Volume I Part 101 (2/2)

And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt, With the master so cruel and grim, And the shaded nook in the running brook Where the children went to swim?

Gra.s.s grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt, The spring of the brook is dry, And of all the boys who were schoolmates then There are only you and I.

There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt, They have changed from the old to the new; But I feel in the deeps of my spirit the truth, There never was change in you.

Twelvemonths twenty have pa.s.sed, Ben Bolt, Since first we were friends--yet I hail Your presence a blessing, your friends.h.i.+p a truth, Ben Bolt of the salt-sea gale.

Thomas Dunn English [1819-1902]

”BREAK, BREAK, BREAK”

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately s.h.i.+ps go on, To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

<script>