John Kenyon Poems

Our Past—how strangely swift! Its years—mere months!
Months—clipped to weeks! and longest day—an hour!
But oh! how slow the Future; slow to all
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Thee, Mary! first 'twas lightning struck,
And then a water-vat half drowned;
But I can't think 'twas mere blind luck
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They tell me that my face is fair,
That sunny smiles are on my cheek—
Yet sorrow hath been busy there,
For many a day—for many a week—
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Weary centinel of earth,
Grief's companion from my birth,
Doomed no more to watch and weep,
Now I sleep the dreamless sleep
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A.— Yes, I confess, I do regret the times
When Pope and Dryden knit their manly rhymes;
When Sense, to Fancy near, like light and shade
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When madden'd France shook her King's palace floor,
Nobly, heroic Swiss, ye met your doom.
Unflinching martyr to the oath he swore,
Each steadfast soldier faced a certain tomb.
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Gay register of harmless mirth,
Record of dear domestic hours;
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Ye Gods of Greece! Bright Fictions! when
Ye ruled, of old, a happier race,
And mildly bound rejoicing men
In bonds of Beauty and of Grace;
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Lucinda! Lucinda! why all this abstraction?
May astronomy hold no communion with mirth?
Stars—comets—eclipses have these such attraction
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A.—
By no faint shame withheld from general gaze,
'Tis thus, my friend, we bask us in the blaze;
Where deeds, more surface-smooth than inly bright,
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