FROM

SHAKESPEARE

ΤΟ

POPE

AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES AND PHENOMENA OF
THE RISE OF CLASSICAL POETRY IN ENGLAND

BY

EDMUND GOSSE

CLARK LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF CAMBRIDGE

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

1885

TO W. D. HOWELLS.

THE humming-bird in June

Sits, like a jewel, on your taut clothes-line,
And greets Charles River broad and opaline,
Till wanes September's honeysuckle moon
Too soon;

And then away he goes,

A flash of ruby on the southward air,

And comes no more, though still the straits are fair, Where misty Cambridge from the Beacon shows Pale rose;

But leaves a plume behind,

A little plume you fold into a book,

On which, one day, if you should chance to look, Your tiny friend would rise, thro' storm and wind, To mind.

The fluted conchs that came

Long since in Salem merchant-ships to town,
With polished porcelain lips and ridges brown,
Faint-perfumed from the isles of Eastern name
A-flame,-

These still, if shaken, give

From their deep hearts a murmur of the dome
Where once their soft inhabitants could roam,-
Sonorous seas where Indian monsters thrive
And strive;