John Warren, 3rd Baron de Tabley

John Byrne Leicester Warren, 3rd Baron de Tabley (26 April 1835 – 22 November 1895) was an English poet, numismatist, botanist and an authority on bookplates.

Quotes

• A fair girl tripping out to meet her love,
  Trimmed in her best, fresh as a clover bud.
  An old crone leaning at an ember’d fire,
  Short-breath’d in sighs and moaning to herself—
  And all the interval of stealing years
  To make that this, and one by one detach
  Some excellent condition; till Despair
  Faint at the vision, sadly, fiercely blinds
  Her burning eyes on her forgetful hands.
  • "The Power of Interval"; Praeterita (1863), p. 27

• Sigh, heart, and break not; rest, lark, and wake not!
    Day I hear coming to draw my Love away.
  As mere-waves whisper, and clouds grow crisper,
    Ah, like a rose he will waken up with day!
  • "Sigh, Heart, Break Not", st. 1; Searching the Net (1873), p. 54

• Arcadian spaces of great grass arise;
    Crisp lambs are merry: hoary vales are laid,
  Studded with roe-deer and wild straw-berries:
    In one a shepherd tabours, near a maid,
  Who teazes at the button of his cloak,
    Where rarely underneath them grows the herb;
  A squirrel eyes the lovers from an oak,
    And speckled horses pasture without curb.
  In a fair meadow set with tulip heads;
    A water-mill rolls little crested falls
  Of olive torrent, broken in grey threads,
    A grave-yard crowds black crosses in square walls.
  Quaint pastoral Arcadia, where are set
    Thy rainy lands and reddish underwoods?
  Earth hath not held thy fabled sunsets yet,
    Though lovers build their palace on thy roods.
  • "A Farewell", sts. 6–9; Searching the Net (1873), p. 72

• Sweet are the ways of death to weary feet,
    Calm are the shades of men.
  The phantom fears no tyrant in his seat,
    The slave is master then.
  Love is abolish’d; well, that this is so;
    We knew him best as Pain.
  The gods are all cast out, and let them go!
    Who ever found them gain?
  Ready to hurt and slow to succour these;
    So, while thou breathest, pray.
  But in the sepulchre all flesh has peace;
    Their hand is put away.
  • Chorus from "Medea"; Searching the Net (1873), p. 107

• I had a true-love, none so dear,
    And a friend both leal and tried.
  I had a cask of good old beer,
    And a gallant horse to ride.
  A little while did Fortune smile
    On him and her and me.
  We sang along the road of life
    Like birds upon a tree.
  My lady fell to shame and hell,
    And with her took my friend.
  My cask ran sour, my horse went lame,—
    So alone in the cold I end.
  • "Fortune’s Wheel"; Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893), p. 20

• Thou felon anchorite of pain
  Who sittest in a world of slain.
  • "The Study of a Spider", ll. 17–18; Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893), p. 41

• Hero and herdsman in red earth are one.
  • "An Ode", st. 10; Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893), p. 95

About

• His mind was like a jewel with innumerable facets, all slightly blurred or misted; or perhaps it would be a juster illustration to compare his character to an opal, where all the colours lie perdue, drowned in a milky mystery, and so arranged that to a couple of observers, simultaneously bending over it, the prevalent hue shall in one case seem a pale green, in the other a fiery crimson.
  • Edmund Gosse, "Lord De Tabley: A Portrait", Critical Kit-Kats (1896), p. 165

• The characteristics of De Tabley’s poetry are pre-eminently magnificence of style, derived from close study of Milton, sonority, dignity, weight and colour. His passion for detail was both a strength and a weakness: it lent a loving fidelity to his description of natural objects, but it sometimes involved him in a loss of simple effect from over-elaboration of treatment. He was always a student of the classic poets, and drew much of his inspiration directly from them. He was a true and a whole-hearted artist, who, as a brother poet well said, “still climbed the clear cold altitudes of song.” His ambition was always for the heights, a region naturally ice-bound at periods, but always a country of clear atmosphere and bright, vivid outlines.
  • Arthur Waugh, "De Tabley, John Byrne Leicester Warren", Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 8 (1911), p. 110