The Silver Jubilee: To James First Bishop of Shrewsbury on the 25th Year of his Episcopate July 28. 1876

1
Though no high-hung bells or din
Of braggart bugles cry it in -
What is sound? Nature's round
Makes the Silver Jubilee.

2
Five and twenty years have run
Since sacred fountains to the sun
Sprang, that but now were shut,
Showering Silver Jubilee.

3
Feasts, when we shall fall asleep,
Shrewsbury may see others keep;
None but you this her true,
This her Silver Jubilee.

4
Not today we need lament
Your wealth of life is some way spent:
Toil has shed round your head
Silver but for Jubilee.

5
Then for her whose velvet vales
Should have pealed with welcome, Wales,
Let the chime of a rhyme
Utter Silver Jubilee.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse. Hopkins' work had cutting-edge sensibilities that prefigured the modernist style, though his poems were first published only in 1918, long after his death.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Soldier

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

In honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

The Bugler's First Communion

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

The shepherd's brow

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

English

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The Silver Wedding 1

The silver Wedding! on some pensive ear
From towers remote as sound the silvery bells,
To-day from one far unforgotten year
A silvery faint memorial music swells.

And silver-pale the dim memorial light
Of musing age on youthful joys is shed,
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The golden bliss of, Wood, and won, and wed.

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The years that pale the cheek, that dim the eyes,
And silver oer the golden hairs of youth,
Less prized can make its only priceless prize.

Not so; the voice this silver name that gave
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For steps together tottering to the grave,
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The Golden Wedding Of Longwood

With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.

And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!

Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.

The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.

And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.

And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn,
In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.<...

John Greenleaf Whittier

On The Jubilee Of Queen Victoria

I.

Fifty times the rose has flowerd and faded,
Fifty times the golden harvest fallen,
Since our Queen assumed the globe, the sceptre.



II.

She beloved for a kindliness
Rare in fable or history,
Queen, and Empress of India,
Crownd so long with a diadem
Never worn by a worthier,
Now with prosperous auguries
Comes at last to the bounteous
Crowning year of her Jubilee.


III.

Nothing of the lawless, of the despot,
Nothing of the vulgar, or vainglorious,
All is gracious, gentle, great and queenly.



IV.

You then joyfully, all of you,
Set the mountain aflame to-night,
Shoot your stars to the firmament,
Deck your houses, illuminate
All your towns for a festival,
An...

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Poems From "A Shropshire Lad" - I - 1887

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
And beacons burn again.

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The dales are light between,
Because 'tis fifty years to-night
That God has saved the Queen.

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About the soil they trod,
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Who shared the work with God.

To skies that knit their heartstrings right,
To fields that bred them brave,
The saviours come not home to-night:
Themselves they could not save.

It dawns in Asia, tombstones show
And Shropshire names are read;
And the Nile spills his overflow
Beside the Severn's dead.

We pledge in peace by farm and town
The Q...

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The Golden Wedding.

Inscribed to OUR FATHER AND MOTHER, and read on that Anniversary,
FEBRUARY 15TH, 1876.


A half a century of time,
    The mingled pain and bliss
That make the history of life
    Between that day and this;
Two lives that in that morning light,
    Together were made one,
Now standing where the shadows fall
    Athwart the setting sun.

How long it seems!--the devious way.
    And full of toil and pain,--
Yet love and peace kept house with them,
    And love and peace remain.
Though youth and strength and youthful friends
    Were left upon the road
Long since, an honest man is still
    The noblest work of God.

No famous deeds, no acts achieved
    In battle or in state
Make memorable this festal day,
    The day ...

Kate Seymour Maclean

The Jubilee Of A Magazine

(To the Editor)



Yes; your up-dated modern page -
All flower-fresh, as it appears -
Can claim a time-tried lineage,

That reaches backward fifty years
(Which, if but short for sleepy squires,
Is much in magazines' careers).

- Here, on your cover, never tires
The sower, reaper, thresher, while
As through the seasons of our sires

Each wills to work in ancient style
With seedlip, sickle, share and flail,
Though modes have since moved many a mile!

The steel-roped plough now rips the vale,
With cog and tooth the sheaves are won,
Wired wheels drum out the wheat like hail;

But if we ask, what has been done
To unify the mortal lot
Since your bright leaves first saw the sun,

Beyond mechanic furtherance ...

Thomas Hardy