ROSE AYLMER

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Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)

'what avails the sceptred race!

Ah, what the form divine!

at every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes

May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and sighs

I consecrate to thee.

## I. IF THEY FLEE FROM ME

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking within my chamber:

Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not once remember

That sometime they have put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking in continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once especial--

In thin array: after a pleasant guise,

Then her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

And therewithal so sweetly did me kiss,

And softly said, 'Dear heart, how like you this?'

It was no dream; for I lay broad awaking;

But all is turn'd now, through my gentleness,

Into a bitter fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her goodness;

And she also to use new-fanleness.

But since that I unkindly so am served,

'How like you this?'--what hath she now deserved ?

## ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT

John Milton (1608-1674)

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even then who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,

Forgot not; in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks, Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O'er all 'th'Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from those may grow

A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.