avails.

O happy those before me, who could say,

‘Short though thy period, sweet Tacæa, short

Ere thou art destined to the depths below,

Thou passest half thy sunny hours with me.’

I mourn not, envy not, what others gain,

Thee, and thy venerable elms I mourn,

Thy old protectors, ruthless was the pride,

And gaunt the need that bade their heads lie low.

I see the meadow’s tender grass start back,

See from their prostrate trunks the gory glare.

Ah! pleasant was it once to watch thy waves

Swelling o’er pliant beds of glossy weed;

Pleasant to watch them dip amid the stones,

Chirp, and spring over, glance and gleam along,

And tripping light their wanton way pursue.

Methinks they now with mellow mournfulness

Bid their faint breezes chide my fond delay,

Nor suffer on the bridge nor on the knee

My poor irregularly pencilled page.

Alas, Tacæa, thou art sore deceived!

Here are no foren words, no fatal seal,

But thou and all who hear me shall avow

The simple notes of sorrow’s song are here.