TO APRIL 

 II 

 There will be other days as fair as these Which I shall never see; for other eyes The lyric loveliness of cherry trees Shall bloom milk-white against the windy skies And I not praise them; where upon the stream The faëry tracery of willows lies I shall not see the sunlight's flying gleam, Nor watch the swallows sudden dip and rise. 

 Most mutable the forms of beauty are, Yet Beauty most eternal and unchanged, Perfect for us, and for posterity Still perfect; yearly is the pageant ranged. And dare we wish that our poor dust should mar The wonder of such immortality? 

 

 

 TO DANIEL MANIN 

 If that most noble soul, which, here on earth, Was known as Manin, yet have consciousness Of what is, and what is not, being not less Than here he was, in courage and in worth, Seeing the world whereon we sweat and strive; Shall he not know his Italy, and bless, And in his own heart praise the steadfastness That held him to his purpose when alive? 

 Shall he not have reward for all his pain, Who, dying with his incompleted aim, Saw failure only, and the bitter toll Of loved ones lost, and lost, it seemed, in vain? Must not that heart still keep his country's name, Though o'er him all death's waters heave and roll? 

 

 

 TO THE LEADERS OF BOTH PARTIES 

 January 1910 

 "A people's voice, we are a people yet." —TENNYSON'S Ode on Death of the Duke of Wellington. 

 Think on your birthright, England! On that voice Which sounded first the ringing clarion note Of freedom, and the ears of mankind smote With that brave speech, whose hearing does rejoice The angels (in his starry sphere remote Each sitting). Think upon your past, my land; The heart to wish, the will to dare, the hand To do the right, though round the senses float The Protean shapes of evil. We have struck To free the slave, against a world in doubt; Have raised the grovelling from 

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