breaking stress
Of passion, and hast trod despair's dry ground
Beneath black thoughts that wither and de-
stroy.
Ah, wanderer, led by human tenderness
Home to the heart of Nature, thou hast found
The hidden Fountain of Recovered Joy.

KEATS

The melancholy gift Aurora gained
From Jove, that her sad lover should not
see
The face of death, no goddess asked for thee,
My Keats! But when the crimson blood-drop
stained
Thy pillow, thou didst read the fate ordained,--
Brief life, wild love, a flight of poesy!
And then,--a shadow fell on Italy:
Thy star went down before its brightness waned.

Yet thou hast won the gift Tithonus missed:
Never to feel the pain of growing old,
Nor lose the blissful sight of beauty's truth,
But with the ardent lips that music kissed
To breathe thy song, and, ere thy heart grew
cold,
Become the Poet of Immortal Youth.

SHELLEY

Knight-errant of the Never-ending
Quest,
And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire;
For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre
To some unearthly music, and possessed
With painful passionate longing to invest
The golden dream of Love's immortal fire
In mortal robes of beautiful attire,
And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast!

What wonder, Shelley, if the restless wave
Should claim thee and the leaping flame con-
sume
Thy drifted form on Viareggio's beach?
Fate to thy body gave a fitting grave,
And bade thy soul ride on with fiery plume,
Thy wild song ring in ocean's yearning
speech!

ROBERT BROWNING

How blind the toil that burrows like the mole,
In winding graveyard pathways under-
ground,
For Browning's lineage! What if men have
found
Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll
Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul?
Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned
Through all the world,--the poets laurel-
crowned
With wreaths from which the autumn takes no
toll.

The blazons on his coat-of-arms are these:
The flaming sign of Shelley's heart on fire,
The golden globe of Shakespeare's human
stage,
The staff and scrip of Chaucer's pilgrimage,
The rose of Dante's deep, divine desire,
The tragic mask of wise Euripides.

LONGFELLOW

In a great land, a new land, a lan