I 
 
 iiMiii
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ECLOGUES AND MONODRAMAS.
 
 ECLO(;UES 
 
 A N 1 ) 
 
 M O N O D R A M A S. 
 
 OK, 
 
 ./ COLLECTION OF VEIiSES. 
 
 Hv WILLIAM LANCASTLR. 
 
 Jtoitirou nnb cC;iinbrtbc|r : 
 
 M A (MI I. LA N AND CO. 
 
 1864
 
 dmnbribgc : 
 
 PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER, SIDNEY STREET.
 
 /5^ 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The writer neither claims for nor prefixes to these 
 verses the ambitious title of poems. They are merely 
 rythmical exercises which have amused his leisure 
 hours. Such an explanation is necessary by an 
 entire misconception of a previous volume of his by 
 a writer in the Saturday Review,'^' who chose there 
 to designate this as 'a collection of great pretension.' 
 
 This is the only piece of adverse criticism from 
 which, with all confidence, the writer claims ex- 
 emption for this and for his previous volume. 
 
 The title of the pre.sent collection was suggested 
 by the table of contents to Southey's collected works. 
 
 • Nov 14. iSfi; 
 
 861151
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The King's Monologue ..... i 
 
 The Nymph's Protest .... 7 
 
 Country Philosophy . .12 
 
 A Lament for Adonis .... 20 
 
 The Nameless Picture . . . .25 
 
 Anchises ...... 32 
 
 The Mother's Advice . . . . .38 
 
 Ariadne ...... 43 
 
 The New Aha.suerus . . .49 
 
 The Apotheosis of a Town Hero ... 53 
 Rosamond ...... 57 
 
 Dzedalus ...... 69 
 
 The Lament of Phaethon's Sisters 74
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 James and Mary ..... 77 
 
 Niobe ....... 96 
 
 The Sale at the Farm . . . .101 
 
 The Strange Parable . . . . .111 
 
 The Naiad . . . . . • 117 
 
 Daniel before Belshazzar . . . .121
 
 THE KING'S MONOLOGUE. 
 
 T T EAR this, ye idle nations, and be still ; 
 Hear this, unstable children of revolt ; 
 My voice is with you yet a little time. 
 I have worn out the marrow of my days 
 Unrecompensed, unreverenced ; evermore 
 I am a broken life and dispossessed 
 Of filial adoration in my wane. 
 Ye run to any light and hail it guide, 
 Ye march for any ensign under heaven, 
 And leam rebellion with a bestial zeal ; 
 Prone in contagion to a lilinder doom 
 
 B
 
 2 THE KING'S MONOLOGUE. 
 
 Ye perish from the precincts of the land. 
 Therefore have I been patient from disdain, 
 And slow to chide with weakness ; I have made 
 Revenge forgiveness, when some wounded thing 
 Lay in the shadow of my sword to die. 
 
 Still I forgave and still ye "vexed my soul 
 With wayward fluctuation, anarchies, 
 And panic tumults in the dead-ripe noon 
 Of cloudless safety. Ye are wholly seed 
 And stock of discord : I am weary now. 
 Leave me a little rest before I sleep. 
 Effort is food and honey to the young : 
 They breathe by action ; but the old man folds 
 His mantle, storing breath in utter peace. 
 
 Consider, Heaven, that these have set my days 
 A discord, this my state a bitter thing. 
 And made my spirit hungry for repose. 
 Can they remake my cunning hours again,
 
 THE KING'S MONOLOGUE. 
 
 Or build me ramparts from the dark event? 
 Pale is my sun : I care not to endure. 
 
 Is it a little thing that ye are sway'd 
 By me who spake with minds of larger mould, 
 Sons of the silent years whose race is low, 
 Inheriting their wisdom to command ? 
 Hereafter ye shall love me in the dust, 
 A late obedience, and desire my voice. 
 Then shall one speak above my crownless head, 
 ' He hath ungirdled to his last repose 
 The sword of empire, but our after kings 
 Have shrunk to draw the blade and there it rusts. 
 And he was wise as the strong \vise of eld, 
 No puny cackler : surely he had changed 
 The voice of council with the ancient wise. 
 And grew as these to council, who no more 
 Resume their strength and everlasting name.' 
 Thus in late years perchance effectual praise 
 Shall reach my mansion with the fretiucnt dead.
 
 4 THE KING'S MONOLOGUE. 
 
 I have accomplish'd empire to the verge 
 Of mortal change, and consecrate to peace 
 The moments of irresolute decay. 
 I fail the childless father of my realm : 
 My memory is my sole posterity, 
 My deed the stable land-mark of my name, 
 My work, my heir ; so best, than if my race 
 In everlasting generation ruled 
 Unchallenged treasure thro' the forward years, 
 As gods, in firm abiding, dignified 
 With kingly works the children of their thought. 
 
 The old man withers : ye forget his power. 
 Have I not chain'd my rivals round my state. 
 And made the kings of nations, more than these, 
 Famish in burning purple for revenge? 
 Have I not laid an ordinance of doom 
 On all resistance, task'd my foes as slaves, 
 And link'd their functions to a thorny curse 
 Of sleepless renovation % Has this arm
 
 THE KING'S MONOLOGUE. 
 
 Shrunk to extirpate in a mean remorse 
 
 The seed of ahen armies, merciful 
 
 To my rebelUous children's realm alone \ 
 
 I led your hosts and I have spoken fire 
 
 To congregated phalanx, on the edge 
 
 Of conflict, swaying like wind-furrowed reeds : 
 
 My glance was as the lifting beam of day, 
 
 Numbering the faces in their van to die. 
 
 I am old now, dismantled and declined. 
 And stripling feet are itching to ascend 
 The steps of this imperial canopy. 
 Shall I speak false and smoothly at the last, 
 Cease with a recent lie betAveen my teeth, 
 Die with a smiling falsehood on my face? 
 Shall 1 unspeak my nature for an hour? 
 Such as I am ye know me and have known. 
 Age is untutor'd to repeal defect, 
 And alteration pain in ancient eyes. 
 Pain to dethrone old purpose at the last,
 
 6 THE KING'S MONOLOGUE. 
 
 Pain to untread the ordinance of years. 
 Be more obedient and forgive my scorn : 
 Somewhat I love this people that I scorn. 
 Behold I guess not to whose hand ye fall ; 
 Obey him, prosper, leave my bones in rest.
 
 THE NYMPH'S PROTEST. 
 
 Al 7HY art thou fallen, sacred earthborn might, 
 
 Craft of the noblest, wherefore hast thou failed 1 
 The earth-born Titans fell, and nature's voice 
 Moaned in the new supremacy of Zeus. 
 But a disdainful Ate-vengeance came, 
 And floated like a dream about his lialls 
 On to the amber tables and the rest 
 Of that Elysian feasting : but they sat 
 And shuddered by their wine with joyless eyes, 
 Above the cloud-rack in the belted rose 
 And orange vapours, loathing food divine.
 
 8 THE NYMPH'S PROTEST. 
 
 But she, the curse of Ate, came not on 
 'Mid those soft-bosomed meadows where the race 
 Of heroes, in conclusion grandly calm, 
 Eternally repose. 
 
 Deck out thy heavens 
 With rainbow gleams, thou tyrant : build thy rest 
 Securely : bid the scented asphodel 
 Feign a wan summer where no winter enters. 
 Thou canst not be the tyrant of that fear. 
 Coeval with thy reigning, which shall plant 
 Thy feet on thorns amid the heavenly flowers. 
 
 For us no hectic summer of the gods. 
 But real earth, imperfect, bountiful, 
 Its deaths and its renewals; let us breathe 
 Apart, long sundered from the haughty seat 
 Of thy predominance and withering power, 
 God-queller Zeus, whose mercy is a dream. 
 Give us the kindly earth, its fleeting love. 
 Love tho' a mortal one ; and hand in hand
 
 THE NYMPH'S PROTEST. 
 
 Tread we the pleasant pastures, and out-tell 
 With tender vows the number of the stars. 
 Or bind, all breath and soul, eternal oaths, 
 That may not last the changes of a moon ; 
 And our hot kisses and the clasping hands 
 Shall be as revelations on the soul 
 Of something that perfection cannot give, 
 Earth-savouring, earth-imperfect, yet to us 
 Worth all the sameness of a stale Olympus. 
 
 Love is alone eternal as the stars : 
 The tyrant cannot touch it : to its age 
 His puny throne is builded but an hour, 
 His generation is a recent thing, 
 His dynasty a growth of yesterday. 
 
 My mortal lover, look into mine eyes. 
 Look deep into mine eyes, wert thou a god, 
 I could not love thee more, I ask no more : 
 Be with me always, always, 'tis enough.
 
 lo THE NYMPH'S PROTEST. 
 
 Leave me this earth, this love, and rule thou on 
 The weary clouds, unenvied and supreme. 
 Crush down the gentler race of nature's gods 
 In everlasting darkness, whose sole crime 
 Was to have ruled ere thou didst rule. Their name 
 And very record galls thee on thy throne 
 With silent protest at the upstart king. 
 Their patient foreheads seam'd with scoring flame 
 Sustain'd benignant empire ere thy day : 
 And this men know and teach their sons to teach 
 Their children, how the order of this world 
 Harmonious once, lies groaning in thy sway; 
 How, hating this remembrance, thou hast bound 
 The elder powers in darkness, vainly wise : 
 Torture thou canst but not abolish these. 
 
 But me the patient earth, that bears thy hand 
 And stormy desolation, shall console. 
 The woods shake off their thunder-rain and stand 
 In their divineness : thee the sacred sun
 
 THE NYMPirS PROTEST. ii 
 
 Owes nothing for the radiance round his head ; 
 Thou canst not tear him from the arch of heaven 
 And make the nations darkness. Spring is here 
 Without thee, and the myriad blossoms spread 
 As if thine evil were a thing unknown.
 
 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 WILLIAM AND JAMES. 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 Z'^^OOD morrow, neighbour, 'tis a tuneful morning 
 The birds have jump'd into their singing gear 
 Most suddenly, and spring, before our thought, 
 Comes with the wheatear on the fallow side. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 I told my wife that I should find you here 
 On the first blackbird's whistle, and I came
 
 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 And here I find you : let us chat an hour : 
 
 This is no busy season to our hands — 
 
 Time to look round, and little else to do 
 
 But breathe sound air and broaden like green com. 
 
 What power this March sun shakes upon our path. 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 Lean on this boundary hedgerow of our farms. 
 We are near enough for talking : I can watch 
 My beasts at graze, and you can count your stacks, 
 Your feet upon your holding, mine on mine. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 William, I think I've slipped a score of years 
 
 Since yesternight : this touch of frost has given 
 
 A spice and savour to the calm serene, 
 
 And makes the sunshine burnish on the hedge, 
 
 Or 'tis my fancy. I'm as fanciful 
 
 This morning as a youngster of eighteen — 
 
 There goes one : listen, down the lane, to the right :
 
 14 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 He whistles, now he sings by breaks, " Fair Hps 
 Whom are ye for, if ye are not for me"?" 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 This hawthorn bird is out before the buds 
 That feed him ; for the thorny twigs are bare 
 That nurture up their blossoms near the tread 
 Of feet that pause not earthwards for delight, 
 When blooms of may shower on the clasping hands. 
 Or blind those eyes from forward-searching care. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 Why, friend, you have that from some book of songs. 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 Not I; the air's to blame; if some old thrush 
 In spring forgets his hoarseness into song. 
 I shall be mute enough by harvest week, 
 With other occupation tlian at ease 
 To lounge and pipe a careless flourish here.
 
 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 JAMES. 
 Each month has office in the farmer's year, 
 And chief in this I count our calling best, 
 That nature's scope and change are all our own, 
 And so we cannot lack variety. 
 See yonder townsman in his warehouse walls : 
 What change, except in his thermometer. 
 With wet or burning pavement, marks his days 
 Or notes the deeper year; and gives him rest 
 From that eternal simper at his wares 
 \Vhen customers bite briskly? He shall see. 
 From zero to the dog-day weather-point, 
 One patch of sky. 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 And yet this very man 
 Secure in his importance, holds us cheap 
 As bumpkins, speaking broad, with swollen hands. 
 And counts his apei.sh mincings as the trick 
 Of true gentility, 'what clowns are these."
 
 1 6 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 JAMES. 
 I would not wear his manners for a week 
 To be a squire a twelvemonth and a day ; 
 Content to be no better than my father, 
 And, thank these hands, no worse, to pay my way 
 And move about my pastures in no fear 
 Of bailiffs or the rent-day, with a son 
 To take the old place on when I am gone. 
 And keep a stranger from the fields where I 
 Have been a boy and grew a man and died. 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 Your scheme of life is brother to my o\vn ; 
 I shall not change my trade, tho' it has rubs 
 And stiff ones : now this agent of our squire's, — 
 The man was born to plague me, and his thought 
 Comes like a city whiff to taint in smoke 
 The freshness of the morning, — well this man, 
 Whose soul is in his pockets, and whose eyes 
 Purblind to aught but stiff arithmetic,
 
 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 Would have me square my hedgerows like a rule, 
 
 And prune to faultless parallelogram 
 
 The wilderness of May-bloom and its nests. 
 
 ' Cut straight that curving brook,' quoth he, ' it wastes 
 
 A good half acre ; clear the rubbish growth 
 
 That cumbers round its reaches ■ let it run 
 
 In ship-shape current like the squire's main-drain :' 
 
 I cannot kcej) my temper with the man : 
 
 We'll change the subject. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 O, I let him talk 
 Above his gases and his phosphate base. 
 His lime and silicon : it pleases him 
 And prints well in the ' Herald' with this head, 
 * The chemistry of farming :' yet this man 
 Of mighty theory is but a babe 
 In practice ; I have seen him over-reach'd 
 By very shallow knaves : this wordy man 
 Bought at the fair last week a flock of ewes 
 
 c
 
 1 8 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Not worth a halter. 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 
 Serve him richly right : 
 And yet the squire shall keep him after this; 
 He'll talk him round in his smooth fluent way : 
 Well it's no gear of mine. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 The world flows on, 
 And in its stream some dregs waft uppermost. 
 But truce to these discomfortable themes : 
 Look round, forget them : timid spires of green 
 Creep thro' the fallowy ridges, frail to bear 
 One dew-drop's burthen, yet shall these prevail 
 Weak infants of the harvest to the full 
 And stately ear, to clothe the upland side 
 As with a forest-sea, wherein the breeze 
 Has visible workings, and the cloud is seen 
 To mask and free the light in gleamy falls.
 
 COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 WILLIAM. 
 The morning draws, and we have paid enough 
 In leisure to its freshness. I must set 
 Some graftings in my orcliard, whence my son, 
 ^^^lo knows? shall reap the apples — now — farewell. 
 But as I go one word — that boy of yours 
 Is very often at our place of late : 
 I may not think his early schoolfellow 
 My son his main attraction ; and our Jane 
 Is smartened up I fancy when he comes. 
 Well, well, let things fare on : but well I know 
 If there is aught in this I shall be glad, 
 And you I think, fames, will not take it ill.
 
 A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. 
 
 AITE will lament the beautiful Adonis; 
 
 The sleepy clouds are lull'd in all their trails. 
 The brooks withhold their violet glassiness. 
 The branchy volumes of the clouded pines, 
 Like drooping banners, in excess of noon 
 Languish beneath the forehead of the sun : 
 Nor dares one gale to breathe, one ivy-leaf 
 To flicker on its strings about the boles. 
 
 Lament Adonis here in dead-ripe noon ; 
 Weep for her weeping, Queen of love and dream, 
 Disconsolate, love's ruler love-bereaved :
 
 A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. 21 
 
 Where is thy godhead fallen, what avail 
 To throne it on the clouds yet lose thy joy? 
 Couldst thou not hold Adonis on thy lips 
 Eternally, and scorn the ebbing years ? 
 This, this were meed of immortality, 
 To wear thy stately love secure and fair 
 Of rainy eyes : now shalt thou ne'er resume. 
 Enamoured Queen, thy shelter at his heart : 
 His arms no longer Aphrodite's nest. 
 
 Kneel then, and weep with her and weep with her. 
 It is not meet that pure cheek's crimsoning, 
 It is not fate those bloom-ripe limbs endure 
 The stain of thick corruption and the rule 
 Of common natures : Queen, pos.sess thy power. 
 Raise him beyond the region of the sun ; 
 There cherish back the heavy eyes to blend 
 With that full morning of the ageless gods : 
 Watch him to life in bloomy asphodel, 
 Dissolve thy soul on his reviving lips.
 
 22 A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. 
 
 In vain, 'tis idle dreaming this shall be. 
 In vain, ye maidens, this our sister toil 
 To scatter posies on his sacred sleep 
 With dole for him that was so beautiful : 
 He shall not wake from that lethean dream : 
 He shall not move for her immortal smile. 
 Nor hear the busy kisses at his cheek : 
 She ceases and she sobs upon her hands : 
 Come, let us weep with her and weep with her. 
 
 Smother his head with roses as he lies. 
 The day may draw the sacred twilight down : 
 The dew-lights on the grasses and the leaves 
 May speck the woods, as night the sky, with stars ; 
 The sun-down gale shall not, because we weep, 
 Forego his perfume, or night's bird her song. 
 Nature is greater than the grief of gods. 
 And Pan prevails while dynasties in heaven 
 Rule out their little eons and resign 
 The thunder and the throne to younger hands. 
 He is the rock, but these the rounding waves.
 
 A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. 23 
 
 Lament not, Queen of love, lament no more : 
 Nature and love alone are ageless powers ; 
 Thy queendom, Aphrodite, shall not fail. 
 The reign of might shall fail, the wisdom fail 
 That wrought out heavenly thrones : the weary clouds 
 Shall not sustain them longer : only love 
 And nature are immortal. Nature sealed 
 Adonis' eyes : the kindly hand forgave 
 The creeping years that held Tithonus old 
 Before the smiles that loved him. ^^'e revolt. 
 And chide at wisdom in our shallow tears : 
 Content thee : surely better so to cease, 
 The riper years enjoy'd, the refuse left, 
 Secure of stain and blemish and decline. 
 Have comfort. Queen, though love will luji endure 
 To lighten loss in reasoning out despair. 
 
 Have comfort ; and our homeward choir shall hymn 
 Thy godhead thro' the cedam labyrinths 
 Till they emerge upon the (lushing slicct
 
 24 A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. 
 
 Of sunset : on those waters many an isle 
 
 And cape and sacred mountain, ripe with eve, 
 
 Cherish thy myrtle in delicious groves : 
 
 Infinite worship at this hour is thine. 
 
 They name thee, Aphrodite, and the name 
 
 Blends with the incense towards the crimson cloud.
 
 THE NAMELESS PICTURE. 
 
 ' \/0U say this picture never had a name ? 
 
 I like it best in all the gallery : 
 More than the faces of Italian saints, 
 More than the genial Flemings by their fire, 
 Its plaintive and most touching pensiveness 
 Prevails upon my fancy : this must mean 
 A portrait surely : the reality 
 Of desolation in those girlish eyes 
 Is no ideal study. Can it be 
 A family picture ? you reply, that these 
 Are hung together in the entrance hail.
 
 26 THE NAMELESS PICTURE. 
 
 The Style and dress would give some thirty years 
 Since this was painted. Why, you told me now 
 That you had been a servant in this house 
 More time than that : come, you know more of this 
 I am a stranger here, and from to-day 
 Return no more : this confidence is safe 
 With one who cannot break it : tell me all.' 
 
 Then the old servant faltered and refused ; 
 But more the stranger pressed him, and at last * 
 He spake to this effect : 
 
 'Some thirty years, ay, more than thirty years, 
 That painting I remember : then it hung 
 In my young master's room where first he saw 
 It waking : and whole days when he was sad, 
 And that, poor boy, was often, or the squire 
 Had vexed his son with crotchets and ill pride — 
 Then, days and days, a silke- veil concealed 
 The i^ainted features : now the veil is gone.'
 
 THE NAMELESS PICTURE. 27 
 
 'And I remember how a rumour grew 
 That Robert, the old man had jjlann'd it long, 
 Should wed a neighbour heiress, and she came 
 To \nsit with her people in full trim. 
 And we supposed the thing as good as done. 
 But Robert on the morning that they left 
 Went to his father's study : in an hour 
 He came upon me with a stormy face. 
 And bade me pack for London on that night ; 
 But the old squire left not his room again 
 Till we were gone : I never saw him more. 
 
 'We had not been in town above a week — 
 It might be more : I think it was a week — 
 I was alone with Robert in the house, 
 His only servant, and the house was small ; 
 When at the edge of dusk a lady came 
 And wished to see my master : at her face 
 I started as at some unearthly thing, 
 The face had left its canvas at the hall.
 
 28 THE NAMELESS PICTURE. 
 
 'When she had talked with Robert for a time 
 He led her down to go ; and as they past 
 My room she seem'd to pause, and then these words — 
 I could not choose but listen, for the voice 
 Drave some strange power upon me, and the sounds 
 Seemed one by one to burn into my brain 
 And could not be forgotten. Thus she spoke : 
 
 ' ■•' True friend, forget me : I am not mine own : 
 Seek out some worthier one and leave this dream : 
 Forget the gentle time that we have known. 
 You know I have forgiven long ago : 
 Nay, what should I forgive 1 You made me love 
 And have been very true : shall love and truth 
 Demand forgiveness? What had been my life 
 Without thee and before thee'? O mine own, 
 My one true love, shall I complain of thee 
 Noble and young, to whom my passionate heart 
 Fled tremulously happy ; over-blest 
 That thou wouldst smile upon so mean a thing,
 
 THE NAMELESS PICV'L'KE. 29 
 
 Unworthy thee save in her utter love 1 
 
 I have dared to see thee once, I have dared to speak, 
 
 And tell thee that this marriage shall not cease 
 
 For one like me. 1 will not drag thee down, 
 
 I love thee far too much to drag thee down, 
 
 Or hold thee from thy station to resume 
 
 The pleasant hours beside me : not for me 
 
 Thy people shall reproach thee : truest friend, 
 
 I know thy utter fealty to refuse 
 
 The sacrifice, if any choice were thine. 
 
 So I have left thee none : the die is cast. 
 
 He is a worthy man — my husband — I 
 
 Am better so, than plaguing thee, a clog 
 
 About the neck 1 love, too lowly born 
 
 To wed with thee, and yet too fondly proud 
 
 To bar thee from advancement and thy right. 
 
 Fear not for mc, if I can say farewell. 
 
 Truest and best and dearest, long farewell." 
 
 'Then silence; and I heard iicr lessening feet:
 
 30 THE NAMELESS PICTURE. 
 
 The door was closed, and then, methought, there came 
 
 A sound of heavy faUing, and I went 
 
 And found my master senseless on the stone. 
 
 Poor lad, he never rallied from that day, 
 
 Altho' he seemed to all the world but me 
 
 The same as ever, only somewhat still. 
 
 And paler than his wont. From day to day 
 
 He fought his sorrow down, but still it grew 
 
 And mastered : in his absent way he said 
 
 Half to himself one night, and half to me : 
 
 " I wish I had the heart to face again 
 
 My father; they have written, the old man 
 
 Is very feeble lately : he and I 
 
 Are lonely in the world, and shame it is 
 
 To bicker with each other, for of friends 
 
 We have not many else." And that day week 
 
 A letter came to tell the squire was dead. 
 
 'Then we returned to this old place with speed. 
 And the old squire was buried, with a score
 
 THE NAMELESS PICTURE. 31 
 
 Of coaches, lines of tenants, in the pomp 
 
 Of a great landlord. Robert lived alone 
 
 Thereafter many years — that room was his. 
 
 Poor lad, I wondered that he lived so long. 
 
 He ever seemed to carry where he went 
 
 A weight of evil : and a vague suspense 
 
 Held in his eyes, as if he waited long 
 
 For something that should come but never came : 
 
 And yet a gentler master with it all 
 
 I think we shall not find — But I am long : 
 
 He died a young man still, and then the place 
 
 Past to a distant cousin. The old breed 
 
 Is gone and ended out, and these I serve 
 
 Are strangers : not unkind, for me they kept, 
 
 I had been here so long and here would die. 
 
 And now you know the little I can tell 
 
 About the portrait.'
 
 ANCHISES. 
 
 T EAVE me, my son, an hour in loneliness 
 
 On this Sicilian Erj'x : my. farewell 
 Of earth is near accomplished : I would hold 
 Communion with the faces of the past, 
 Collect my soul in memory ere I go. 
 And feed on shadows of the ancient years. 
 Here underprop thy mantle to my head, 
 For here the mountains have a lonely sound, 
 And like faint harmony the wash of sea : 
 Return thee in an hour, return my son. 
 
 T die in a strange land : a casual grave
 
 ANCHISES. 33 
 
 Where never son of mine shall talk or tread 
 
 Hereafter, and no kindred step impress 
 
 My lonely bones. I have left my fathers' urns 
 
 As far behind me as the rising sun, 
 
 To measure distance by the painful sense 
 
 Of travel to the pausing limbs of age. 
 
 I do remember when my country fell, 
 They snatch'd me thro' the tumult to the ships, 
 ^neas strode before them, many a Greek 
 That barr'd his passage died : but my old blood 
 Glow'd not to see them fall, as in the days 
 When battle lit my soul like maiden's lips. 
 Mine eyes were dim, I only could complain 
 At fair endeavour wasted to ensure 
 A wither'd abject from the sword to-day 
 Whose urn is due to-morrow, and I said : 
 
 " All is disorder'd like an ancient tale, 
 And the old form of time is cracked and thrown 
 
 u
 
 34 ANCHISES. 
 
 Dishonoured by. Confusion big with death 
 
 Usurps our hearths, and draws a line of blood 
 
 Across the record of our dearest hours. 
 
 There is no further sorrow to endure, 
 
 No tear beyond what I have seen to-day : 
 
 Thrust me in mercy thro' and let me rest 
 
 In Trojan earth : most old am I to change 
 
 My country : ye are young, your years are sweet, 
 
 But mine are very weary : what reward 
 
 Of voyage mine except a stranger grave? 
 
 A scratch will end me : 'tis an easy boon. 
 
 Is it no bitter thing, this ancient frame 
 
 Condemned upon the threshold of its dust, 
 
 To ride the wild heads of the hollowed waves. 
 
 The lapse and weather of the scaling seas? 
 
 When all discomfort multiplies on ache 
 
 Of waning years, stiff burden in themselves." 
 
 But they or heard me not or would not heed. 
 
 Thence, in the curving buffet of the tide.
 
 ANCHISES. 35 
 
 Our keels have girdled half the seas in quest 
 Of visionary kingdoms, with reward 
 Of infinite misfortune to our hands. 
 We set the sail for other thrones, beyond 
 The sea-mark of the rolling spheres in heaven, 
 And found no scant of danger or of death ; 
 But reap this sole unenvied royalty, 
 To be the chief of mortals that endure. 
 
 r 
 
 O stedfast son of thine unstable sire, 
 Dost thou misdoubt the shielding God's command. 
 That led thee out among tumultuous seas, 
 Still pointing onwards? Oracle of heaven, 
 Care dost thou build us, in each port new care : 
 Where is that utmost haven of thy word? 
 Peace, be content, old heart, what shouldst thou do 
 With future? Cheat no longer closing eyes 
 With lust to see the kingdom of thy son. 
 
 In the next valley or beyond the stars
 
 36 ANCHISES. 
 
 'Tis one to me : my wounded life admits 
 No interim to reach it : here I pause. 
 
 No farther : be it then : my way is done. 
 Turn, ancient eyes, turn backwards ere your sleep ; 
 I, the old man, would number back the years 
 Of all my flower and strength and nervy prime, 
 Heroic — once heroic and thus now. 
 Erase, old heart, the staining years between. 
 Face thy great hours once more, then cease to beat : 
 Nay, rather let large silence hold the past : 
 Its changeless veil removes not for the moan 
 Of retrospect, and weak it were to fear 
 Immutable conclusion wholly best. 
 Behold my son returns, and I will smooth 
 These doublings from my face : enough for me 
 The question and the anguish : this were shame, 
 To dash his living purpose with the taint 
 Of this my palsied fancy and mistrust — 
 Courage, my son, to-morrow we will spread
 
 ANCHISES. 37 
 
 New sails, the land of promise sure is near. 
 If my breath hold till sunrise I will sail 
 Not less than the young soldier in the fleet : 
 If I have slept by then, large choice of grave 
 Is here upon the beach ; but sail not less, 
 My spirit leading to the fated land.
 
 THE MOTHER'S ADVICE. 
 
 T HAVE heard you out, my boy ; now let me speak. 
 
 We are alone together, you and I : 
 So we have been : the new tie changes all. 
 You are not pledged as yet? So far is well — 
 Nay now, be patient, hear me till the end : 
 I do not mean to gainsay with one word 
 Your marriage as a marriage : 'tis the way 
 And process of the world : the mother's turn 
 Cedes to this stronger heritage of time, 
 And the wise mother grieves not : only this, 
 I deem it in my duty chiefly now 
 To mind you how past things have stood with us,
 
 THE MOTHER'S ADVICE. 39 
 
 To argue out your future as I may 
 
 In all forbearance where I see you touch'd 
 
 So nearly : therefore hear, my boy, and weigh 
 
 The words as calmly as the words are said. 
 
 It is my right and duty to advise 
 
 Tho' hardly to forbid : these few calm words 
 
 And I have done : yours is it to decide, 
 
 The sequel good or evil most is yours : 
 
 And as you say hereafter so shall I. 
 
 For when your father died, and left the land 
 Encumber'd, you had been at school a year, 
 And you and I were lonely in the world 
 And very poor at first : the place is small, 
 The income scarce enough to hold our heads 
 Above the yeoman, but the name is old, 
 And you at least are bom a gentleman ; 
 But one so little rich this name can bring 
 No license to be idle. This alone 
 Were profit more than loss, if this were all.
 
 40 THE MOTHER'S ADVICE. 
 
 Weigh then, my son, her station with your own, 
 To her in fairness weigh it while you may. 
 Most free am I of narrow county pride, 
 That mates by pedigree, and would despise 
 Earth's fairest choice with no armorial stem ; 
 But this at least allow me to premise. 
 As something in the scale of yes or no. 
 Her grade is not as yours : tho' young and fair. 
 The daughter of a village lawyer, still 
 She is not much to bring me for your wife 
 Without a dower to this bare manor-house, 
 Whose crumbling rafters chide their needy lord. 
 
 You answer this is worldly : love is more 
 Than birth the mock of accident : that she 
 In the sweet garland of her youth outpays 
 A labyrinth of lineage, and the dross 
 Of mercenary heirdom : this is well, 
 And gallant speech, and easy to uphold 
 While yet her flower has freshness : pause on this,
 
 THE MOTHER'S ADVICE. 41 
 
 And look beyond : for what is man removed 
 Above the herd, who fears to reason out 
 The franchise of his foresight? Think on this, 
 Will her disparity be held as light. 
 As now you hold it, in the testing days 
 When she has lost her beauty? Dare romance 
 Make equal all in love and turn foresworn 
 After a few rough years? No better then 
 Than he who never made pretence to love 
 And wedded for advantage. 
 
 O my son, 
 Think me not hard and worldly : I have known 
 That poverty beyond the poor man's curse, 
 Which makes the needy gentleman forego 
 His rest to save appearance with the world. 
 Nor shame at last an honourable name. 
 And strong must be that wedded love to save 
 Its gloss in such misfortune : .such was ours, 
 Your father's, portion : yours, alas, my son, 
 Not greatly fairer ; therefore, l)ear with me.
 
 42 THE MOTHER'S ADVICE. 
 
 If, having known the bitterness, I teach 
 The peril to my child. I am not hard 
 The' I have had my troubles : I can feel 
 For your young love and you, altho' my voice 
 Must sound from duty with a raven croak 
 Among your may-bloom weather. I have said : 
 Decide my son, in wisdom, I have done.
 
 ARIADNE. 
 
 T O, at my feet this ocean, and the moon 
 
 Is shaking out her splendours on its fields. 
 The spring is sighing up beneath the earth, 
 And settles in the winter of my soul 
 With tumult and with impulse, but no joy. 
 The mountain streams are reeling to the sea, 
 They make a voice on night beyond the wind. 
 I question with the wilderness of stars 
 For comfort. These eternal pinnacles 
 That toss the striding Neptune from their walls 
 Have heard the protest of my lonely tears. 
 There is a cliff that wrestles like a god
 
 44 ARIADNE. 
 
 Alone in waters, for the waves have rent 
 His brothers down behind him, and alone 
 Cinctured with mutinous discord evermore 
 He feels the teeth of everlasting surge 
 Eat out by inch his earth-roots till he fall. 
 Even such a wear}' purpose is my life, 
 Opposing isolation, tho' it knows 
 An hourly gaining sentence at its core. 
 
 Is there no rest % surely in craggy bowers 
 Apart from moonlight rest the dissonant waves : 
 The sea-mew builds in rifted silence there, 
 And makes her brood a safety : whom her mate 
 Will not relinquish though the open seas 
 Invite the sinew of his reaching wing. 
 
 Patience is half ignoble in much wrong. 
 These gods, that vex our wretchedness, exact 
 This further torment, that the victim's lip 
 Tell not its ])ain but bless them for their curse.
 
 ARIADNE. 45 
 
 These, while the surfeit of prosperity 
 Crowds all their altar-steps with hecatombs, 
 Forbid the wretched franchise to complain. 
 
 This man — this hero — for he wore the name 
 Gilded with deeds in Crete, and lack'd the heart 
 Heroic, masking guilt in smoothest show — 
 This eminent concealment of dishonour, 
 Theseus, the name will burn my uttering lips, 
 I brand thee rich in worship as a slave 
 Whose hands are full of lies and infamy. 
 Be demigod in shallow Hellas still : 
 'Tis the world's process to make great men small 
 And worship draff, and kneel to ready knaves 
 Who steal an empty throne, and seated cr}', 
 "I am a god, come, worship 1" and men come. 
 
 So nile in Athens, Theseus, and the herd 
 Shall bum their abject incense to thy state. 
 Be lawgiver of nations : blazon out
 
 46 ARIADNE. 
 
 Thy virtue : state has seasons of repose 
 And breathing for the actor, intervals 
 Secure of note, to revel out the wrong 
 Most native to thy nature and resume 
 The Theseus I have known thee, brave alone 
 In cheating foolish maidens from their homes, 
 And leaving death most ready to their hands 
 When thou art weary, hero, and away. 
 
 So let me live though weary of myself. 
 To thee at least dishonour. Silent years 
 May dim my features on thy memory : 
 But not that long eternity of time 
 Can sweeten thought and record of my wrong, 
 Enduring in the pauses of thy brain 
 When idler themes are absent. I have said : 
 And through the shout of thy triumphant hour 
 A whisper of my name shall tear thee down, 
 And teach thee what thou art, though men acclaim 
 Thy glories to the citadel of God.
 
 ARIADNE. 47 
 
 Enough of thee : be faithful to thyself : 
 Poison more lives and banish all thy rest. 
 But I perforce live on, perforce consume 
 The barren gift of breath, and watch the years 
 To winter ; whom the folding of a flower, 
 The burning dew-drop, sudden daffodil, 
 The golden weather dropt among the woods. 
 Affect with no delight : all pleasant things 
 Are equal apathies. 
 
 O rest and peace. 
 Fabled beyond the sunset, equal gods, 
 Dare I entreat you thus with sleepless eyes 
 And such a seething heart % Ye will not come : 
 The perfume of immortal asphodel 
 Pervades your meadows, and ye will not come. 
 To me the moaning seas and barren strand 
 Must minister their comfort, and the sounds 
 Of nature recompense the absent voice 
 Of human consolation. I have seen
 
 48 ARIADNE. 
 
 The slow wave wear the rugged chff to smooth, 
 The weak rain batter out eternal stone : 
 Where nought endures shall only sorrow build 
 An ageless throne above the fallen years'?
 
 THE NEW AHASUERUS. 
 
 "\1 /"HERE is the rest and whither all this tending? 
 
 To be infimi and feel it in the beat 
 Of streaming waters that would tear thee down. 
 Where is the rest? Oh, not in nature's face, 
 For her divine revealments and repose 
 Are only contrast to the craving sting 
 Of inward agitation. Here at least 
 Upon this central alpine pinnacle 
 The weary day arises once again 
 In all its beauty, sheathed with glossy cloud. 
 The stars are moving to their still desire : 
 The pale mist zones one trembling orb : the capes 
 
 E
 
 50 THE NEW AHASUERUS. 
 
 Are lovely, and their snowy spiral throng 
 
 Sharpens in morning ; thro' that ample calm 
 
 The low fresh fields are hushed in crystal air : 
 
 The shining ledges flash : the bordered shales 
 
 In rippling specks evolve celestial light, 
 
 And glaze the rocks with motion : the light herb 
 
 Grasps them, inhaling increase at the sun, 
 
 And so endures a season its delight 
 
 Of arching skies, so withers. As I gaze. 
 
 In silence the innumerable veils 
 
 Descend in roseate drift : aspiring shafts 
 
 Glister in rose to meet them, till the sun 
 
 Is broadly imminent, and changes all. 
 
 Then the firm-seated mirror of the morn 
 
 Weighs on some lonely flakes becalmed among 
 
 The liquid depth unclouded, and the shine 
 
 Breaks, tears, and pastures out their streamy spires. 
 
 Erasing all their station vein by vein. 
 
 Till the great round burns silent and alone, 
 
 Ruling his baffled rivals from his seat,
 
 THE NEW AHASUERUS. 51 
 
 To leave the unfoUled inten-al of Heaven 
 Silent through all her precincts as a dream. 
 
 But what to me the glory and the strong 
 Emotion % I have wandered through the earth, 
 And always borne a curse upon my heart, 
 Darkening the order of celestial change : 
 So not the mild accord of vernal bird. 
 So not the deeds that reach us from the dead 
 To chide our lax endeavour, not the breath 
 Of some heroic trumpet in the past, 
 So not the thought that moves us to contend 
 When life is young with us, from native love 
 Of motion for itself, — not these, not all 
 Can draw delight upon a blasted thing. 
 
 My road is yonder in the devious vales, 
 At times it glistens like a silver thread : 
 At times the mist is kindled as a dust 
 And sweeps between. So onward, till the end.
 
 52 THE NEW AHASUERUS. 
 
 The longer pause becomes an agony 
 
 That makes this forward toil with all its pain 
 
 A preferable evil. Fall on fall, 
 
 The mountain stream has instinct towards the sea, 
 
 Her great ulterior rest. What hope is mine, 
 
 To make me wrestle with the flinty bands 
 
 That sting my weary footsteps to no goall
 
 THE APOTHEOSIS OF A TOWN HERO. 
 
 nPHE sacrifice is ended — lather, come : 
 
 Beneath the oHves yonder there is rest. 
 The hymn of consecration and its close 
 Dwell on my fancy yet : the crowd is poured 
 About the vacant streets : the garlands droop 
 On architrave and fluted column-work. 
 The spiral smoke mounts feebler, and the ash 
 Is embercd in the censer : all is done. 
 Henceforth the man Dicceus, at whose hand 
 This city drew such broad prosperity. 
 Is numbered with the everlasting Great 
 For lawful worshiji, hero, demigod. 
 Guardian for aye of right municipal 
 In this our native city-commonwcalth.
 
 54 THE APOTHEOSIS OF A TOWN HERO. 
 
 Hero is God, my father : but you say 
 That this same man, who wrought the state such praise, 
 Was, when he moved among us, much as we; 
 Only with greater fixity of will 
 To make the thing he wished, the thing he did : 
 And you alone of all this town survive 
 Who face to face lived with him, man to man. 
 The times are changed : the hero's stuff is done. 
 I do not think there will be any more. 
 
 You tell me 'nay,' that 5^ou and he have trod 
 Thro' foul and fair together, with no thought 
 That you were souls unequal, each to each 
 Conceding, as our common friendships use ; 
 Allowing small vexations and the need 
 Of trivial talk for solace on the road : 
 And now that he is equal with the race 
 Of heroes, Heracles, or Brasidas 
 Of age more recent— you a broken man 
 Declining from the vigour of your time, 
 And daily losing something of the past.
 
 THE APOTHEOSIS OF A TOWN HERO. 55 
 
 You loved the man and watched him mount serene 
 The gradual road of civic eminence. 
 He spread his hands to glory and it came : 
 The elements of discord in his eyes 
 Pealed out their cloudy bolts : the shocks of state 
 Beat on him like a rampart, and he stood 
 In that high region, like a thing at rest, 
 Invulnerably dauntless. At his voice 
 The city armed or rested : absolute 
 In council, as a private citizen 
 He trod our streets and gave his word to all. 
 He ripened thus his glory, chiefly blest 
 To leave it, as he left it, full and fair : 
 For dying, as he died, some worthless man 
 Had surely gained an honourable grave ; 
 To him, the cro\\Tiing and immortal close 
 Of undiminished honour this became, 
 To die where he had conquered, with a smile, 
 Under his country's banner as it stood 
 Upon the alien rampart. .\i his side
 
 56 THE APOTHEOSIS OF A TOWN HERO. 
 
 You knelt his ancient comrade, and received 
 The latest pressure of the strengthless hand, 
 The recognition of his last regard : 
 The leader, statesman, he, and you his friend 
 A nameless soldier in the city's war. 
 
 And that you loved the man beyond the taint 
 And touch of envy, envying but his death, 
 Rejoicing in his honour : you are old, 
 My father, now ; but this your broken age 
 Is good in this, that you have seen to-day 
 What our most narrow season in the light 
 Forbids the race of man before he sleep — 
 You have seen a younger generation meet 
 To consecrate the type of living worth 
 In your own day, which you had loved, but these 
 Behold gigantic through the misty years.
 
 ROSAMOND. 
 
 T T E moved among his captains to the wine, 
 
 The revel deepened ^vith the downward day : 
 By bench and column huge barbarian lengths 
 Round tankards threw a sprawl of cliaining arm 
 And hugg'd their gleaming poison, with fierce eyes 
 Fiercer between the draughts. One leant : one lay : 
 One thundered out a Rhrctian battle-field 
 Half-cancell'd in the anarchies of time, 
 Whereon he dealt decision like a god. 
 One half in shade, gigantic shadow, slept, 
 And some ill vision writhed his nostril's edge 
 And made his face a tumult, as his teeth
 
 S8 ROSAMOND. 
 
 Ground audibly, and clenched the massive hands. 
 And one with fewer years and ambered hair 
 Told all the sweetness of his lady's eyes 
 To some gray swordsman on his brand declined, 
 Deaf to the burning words and all the rout. 
 But gazing with cold orbs on something far 
 Beyond the banquet and the banquet noise. 
 And most sat level at the lengthened board, 
 Intent alone on revel-moving wine. 
 
 And royal Alboin feasted, chief of men. 
 And held his state encanopied beyond 
 In crimson splendours, like a flushing cloud 
 Above the secret morning : larger he 
 And mightier than the congregated peers 
 Of all the Lombard army : he had drained 
 Huge draughts Falernian to his idol gods, 
 Who gave him pleasant seat among a land 
 Of waters and of summits for his own, 
 And lovely Pavia to his lordly rest.
 
 ROSAMOND. 59 
 
 And then the fierce and cheating spirit of wine 
 Made proud his heart. He looked upon his men 
 And he believed himself invincible, 
 Till rolling out his arrogant words he said : 
 
 ' Princes and Leaders of the Lombards, hear, 
 Have I not led you to a pleasant land? 
 Who hath Avithstood our armies for a day? 
 AVe conquer all things with a careless hand : 
 The blast and forward shadow of our tread 
 Compel the strength of triple-cinctured towns, 
 And hide their men in marshes : desolate 
 The streets : their riches ready to our hands. 
 And now, behold, our large prosperity 
 Is founded stable as the careless hills 
 That wind and storm unroot not like their pines. 
 Much meat is ours in safety till the end 
 From flocks and cattle in uncounted vales : 
 What stint of revel when a hundred hills 
 Are ours, and all their vineyards to our cheer?'
 
 6o ROSAMOND. 
 
 Wisely are we descended to these plains : 
 
 In frozen hills what empire % to dispute 
 
 Uncouth dominion in the hungry north, 
 
 This was the slender wisdom of our sires : 
 
 And we are gods to these, that in their day 
 
 Did well, as wisdom went, but we are more, 
 
 The braver fruitage of a fatter soil. 
 
 Their gods have given them rest among their snows, 
 
 And conquest to their sons with lordly ease. 
 
 I pledge the memory of their silent years : 
 
 Have I no nobler vintage than the last. 
 
 No choicest warmth of concentrated fire, 
 
 No vine-blood rare as gold? For I would crush 
 
 The purple essence of Italian heaven 
 
 To pledge them in our best since we have thriven. 
 
 Nay — while the grateful riot of their praise 
 
 Burns in my pulses to a deeper thirst, 
 
 I drink it and it trickles to my core — 
 
 I feel an evident and conquering god. 
 
 I will not pledge them in unmeaning gold,
 
 ROSAMOND. ^- 6i 
 
 'The cup shall be more worthy than the praise, 
 
 More precious than the wine, a royal bowl : 
 
 Bring forth the lordliest beaker of my store, 
 
 The skull of Cunimund — here wrought the brain 
 
 That planned me frequent death — it holds my wine ! 
 
 So fall my foes. There is no fitter cup 
 
 To pledge our fathers in eternal sleep. 
 
 Refill it yet : shall I believe the wine 
 
 Has drawn a vengeance-relish from the bone, 
 
 Gliding, as love's soft kiss between my lips, 
 
 To light a nobler tumult in my heart? 
 
 Refill again — go bear it to the Queen, 
 
 Bid her rejoice among us with her sire : 
 
 Ay, by my country's gods she shall rejoice ; 
 
 Have I not sworn it — can I not compel I 
 
 Were it the blood of her detested sire. 
 
 Shall she not taste a vengeance to my foe?' 
 
 He ended in a tumult of acclaim : 
 So fierce the wine had stung them to a thirst
 
 62 ROSAMOND. 
 
 Of brutal exultation, cruelties, 
 
 And devil -vengeance : but the wiser few 
 
 Shuddered and sickly pushed their goblets by, 
 
 Waiting the issue. Helmichis alone, 
 
 Who bare the armour of the Lombard King, 
 
 Sate with the clouded thunder of his brow 
 
 Silent yet ripe to glisten into sound : 
 
 So fierce his breathing laboured, towards his brand 
 
 His touch went eager fingering out the blade 
 
 An inch, but let it linger for the event. 
 
 They bore the charnel tankard to the Queen; 
 She sate among her ladies at the loom. 
 Before the beat of nearing steps their laugh 
 Ceased, as the birds cease music ere a storm. 
 She glanced surprise upon them, with pressed palms. 
 She moved not in emotion beautiful, 
 As beautiful as thought : her gliding eyes 
 Of resolute azure failed not : some light cloud 
 Of doubt in floating wrought as light a shade,
 
 ROSAMOND. 63 
 
 And touched the rose confusion of her cheek 
 To curves that spoke command upon her Hp, 
 One only fleck on her divine repose : 
 Until she heard the mandate, and beheld 
 The ghastly token of the hollow brow 
 She loved so well, and its ignoble use, 
 Linked with her own constraint most horrible. 
 Then as a watcher by a summer sea. 
 With rosy clouds behind it, may perceive 
 The landscape instant thickened, and white force 
 Tear down the ripple with an undertone 
 Of hoarse and ominous mischief, so intense 
 The large waves cannot lift their mounded rage, 
 And all the emerald weather's cope serene 
 Blackens and is transfigured — So her face 
 Changed and her pale lips trembled : her deep eyes 
 In tremulous shimmer, counterchanged with glare 
 Of rushing lights, came wildly : the light hands 
 Worked, as with deathbed clutches ; thro' her frame 
 One seething shudder's long continuous creep
 
 64 ROSAMOND. 
 
 Convulsive shook her nature to its core. 
 
 Nor yet her proud will failed of self-command 
 
 In that excessive and tumultous sting 
 
 Of pain and bitter wronging keen as death : 
 
 One moment and she crushed her weakness down, 
 
 And masked unrest with most unnatural calm, 
 
 And feigned obedience in her wild revolt 
 
 Of love and instinct ; she controlled her voice 
 
 To speak smooth words ; then with some meek incline 
 
 Tenderly raised the skull in filial hands, 
 
 And bowed her fair lips meekly to the rim. 
 
 But scarcely let the feel of that loathed wine 
 
 Moisten upon them : shuddering then she ceased 
 
 And murmured faint, ' Let my lord's will be done.' 
 
 Yet ere she gave again the cup, she took 
 
 Its bony seams upon her lips, and thrice 
 
 She kissed it, thrice and closely ; and these went 
 
 And bare it to Alboin : she remained 
 
 Silent among the silence of her maids. 
 
 To weave again with shuddering hands the loom,
 
 ROSAMOXD. 65 
 
 And never shed one tear or spake a word, 
 And a great silence settled in her bower. 
 
 But when the pale light strengthened out its day, 
 Remorse on Alboin fell when that ill cheer 
 Of wine had left him, and he knew her wrong 
 Was bitter, most malignant : since her soul. 
 Proud in its least obedience, must recoil 
 From that excessive test in burning shame. 
 And the King thought to make her some amends, 
 But being proud endured not to unsay 
 The tumid folly of his feasting hours : 
 And, tho' he wished, said nothing for the day; 
 So left the wrong to fester unatoned. 
 
 But she arose from slumber's restless mock 
 Of raging dreams : one purpose of revenge 
 Possessed her life : all other thought became 
 Vassal to one endeavour's sole command. 
 Then sent she forth and summoned Helmichis ; 
 
 r
 
 66 ROSAMOND. 
 
 To her imperial summons he repaired, 
 And guessed the import of her sending now : 
 And when he came she looked into his eyes, 
 And took his hand and held it as she spake : 
 
 'Dost thou remember the old days that were, 
 Before this King had placed me at his side 
 By right of conquest when my father fell. 
 No maiden choice was mine but to obey. 
 The mock of insolent conquest I assumed 
 Detested queendom at a victor's hand : 
 Surely I owe my tyrant lord much love. 
 But when I dwelt a girl with Cunimund, 
 And moulded fancies in my father's halls, 
 One came and whispered love, and that was thou 
 Those days are dust and Alboin came between, 
 He made an orphan where he sought a bride, 
 And rooted out my race to speed his vows : 
 And fancied, as he dragged me at his wheels, 
 Submission was a nobler thing than love.
 
 ROSAMOND. 67 
 
 ' I was his queen, and I endured this curse 
 Some years without complaint. I will endure 
 No longer : patience falters at the last. 
 Last night he planned strange insult at his wine, 
 Disgrace no daughter ever bare and throve 
 Thereafter and forgave it : such fierce shame 
 As makes submission infamy, and tears 
 Allegiance from the empty name of wife. 
 I have sworn a stedfast oath that he shall die. 
 Why should this tyrant trample on more souls, 
 Swell like a god in his impunity? 
 And if those former vows of thine endure, 
 If change has been as silent in thy heart 
 As mine through all the turmoil of these years, 
 Thine, thine shall be the hand to make me free. 
 I know thee brave, I know thou lovcdst me once, 
 When this is done thou shaU not question long 
 If then T loved again. I cannot fear 
 Refusal when I look upon thy face 
 Heroic and recount my utter wrong I'
 
 68 ROSAMOND. 
 
 She ended, and he promised her desire : 
 What could he else? such power upon his soul 
 Wrought thro' her words and earnest pleading eyes. 
 Meantime, secure in his imperial halls, 
 Alboin feared no vengeance for her wrong.
 
 D^DALUS. 
 
 'T^HE craftsman Dsedalus, the slave of kings, 
 
 Artificer of nations, instrument 
 Of fools that use his fingers, and refuse 
 The shelter of their gates, the drift and mock 
 Of royal whim and civic insolence, 
 The man of ready brain and cunning hand — 
 It has not come to much this life of mine. 
 
 Yet once again an exile : there it lies 
 This city which I peopled with my brain, 
 And fed with water from the hills, and changed 
 Their hovels into marble palaces,
 
 70 DALDALUS. 
 
 And carved them gods to worship with the eyes 
 
 Of mortal beauty : this is my reward. 
 
 This petty tyrant thunders Uke a Zeus 
 
 And thrusts me out on surmise, with excuse, 
 
 * Forsooth his craft is dry, and we have reapt 
 
 His brain to stubble : let him pack and flee, 
 
 Lest he should flout us with his benefits.' 
 
 Was it for this that I have pondered out 
 The forces of the earth, and made man strong 
 Beyond his puny fibre to remove 
 Some mountain like the Titans'? As a god, 
 Creating power in new development, 
 I seated man the regent of the world : 
 Wliom I had found a cowering slave, beneath 
 The cattle in endurance, walking blind 
 Among the helps and wonders at his feet. 
 
 It is the curse of wisdom to endure 
 The scorn of fools that use us when their need
 
 D^DALUS. 71 
 
 Is ended; then the brutish herd accounts 
 
 Intelhgence as treason to the rule 
 
 Of universal blindness. I have seen 
 
 The noisy birds that peck to death their kind 
 
 If one of lighter plumage should intrude 
 
 Among their even blackness ; typing thus, 
 
 How men reject the spirits that presume 
 
 To leave their age behind them, and uphold 
 
 Attentive faces to the purple light 
 
 That thickens where the later sun shall tread. 
 
 For he that smooths the daily lives of men 
 By mere material comfort must upraise 
 The moral nature : as the home the man. 
 I have done this, have built their houses firm 
 And beautiful ; so taught them to provide 
 A better food with fire : to reap their crops, 
 And carve or plane the fissile woods at hand. 
 In softer wools I clothed them, and have drawn 
 The flax in closest fibre. At my hand
 
 72 DMDALUS. 
 
 The sea-shell rendered up intenser stain ; 
 For colour works with form an equal power, 
 Subduing and refining thro' the world. 
 
 I must not pause to murmur, or the night 
 Shall take me on the summits : I would live 
 And reap, in spite of envy, the delight 
 Of new creation for itself; beyond 
 I know there is no recompence : my work 
 Is excellent or worthless in itself; 
 And I am weak to murmur if to-day 
 Is chary of its praise, the after-time 
 Will set me right. If the blind mole reprove 
 The glory of the dawn shall nature cease 
 Her radiance for his blindness. I will on, 
 And scorn to stint my effort till the end. 
 The gods, that made me what I am, will keep 
 My record and avenge me on this age. 
 In Hellas there are towns enough to prove
 
 DM D ALUS. 73 
 
 My use and my rejection. Chance shall guide 
 My footsteps : in our energy we live, 
 And all the rest is dream and accident.
 
 THE LAMENT OF PHAETHON'S SISTERS. 
 
 nPHE short-lived crocus bring and moly bloom, 
 Sweet incense gum and odorous cedar burn, 
 With roses we will strew his sepulchre, 
 A vernal wreathing for a royal tomb. 
 
 Ill-fated, most presumptuous brother mine. 
 The gleaming chariot couldst thou dare ascend 
 To guide the sun-steeds, mortal charioteer? 
 
 Our father, he the unapproachable, 
 Phcebus, the lord of Delos, in his sphere 
 Eternally surrounded by the flakes
 
 THE LAMENT OF PHAETHON'S SISTERS. 75 
 
 Of awful glory — frowned at thy request, 
 Nor yet denied it : rashly hath he sworn 
 By that infernal river, which alone 
 Can bind the ageless gods in their despite, 
 That he will hear the first boon of his son. 
 
 Ah, ye our father's horses, steeds of day, 
 Could ye destroy this brother, to our tears? 
 Hence shall we no more bring you golden food. 
 Divine, ambrosial barley : now no more 
 Our hands shall love to sleek your proud necks down, 
 No more our wandering fingers comb your manes : 
 Ye have betrayed him, to our utter woe. 
 
 Then sped the bolt of Zeus, eternal King, 
 An irresistible vengeance on thy head, 
 To scorch thy wretched life, and thou wast hurled 
 Out on the realms of space, as falls a grain 
 Of sand to sound the ocean infinite. 
 Immeasurable depth, and falling still,
 
 76 THE LAMENT OF PHAETHON'S SISTERS. 
 
 Three days among the stars, and falling still, 
 Blackened with lightning, towards the misty earth. 
 
 Until we found thee by the river here ; 
 Thy beauty scarred ; with sad distorted face : 
 Our love alone had known thee in that hour. 
 
 Here in the genial bosom of the mould, 
 Enswathed with costly cerement, choose his rest : 
 And we sad watchers, by its sacred rim, 
 Upon the crystal river weep long tears, 
 And thick as amber rain our sorrow down. 
 
 And sigh, as yonder margin poplars sigh, 
 That droop above the sedges their sere leaves ; 
 With these in unison shall moan the flood 
 A dirge for thee, beloved one, brother mine, 
 Ill-fated, most ill-fated brother mine.
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 "DESIDE a furzy common patched with sand, 
 An ancient mansion stood, a piebald heap 
 Of blackened oak and plaster : in the days 
 Of queenly Bess a hall, a farmstead now. 
 Here Martha Bruce for many years abode, 
 A widowed mother with a single child, 
 Mar)' a comely blossom of eighteen. 
 
 Now Martha, ere she fell in widowhood. 
 Had in her cares of wifedom fretful grown : 
 A grievance-searching nature hers, most keen 
 To guage and probe the petty rubs and thorns
 
 78 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 Of household custom : dwelling on her cares, 
 She bred them for herself from carelessness 
 And want of system ; then on these complained 
 In needless-fretful whining, till she made 
 The mote annoyance bulge a beam of wrong, 
 And half believed herself an injured drudge. 
 The very model of a wife ill-used. 
 
 And thus she found her trouble for herself 
 By faults of nature part, of nurture more : 
 Forsooth she had been delicately bred, 
 A yeoman's daughter upon gentry's verge. 
 Taught that to move in homely usefulness. 
 To touch a pan or darn a stocking end, 
 Were loss of caste : the lady must not toil ; 
 And the more helpless the more lady she. 
 And thus the girl grew, till she came to wed, 
 Environed with a draff gentility : 
 And when she wedded with a poorer man 
 She started on the test of married days
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 79 
 
 With slender stock of foresight ; soon to fail, 
 And sour herself and make a curse of home, 
 Alternative in shrewing and in tears. 
 And, after years, her goodman chanced to die ; 
 She, left with narrow store and one weak child, 
 Held barely on tlie farm as best she might 
 Unthrifty, cankered with penurious days, 
 While still she gave her want the fiercer sting 
 With jarring discontents, and evil thoughts 
 Against her richer neighbours in the land. 
 
 And she would prate to Mary as she grew, 
 Filling the child with vainness and conceit. 
 How ne'er another lass in all the shire 
 Could touch her Mar)''s beauty by a league. 
 And she could tell, nay, well enough she knew, 
 Mary's sweet face should drive the neighbour lads 
 Half mad in time : but she was not for these. 
 Nay, but she hoped her child would bring her ea.se. 
 And come to marry in a wealthy liouse.
 
 8o JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 And comfort her old mother's latter days 
 In sunshine and the honour of her name. 
 
 But to the fair face, dreaming on the world 
 Of future wonder and the things to be, 
 The roUing years came slowly, till the time 
 Had shaped her woman and had overborne 
 Her girlhood. Then the mother looked at her 
 And thought, ' My wish sights haven in this child. 
 My still endeavour all these eighteen years 
 Has fruited richly. I shall see good days 
 And lay my bones in honourable rest.' 
 
 But westward of the heath by some hours' ride, 
 James Bolton lived, half farmer and half squire, 
 Florid, fair-built, some twenty-four years old : 
 Who rode his hunters : kept his park of deer, 
 A small one : owned some land and rented more. 
 He, from the hunt thrown out one winter eve, 
 Pushed meditative homewards with loosed rein ;
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 8i 
 
 And chanced on Mary leaning near a well 
 To lift her pitcher : in whose gentle eyes 
 He read a power that seemed to clothe in light 
 The gray lane with its bare and soughing twigs 
 Of leafless hazel : and his horse drew up 
 Guessing the rider's mind. But James's blood 
 Came at a leap in crimson to his face, 
 Deep as the red leaves showering from the eaves 
 Of cottage trailers : somewhat less she blushed ; 
 As the wann west answers the eastern glow 
 At sunrise matching with a fainter rose. 
 And so they dwelt confusedly : but he 
 Grasping suggestion, with a quickened brain. 
 From the mid flutter of his heart, devised 
 To feign a thirsty pretext for delay, 
 So perhaps to speak a word or change a glance. 
 And she, how could she else? with some faint smile 
 Willingly gave the bright wa\'e of the well 
 Caught from its source and trickling now no more 
 In prison walls, and reached it, near as fair 
 
 o
 
 82 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 As she, whose story in the Church is read, 
 The mother of the favoured Israel. 
 
 So Mary stood : he leaning from his steed 
 Forgot his thirst in gazing o'er the rim 
 Upon the giver, and, so ending, thanked : 
 And with some trivial sentence interchanged 
 Past on and homewards ; only to return 
 With the gray light of the succeeding days, 
 And wait beside the freshet till she came. 
 Till it grew custom and they settled hours 
 Of frequent tryst ; and love newborn resumed 
 The millionth time upon two wondering hearts 
 His ancient empire ; trustful love as young 
 As when the first pale lovers moistened eyes, 
 And trusted vows were everlasting stuff 
 And passion's lease eternal. 
 
 So the time 
 Wore : and the mother, in short-sighted zeal, 
 For Mary dared not tell her yet of James
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 83 
 
 From some vague awkwardness and half in fear, 
 Dinned in the daughter's ear perpetual praise 
 Of one rich miller in a neighbour vale. 
 Her very model of a son-in-law, 
 This miller with his solemn face inane. 
 Broad-cheeked, and well-to-do, and middle-aged, 
 Easily natured, patient to be led : 
 Slow in his speech, nor rash to overflow 
 In glancing topic or colloquial fence. 
 He, in a mooning fondness for the girl, 
 Would sit, on drowsy Sunday afternoons, 
 On the same parlour chair, in staid routine 
 Of an accredited courtship, much besunned 
 With bland maternal smiles and meaning looks. 
 But Mary sat unmoved with wearied face : 
 For duller seemed the good man than a day 
 That drips without a stint from dawn to dusk. 
 And so he came by clock-work and withdrew 
 The same to a minute, phrasing his farewell 
 Upon a constant formula : nor dreamt
 
 84 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 In his thick hide that Mary wished him gone 
 Ere he had passed the door : and, week by week, 
 Heavily amorous, still he came and came, 
 And took his courtship as his Sunday beef, 
 Equably stolid, and with both content. 
 
 But, after that James Bolton sought her heart. 
 On Mary loathing towards that other grew : 
 Where hardly she had borne him from the first 
 Outright she hated now, and gave to James 
 A deeper tenderness : so time went on. 
 
 At length the miller on a Sunday noon 
 Walked with the mother in the orchard grass ; 
 Where, plucking heart with prefatory hems. 
 He told her there and then, 'that, on advice. 
 For folks had told him he had courted now 
 The right time to an ell, who knew the best 
 How such things should be with a thriving man, 
 Who paid his way, and might, but he cared not
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 85 
 
 For such things — and worse men had done it too — 
 Subscribe himself Esquire. Well, it were best, 
 Since he should wed her daughter, to agree 
 The how and when, and clench the matter soon. 
 The girl seemed shy at times : young girls were shy : 
 Time set that right : it suited him as well. 
 He did not want a girl to droop and pine, 
 And swear she loved him fifty times a-day. 
 Fierce tinder soon burnt out. The best of wives 
 Were they that wed without the trash of hearts 
 And lover nonsense. All that folks required 
 To rub on well together thro' the world 
 Came after marriage.' 
 
 This he blurted out 
 In puffs unevenly, unusual length 
 Of verbiage for his silence. Martha gave 
 Joyful assent, and promised for licr child 
 All should be smooth and settled in a week. 
 
 Then Martha told her daughter, and the girl
 
 86 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 Looked scared, but answered nothing for the night ; 
 
 Nor would the mother press her further then. 
 
 So Mary shpt in silence to her rest ; 
 
 But ere she slept she wrote to James, and told 
 
 How things went ill against their love at home : 
 
 And how her mother hurried on the match 
 
 She hated, and she knew not what to do. 
 
 On James his trouble thickened as he read, 
 For need of action came in unripe hour. 
 Ere he had settled purpose with himself 
 He feared his mother likewise ; who abode 
 And kept his house with him, and watched her son 
 With jealous and maternal tyranny. 
 She, daughter of a county family. 
 Had ruled her goodman straitly till his death, 
 Quelling his free-will with superior birth 
 And right assumed of territorial pride : 
 And, since this sway bore weaker on the son, 
 She ever strove, by straining it the more.
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 87 
 
 To brace her tottering frail prerogative. 
 Thus, to sustain her ground, she came to feel 
 Past reason querulous on imagined slight 
 And faintest contradiction : and James knew 
 That all her heart, as all her pride, was set 
 To match him with a slip of some great squire, 
 Whose race had held their acres, sire to son, 
 Since rose with rose contended, in a chain 
 Of proud, obscure, and dull gentility. 
 
 Now James had wTote to Mary he would come 
 The morrow ; so he turned the question round 
 Thro' all that day and half a restless night 
 In sleep, that came, more hateful than unrest, 
 To feign distorted shadows of his thought. 
 And so with light he rose, and unrefreshed 
 Rode out across the meadows, crushing down 
 His care with motion in the whistling airs 
 Of morning : and he rested not liis steed 
 Until he found lier by the lisping well
 
 88 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 Pallid as he was pale, and in her eyes 
 He read the crisis of his life was come. 
 
 Then she, ' Alas, my own and not my own ! 
 I tremble in the presence of this hour, 
 Which parts or binds us all our doom of days 
 Till we are cold in earth, and summer-time 
 Is one with winter on the pulseless heart. 
 We plant weak vows eternal, else unroot 
 The slender threads which held us in a soil 
 Of rich delusion. Thine, O love, to choose : 
 On thee self-doubtful leaning I withhold 
 My wavering judgment : yet in one resolve 
 Most resolute am I, that if mistrust 
 Or fleck of unsure purpose touch thy wish 
 To cast in hand with mine this earthly time — 
 I will begone and see thy face no more. 
 And bear it patiently, as bear I can : 
 And better thus, than in my autumn days 
 To hang a clog about the neck I love 
 When this poor cheek has worn its freshness by.'
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 89 
 
 She faltered, ending thus, and chmmed his sight : 
 Yet at his brain, while moister grew his eyes, 
 A selfish instinct came. As one at bay, 
 Environed with self-wrought perplexities, 
 Sees some escape, unhoped for, thrust at him, 
 And, good or evil, grasps it — So with James, 
 Chancing on sudden outlet, eager flashed 
 Suggestion to ensure it : 
 
 'When I came, 
 And found you, Mary, listening in soft light, 
 Strong love thrust out all hazards to conclude 
 Thy fate and mine together. But thy words. 
 Children of wisdom, wisely have imposed 
 Some rein of caution on the sudden heart. 
 That rushes blindly to its end, with guide, 
 Save heated fancy, none. I now reverse 
 My fomier mind : 1 sec that wait wc must : 
 Wait in no rash endeavour to foresee 
 The sequel, or |)recipitate the close : 
 And yours to bend this mother to delay
 
 90 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 Our stolid miller's suit, too mean to raise 
 Much anger, else abhorred : allege, you can, 
 A peck of girlish reasons. Love, take heart ; 
 Be, love demands it, in entreaty brave; 
 And all shall prosper nobly, when I win 
 My mother down to reason from her pride.' 
 
 And so they kissed and parted. But James rode 
 Homewards with loosened rein : no ease at heart : 
 Vext that he had not acted fair and well. 
 So, pricking on the faster to beat down 
 The chafing thought, he took across the fields. 
 To slice an angle from the road, and cleared 
 The fences in his line : but at the third 
 The horse, who rose not, crushing thro' the stakes 
 Rolled on his rider, whom some ploughmen came 
 And found, to bear him homewards sense-bereft. 
 
 But James was long in fever from his fall. 
 And him his mother tended. But mischance
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 91 
 
 Brought in his coat the letter to her hand, 
 Last writ of Mary, when they brought him in 
 Helpless and stunned. She read it, and long days 
 The mother watched him, scheming to unweave 
 The love this letter taught. Some comfort this, 
 His illness, bad in most, was good in this 
 That she might plot unthwarted : and she held, 
 All means were holy and a mother's right 
 To stave her son from this perpetual shame 
 Of mating low : for all her thought was blind 
 And warped with narrow county pride ; and chief 
 She feared her spinster sisters in their hall 
 Lined with the canvas faces of past squires, — 
 Great squires, each in his narrow walk supreme, 
 Lords of the hind and acres at their gate, 
 They drank, bred, hunted their allotted time, 
 Then gave the jiarish-church one hatcliment more. 
 
 So, from fierce dread this match might come about 
 In her despite, when jamcs was up and sound.
 
 92 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 The mother stooped to guilt : and first she penned 
 
 In James's hand close-mimicked some vague lines, 
 
 Hinting on doubts to Mary, half-grown fears. 
 
 To let her gently down, and pave the road : 
 
 So prelude in her final forgery 
 
 The key-note of her plot : this last she sent 
 
 A week in rear. From James the writing ran 
 
 In purport crafty, ' That, in deepest pain, 
 
 Tortured he wrote with all perplexity — 
 
 He was not master of the course of things, 
 
 He least could guide them : he had broached his love 
 
 For Mary to his people one by one : 
 
 Had tried remonstrance, all persuasion — drops 
 
 On granite — "Wed he must if wed he would 
 
 Beneath him ; he was master of himself 
 
 They could not stay his wiving, nor could he 
 
 Constrain tJiem — and on this their mind was firm — 
 
 To change a single nod with his vile choice 
 
 Caught from the milk-pail.'" The insidious hand 
 
 On Mary laid decision what was best.
 
 JAMES AND MANY. 93 
 
 Assured she could but answer and release 
 James of all faith henceforward. As indeed 
 Came the reply of Mary, penned in tears, 
 'But blaming James in nothing, with a prayer 
 That he might find some worthier than herself 
 To make him happy at a future day. 
 Nor must James fret about her : she would choose 
 Mayhap in time an equal when this dream 
 Had faded, one whose mother should not blush 
 To call her daughter — ending with farewell.' 
 And when this came the mother had good heed 
 To intercept it from the sick man's hand. 
 So in her scheme she prospered, still in dread 
 Lest James should move about again too soon 
 And crush her web to nought. 
 
 But that day month 
 The pale sad Mar)', crushed with evil days 
 And goaded by her mother, morn and noon, 
 Wedded the heavy miller, and so passed 
 Beyond the land, to pore in after years
 
 94 JAMES AND MARY. 
 
 On what had been, and train a patient heart 
 In one dull round of loveless duty's sphere. 
 
 But James, who mended slowly, chanced to read 
 The County Herald, lighting on the news : 
 And for a space the ceiling and the walls 
 Swam round him, sick and stunned. He giddily rose, 
 And strove to dress and dash aside his pain ; 
 But on him came his weakness and prevailed, 
 As clearer flashed conviction of his full 
 And utter desolation. Could he mend 
 An hour of her irrevocable doom 
 Now were his strength at fullest? Lost as dead 
 Was Mary now : could strong despair unknit 
 Life-woven vows, the goodman from his wife? 
 And, if he moved, of bad should worse ensue 
 To Mary full as wretched as himself, 
 If he knew right, in this thrice-loathed result 
 Of motherly compulsion. Fool and blind 
 To waver two months since : then blindly ride
 
 JAMES AND MARY. 95 
 
 A break-neck course in spleen : thus men lost all. 
 He wished his neck had broken : this had spared 
 All self-reproach, much bitterness of time 
 Hereafter, and the sting of wasted chance. 
 He must not even see her, but sit still, 
 In forced inaction dribbling out his days 
 With trivial occupation as they came. 
 
 So wore his life away ; till at the last 
 In apathy or weakness, or in both, 
 He wedded as his mother bade him wed, 
 And never knew her guilty till his grave.
 
 NIOBE. 
 
 T)EHOLD I am the mother of all woes, 
 
 An isolation on a living earth 
 Of creatures meting love and loved again : 
 There is no moving life that loves me left. 
 
 I dreamt that there was mercy with the gods, 
 And like a child I dreamt it : for I hold 
 The adder largely pitiful to these, 
 He kills not but in hunger and defence 
 And not for pastime : the brave Delian's bolt 
 Prefers the innocent : he draws on man 
 Behind his hedge of immortality 
 Secure of counter aim : trim courage this. 
 And noble exploit were it to besmear 
 Some widow's cheeks with sorrow : to destroy
 
 NIOBE. 97 
 
 Her oqihan brood and quell the beaming eye : 
 
 To trample trust and youth in dust and shame. 
 
 I knew not this your right omnipotence. 
 
 I had but heard that man's adversity 
 
 Was something for your contemplative choir 
 
 To gaze upon with dull incurious eyes, 
 
 As on a curious picture new no more. 
 
 These gods have watched so many thousands die, 
 
 Have learnt so well each phase of human pain, 
 
 That, to relieve their leisure, they must plan 
 
 Yet more ingenious torture : since to slay 
 
 At once were feeble pastime, stale and old : 
 
 Stale as that old, old prayer, monotonous, 
 
 For something which these men have Mercy named : 
 
 A word forbidden in the sliining halls, 
 
 Or with your dynasty of recent gods 
 
 Disused and changed for Vengeance. 
 
 .Art tiiou King, 
 O Zeus, who drowzest on thy dappled clouds ? 
 Thou spreadest hugely on the wearied clouds : 
 
 H
 
 98 NIOBE. 
 
 Dost wake to murder, as a prince to hunt, 
 Clearing the fumes of nectar round thy brain 
 With thunder tossed in pastime on our towns'? 
 Tear up the yellow harvests with thy brand, 
 And cheat the hungry mouths of foodless men : 
 Mock them with famine : let the slaves lick up 
 The leavings of thy storm : some patch of maize 
 Outstands the scathing bluster : the rained brooks 
 Are drink enough, and draff and shards content 
 The aches of famine till men cease, and pass 
 Under the night to plague the gods no more : 
 Their dole of tears is wept : they fear no cold. 
 
 Ye thralls of meanest vengeance, tyrant gods. 
 Who mar the sacred nature in her fruit, 
 Who relish all disorder and unfaith, 
 Whence your authority that frame such deeds'? 
 Ill power that put you stronger than our lives. 
 But not your scorn or anger can bereave 
 The freedom of the breast, that bears about
 
 NIOBE. 99 
 
 Innate rebellion to your craven powers. 
 
 Ye cannot silence the pale lips, that hurl 
 
 The birthright of their protest in the teeth 
 
 Of domineering wrong they cannot stay, 
 
 Since some blind fate has seated wrong supreme. 
 
 Triumph in wrong, thou race of Zeus : the earth, 
 Is at thy feet for carnage : run thy day 
 Of tyranny, and turn thy careless eyes 
 To other desolation : there is food 
 For thine immortal arrows otherwhere. 
 And children fair as mine in peaceful homes 
 For new destruction : slacken not thy hand, 
 Lest men grown happy say tliy rule is done. 
 It is a fruitful race this breed of man, 
 And thrives by thinning : victims will not fail : 
 To spare, lest this should be, were idiot fear : 
 Not thy full malice shall extirpate all. 
 
 But O ye elder race of gentler gods,
 
 loo XIOBE. 
 
 Whom these have bound in darkness, whom the voice 
 
 Of lamentation at the upstart Kings 
 
 Adjures as only worthy to command ; 
 
 As only gods in deed, tho' these prevail. 
 
 Our hope is towards you chained beneath the world : 
 
 We whisper that you are not conquered yet : 
 
 That not in record human or divine 
 
 Was evil yet eternal : tyranny 
 
 Is doomed as soon as born, and bears about 
 
 The seeds of sure destruction, from the germ 
 
 Coeval with its growth ; and doomed its rule 
 
 However long the respite of its fall. 
 
 Arise ye Titans then, for these are weak, 
 Rend out your adamantine chains, and shake 
 The mountains from your limbs, infirm no more 
 To yield your ancient seats : resume that might 
 Which girdled round the world ere these had drawn 
 Their baby milk, and crush them from the sky. 
 Arise ye Titans and avenge my tears.
 
 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 
 
 T TRUST the worst is over with this sale. 
 
 The old place had a strange look in the crowd 
 The jostling and the staring and the creak 
 Of shufifled feet, the public laugh sent round, 
 The hammer's clink, the flippant auctioneer, 
 Number on number lengthening out the day : 
 Familiar things dishonoured, like old friends 
 Set up on high to scorning fools : and then 
 The ache of loss, and some dull sense that lliey 
 Would sell me last by parcels, till the dusk 
 Drew, in December sleet, and all were gone: 
 And this old wreck bowed at my drooping tire
 
 I02 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 
 
 In gathered shade unfriended and alone. 
 
 Bare walls and fixtures here : thus ends the tale. 
 
 George Barnes, the thriving farmer, warpt and shrunk 
 And naked to the bite of wind and wave. 
 On the blank threshold of his eightieth year, 
 Ripe for the parish union or the grave. 
 The man whose name was clean and word was sure 
 Dishonoured : pattern farmer of the squire, 
 The farm of gapless hedge and pasture clean 
 Without a rush : I, broken, the safe man 
 As England's bank for credit? when old Groves, 
 Who never paid a punctual rent, scrapes on. 
 With his lean kine, like Egypt's plagues, at grass 
 Where sprouts one blade of herbage to the score 
 Of rushes stubbled close as urchin ([uills. 
 
 Ye idle sons, ye false and idle sons, 
 A bitter ending to my careful years 
 Ye have devised me in your lurcher pride :
 
 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 103 
 
 Why should ye make me homeless at the last? 
 
 Ye knew that thrift had raised the labouring man 
 
 A fruitful farmer : your vain wits forgot 
 
 The two-roomed cottage of your schooling years ; 
 
 A labourer's sons to ape at gentlemen : 
 
 To drink and racket like the careless heirs 
 
 Of noble acres, race and ride to hounds ; 
 
 Fine clothes, French wines, ill comrades from the town : 
 
 And then to come and tell me, that I shamed 
 
 Your worships by still working with my men 
 
 In these old fields that bouglit you all your show. 
 
 Meanwhile your farms went wrack in bailiffs' liands, 
 
 Ye saw to nothing, stinted not, spent on : 
 
 Ye never held a plough or bound a sheaf: 
 
 Lord, I have seen you ride on liarvest days, 
 
 Among the smoking reapers, spruce and cool, 
 
 Be-gloved and Sunday-coated, vain and gay 
 
 As weedy poppies among honest grain. 
 
 And so these ran their tether out like lords. 
 
 While loan and credit lasted, and one year
 
 I04 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 
 
 Had back to bear the burden of the last 
 
 And pass it to another with its own. 
 
 And so they ran their folly to the lees, 
 
 And borrowed deeper till their flash studs failed, 
 
 And I to save some shreds of our good name 
 
 Sat down at four-score beggared — so it runs. 
 
 With nought I started and with nothing end : 
 For I and my old dame in our young days — 
 Kind soul, she's best in churchyard from these tears- 
 From her brisk needle and my labourer's wage 
 Contrived to scrape a little, coin by coin, 
 Albeit hungry mouths were in our nest 
 Of growing children, and the wages low. 
 And after hours I wrought a patch of waste 
 Into a garden : many helps are found 
 By those who seek them like midsummer bees 
 Making the long days longer, and our store 
 Grew under wary watching like a child. 
 We bought a cow to pasture in the lanes ;
 
 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 105 
 
 And since occasion helps the helj)ful man, 
 The squire's head woodman faiUng, I came in 
 Till there was picked another to their mind. 
 And since I felled as much at lower wage, 
 And since the bailiff gave me sturdy praise, 
 And since the squire could light on no one else. 
 They were content to leave this as it stood, 
 And no one came above me, so I throve. 
 
 And after years a leasehold farm fell in. 
 The homestead ruinous and the land undrained, 
 No specious venture ; for the dribbling term 
 Had thrown it lastly to a needy man 
 Who almost starved upon it, a poor soul 
 Crippled with ague and consuming sloth. 
 Thus an ill name, the fault of his neglect. 
 Clung to the farm and .scared the applicants. 
 Till, last the steward bating of his rents, 
 I closed the venture, now to stand or fall. 
 My savings scarce could stock it at the first :
 
 io6 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 
 
 All was awry, and, rood by rood, the land 
 
 With stubborn pains reclaimed from careless years. 
 
 Set me afield before the sleeping sun. 
 
 I dyked the solid marls with sturdy zeal, 
 
 Slaved like ten ploughmen in November dwift, 
 
 And bent the stubborn fallows to my will. 
 
 But at the full fall of the leaf there came 
 
 A bitter season in my second year 
 
 With sickness to our cattle, and with pain 
 
 We barely weathered through it to the spring. 
 
 Once safely through, large store of better days 
 
 Succeeded, and above our heads the sun 
 
 Of prosperous labour held an even noon. 
 
 And days of golden plenty flowed in toil 
 
 That set an honest relish on the day, 
 
 And gleamy tints by day's unstormy fall 
 
 Gave equal promise of to-morrow calm. 
 
 And when our children and our store increased 
 
 I took this larger farm, reputed first 
 
 In all the township. I have made its name
 
 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 107 
 
 Lose nothing in my keeping, year by year; 
 I made its good yet better; and I throve. 
 
 And as these sons grew men, I said, 'the boys 
 Shall each be started well and have their prime 
 Unfettered with the clogs that kept me down. 
 If my tough amis and purpose seat me here, 
 Why should I toss these troubles to tlie lads 
 Of my probation? they shall till their own, 
 And owe their labour to no man beside. 
 Lords of their honest strength and sinew sure.' 
 
 And spoke unwisely : 'tis a perilous thing 
 To give a lad some choice of idleness, 
 And plenty car\'ed too ready at his hand. 
 Better as I was : this I knew not then : 
 
 And as each son came twenty and a year. 
 Three sons I set them in three farms to thrive, 
 No fanners better started in the shire. 
 
 »
 
 io8 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 
 
 And thus they have repaid me, hke sour weeds 
 That steal the room and nurture of the grain 
 Under whose shade and sufferance they are sprung, 
 And, though they strike no root themselves, contrive 
 To choke and waste it wholly at the last. 
 
 Alas, I erred in being generous. 
 I could detect no failings in my own : 
 I thought their hearts were right because their limbs 
 Were moulded fair, and light was on their face, 
 The rosy maskings of a feeble core. 
 And, one by one, they failed from off the land, 
 Selfish, unstable, vain, and slothful boys. 
 See these have dragged me down, and thought no 
 
 shame 
 To link an old man's ruin to their own, 
 If so they could push back a little while 
 Their imminent destruction, and secure 
 Some paltry furlough for their evil ways. 
 They thought it all the same to strip me how
 
 THE SALE AT THE FARM. 109 
 
 Or wait to wrangle at my monument. 
 What matter if my few remainder years 
 Be comfortably furnished, or commended 
 To parish charity % old age is dull : 
 A dotard could not taste much difference. 
 I lodged as ill before I made your gold : 
 But your nice senses are another thing, 
 They shall not lack full flush of dehcates. 
 Shall gentlemen be shortened of their ease 
 While the old clod has yet a coat to lose? 
 
 Ay me, these troubles and this weary day 
 Have loosed my tongue unduly, and revealed 
 Much grievance better sealed in silent shame. 
 I am so old no wound can hurt me long. 
 The future smooths to one both good and blame : 
 They were my own that wrought their father's fall, 
 My own, tho' sinning, and these bitter words 
 Are wrongly spoken by a father's tongue. 
 Comfort is sure and silence in the grave,
 
 no THE SALE AT THE EARM. 
 
 I can abide the bitter interval, 
 
 As short as sour, that holds me from my rest. 
 
 This desolation and these naked walls 
 
 Are seen no longer, for the light is past 
 
 From these dead embers : so when I am dead 
 
 My thought will dwell no more on any cares.
 
 THE STRANGE PARABLE.''^ 
 
 nrOWARDS noon it left me in the sun's full glare. 
 
 It shook the habitation of my soul, 
 And rending sped upon the void. But I, 
 Albeit my pain was ended, seemed to crave 
 A necessary presence, and an old 
 Subsistence of unrest, accustomed long. 
 The langour and the vacancy of change 
 Replaced the antagonistic element, 
 That gave a substance to my life erewhile. 
 And stung the native energies from sleep 
 By mere resistance. This had ending now : 
 The ferment and the tyranny withdrawn, 
 
 .St. Luke xi. 24.
 
 112 THE STRANGE PARABLE. 
 
 The agony's vibration smoothed in calm 
 Left me a painless thing without a soul. 
 
 And I fared forth beneath the skies alone 
 Without a will to guide me, like a drift 
 In automatic motion ; all my life 
 Chaotic, nerveless now. 
 
 Some influx strove 
 Of barren dread beside my stagnant heart ; 
 There fear, in dearth of purpose, substitute 
 And dream of purpose, ruling in her room 
 Her seat and vacant function. 
 
 So I fared. 
 Along the arid roots of battered crags. 
 The flags of yawning heights, the summit shales. 
 My puipose drave to wander; I abhorred 
 The oozy footings of the plashy reeds. 
 The meadows rank with juicy undermath : 
 And chief I hated those lean wisps of fire 
 That crowd the peat-tarns nightly, or by gleams
 
 THE STRANGE PARABLE. 113 
 
 Of wavering twilight ; here in festered rank 
 The winter-sodden bullrush : here the fangs 
 Of rotten heath in purple blooming cleave 
 The trembling edges of the emerald floor. 
 And still I wandered on and yet no peace : 
 And still I paced the uplands dry and drear : 
 And still the curse was burning at my heart. 
 
 Then to myself I spake and spake with heed,— 
 The isolation and the restless feet 
 Of Cain are mine for ever. Shall I choose 
 Perpetual chaos] Surely I shall cease 
 If I return not. Pain erewhile was peace, 
 But this is desolation as the grave ; 
 The gloom in bitter silence spreads before ; 
 The moveless drifts are ruled along the verge ; 
 Above, the ebon vapour's bosomed waves 
 Lean from the wind, and waver towards their rest. 
 
 And I with heedful steps devised return, 
 
 I
 
 114 THE STRANGE PARABLE. 
 
 My slow blood sick with weariness and strung 
 To horrible emotion. The sheer slabs 
 Of granite stung my foot-fall ; when the ranks- 
 Of precipice and foreland, crushed and piled 
 With shocks of desolation, wore in scorn 
 The violet even on their blasted spires. 
 
 What then sustained me through % no hand of heaven. 
 The greedy chasm refused me : at my tread 
 The loosened snows yell downwards, ere my feet 
 Have made two onward steps. The crazy shales 
 On lips abysmal hold me by an inch 
 Of crumbling from the silence and the void — 
 At last the plain, O God : the bitter heights 
 Are whistling long behind. This rooted flower 
 Comes on me like the voices of my friends — 
 There is my place, last of the level plain : 
 The mist had masked it wholly, yet I know 
 The faintest border of the filmy wall ; 
 And nearer, nearer drawn, my wisli is deed.
 
 THE STRANGE PARABLE. 115 
 
 Ay me, returning, this is no return. 
 The core of desolation and no rest. 
 Empty and swept and garnished, I have found 
 A grave, no home, a bhght, a sohtude, 
 And I am loneher here than on the void. 
 
 So went I forth, and took unto my need 
 Seven former comrades in the naked walls ; 
 They came and dwelt there, souls that mock the light 
 And banter with the melancholy time, 
 Unheeding the to-morrow \ drowning sense 
 Of foresight down ; contented there to hold 
 A grim carousal with a staring death 
 And imminent destruction : but the dwift 
 And end I know not : this at least I know. 
 That man with men must change his words or die. 
 And this I know, man is not man alone, 
 Dowered with the curse of sociability, 
 Source of his sinning. Life is aching fret, 
 Anil bitter prying througli the secret doors
 
 n6 THE STRANGE PARABLE. 
 
 Of future, and stern wrestling with unrest, 
 Some void of unattainment palling all. 
 And this I know, relapse is worse than sin 
 Original ; ay me, what help is mine %
 
 THE NAIAIX 
 
 "D IVER of mine, dear source and parent stream. 
 
 Thy daughter loves upon thy lucid edge 
 To dream away the summer, and entwine 
 Thy lilies in her locks the long day thro'. 
 No sister naiad mine to take delight 
 Among thy ripples with me, nor beguile 
 The lazy silence with alternate song. 
 I am alone with nature and my sire. 
 
 How sweet recumbent by thy gleamy rims 
 To watch this azure Iris floating out 
 I kr curtained petals in the rosy dawn.
 
 Ii8 THE NAIAD. 
 
 To catch the tender murmur of the sedge 
 Rising and bending in the cloven stream, 
 With all its hoary blooms just crisp with wind. 
 The pastimes of a lonely nymph are these, 
 Not undelightful days of pensive calm : 
 
 There is a cavern where I love to sleep, 
 With reedy echoes slumberous at its mouth, 
 And overgrown with fern leaves intricate ; 
 The bees are rustling thro' it all day long. 
 And drop on drop an amber rillet falls. 
 No mortal eye has seen my secret nest. 
 
 Thence I behold the pastoral vale and meads 
 Fostered for ever by my father's wave. 
 Thence in mysterious morning I have heard 
 Delicious music far and faint : its notes 
 Float lost in sleepy vales and seem the flute 
 Of some immortal, viewless in deep woods. 
 Striving with silence thro' an Orphic fall
 
 THE NAIAD. 119 
 
 Of melody. Beyond, the piny steep 
 Exhales a golden vapour, and between 
 The long-draw-n foldings of its sacred vales 
 A foremost temple-porch aerial, set 
 On purple cliff wine-dark with granite scars. 
 I listen as the throbbing music dies. 
 And find another impulse at my heart. 
 Its mighty weird prevails against my peace 
 Destroying god-like calm, and makes me feed 
 On future like a mortal, with the dreams 
 Of earthly love, unmeet divine repose 
 That knows not sorrow. 
 
 Will no hero come? 
 Either beneath the tremulous arch of eve, 
 Or thro' the burning dews of sacred morn, 
 And fold me on his heart, and weave mc tales 
 Of high achievement, how he braved and slew 
 The dragon in his fastness] Of great wars. 
 Like old Titanic conflict with the gods, 
 Wherein his arm had wrestled strong as they.
 
 I20 THE NAIAD. 
 
 Then should I love him as he told, and waste 
 
 My thirsty soul in fervour on his lips ; 
 
 For I am here alone and cumbered down 
 
 With lonely and unloved divinity. 
 
 Sweet is this nature, dear my parent stream : 
 
 I love the velvet hills, and joy to hear 
 
 The inarticulate music of the earth : 
 
 And this calm mind immortal, weighing all 
 
 In contemplation and uneager rest. 
 
 Is very sweet : why ask this toil of love ? 
 
 Nay, love is more than these, and these with love 
 
 Are more delicious. 
 
 Father mine, reclined 
 On thy cold urn, whose everlasting flow 
 Shall make the riper harvest and enrich 
 Innumerable kingdoms, seer and sire. 
 Canst thou unroll the mists across my fate. 
 And read if I am lonely evermore? 
 I love thee well, but thy love is not all : 
 There is a something sweeter yet to be.
 
 DANIEL BEFORE BELSHAZZAR. 
 
 "11 THY have ye led me to this impious halH 
 Thy face, O King, is altered from the joy 
 Of feasting, and thy mighty ones no more 
 Carouse, but mutely tremble : blank their eyes 
 As yonder idiot faces carved in stone 
 For worship. Hath God spoken at the last] 
 Patient too long, O God, thou speakest now 
 To trace a flaming sentence on the wall 
 Full in the staring of those idols' eyes. 
 The secret words, O King, thou canst not read
 
 122 DANIEL BEFORE BELSHAZZAR. 
 
 Nor find interpretation of their fear. 
 
 If I declare the writing it shall make 
 
 Your feast as dust before you : yonder wine 
 
 Shall burn your lips as poison from the cups 
 
 Of hallowed gold, whose desecrated use 
 
 Hath drawn a vengeance from the eternal King 
 
 Of angels down. 
 
 Why should I read alone"? 
 Where are thy wise Chaldeans ] Theirs the craft 
 To read the faces of the silent stars, 
 Assuring smooth dominion to thy pride : 
 They change the map of the eternal heaven 
 Into a lying oracle. Behold 
 The writing : let them read it : there is store 
 Of gold and purple for their ready lies, 
 At such a needful time why are they dumb ? 
 Or, if these fail, make incense to your gods, 
 Sweet odours, more libation : in your hour 
 Of prosperous feast they heard your hymns of praise ; 
 And now they must requite their worshippers
 
 DANIEL BEFORE BELSIIAZZAK. 123 
 
 For adoration : surely they can save, 
 
 For they are gods indeed, not wood or stone. 
 
 Behold I am a stranger, and alone 
 Amid the pride of Babylon : my race. 
 The children of captivity, were led 
 From Judah by thy father in his war, 
 Mean captives of the sword ; and who am I 
 To stand alone amid thy thousand lords. 
 And read thee to thy face the words of fear? 
 
 And yet, O King, the writing is not hard : 
 Search out the haughty annals of thy reign, 
 For thy recorded emi)irc must ensure 
 This sequel, surely as night draws the day. 
 To godless pride there is but one result. 
 And he who bears himself against high Ood, 
 Dooms in that hour his own devoted head. 
 
 Thy gifts be to thyself and not for nu.
 
 124 DANIEL BEFORE BELSHAZZAR. 
 
 I^et other reap reward, but I will none. 
 Shall I presume to barter recompence 
 If 1 interpret this divine decree? 
 The prophet is no merchant of his craft, 
 Nor sells his inspiration. Learn and hear. 
 
 Who gave thy father majesty beyond 
 The nations in his glory? Whose right arm 
 Clothed him with terrible fear, and set the necks 
 Of alien kings beneath his wrathful feet? 
 Wlio gave thy sire his conquest and his throne? 
 Who built secure dominion round his rest, 
 And made him King indeed : a King to slay 
 Or keep alive the nations as he chose. 
 To cancel or establish with his nod ? 
 The most high God, the King of kings, gave all, 
 And prospered in thy father's hand a time 
 His delegated sceptre that he throve : 
 Until his heart was lifted in his pride, 
 And God eternal heard his impious joy.
 
 DANIEL BEFORE BELSIIAZZAR. 125 
 
 For thus the King had spoken as he walked 
 
 For pleasure on his palace-roof, to view 
 
 His large metropolis beneath his feet — 
 
 ' Is not this city Babylon the great, 
 
 \\Tiich I have builded for my realm's al)ode, 
 
 The house of all my kingdom, founded sure 
 
 As an eternal empire in the might 
 
 Of my great glory ; this majestic work 
 
 For my continual honour till the end f 
 
 But while the word was in his throat there fell 
 
 A voice from heaven upon him in his pride, 
 
 ' Thy kingdom is departed :' and they drave 
 
 The madman from his palace : and he dwelt 
 
 With beasts and grazed their herbage, as the dews 
 
 Of heaven were wet upon him : till he knew 
 
 That the high (iod, to whom man's kings are dust, 
 
 Rules in the kingdom of the sons of men, 
 
 And delegates His power to whom He will. 
 
 This hast thou known, Helshazzar. vet refused
 
 126 DANIEL BEFORE BELSHAZZAR. 
 
 To humble thee before Him. Thou hast dared 
 To Hft thyself against the Lord of heaven. 
 Thou hast defiled the vessels of His house 
 With idol wine, and given in these the praise 
 To gods of stone and silver; in whose mouth 
 There is no speech nor seeing in their eyes. 
 But the high God thou hast not glorified : 
 Is not thy breath as vapour in His hand, 
 And all thy ways as nothing in His sight? 
 
 Then came the hand of anger from the Lord, 
 And in thy feasting hour against the wall 
 It wrote ; and word by word I will declare 
 The writing and assurance of thy doom. 
 Mene. Thy kingdom God hath numbered out 
 And finished it henceforward from the earth. 
 Tekel. Thou in the balances art weighed, 
 And God hath found thee wanting utterly. 
 Peres. Thy kingdom is divided : God 
 Hath given it to the Persians and the Medes.
 
 DANIEL BEFORE BELSHAZZAR. 127 
 
 Nay, bring me no reward, no scarlet robe 
 Or chain of honour. \\'hy should I desire 
 A barren title in a falling realm ? 
 This and thy splendour are no longer thine. 
 The alien armies even now have scaled 
 Thy rampart, or have dried to their device 
 The mighty river's arm, and taught its wave 
 Another course. I forge no idle dream : 
 And even as I speak my words are deed. 
 Is there no sound upon the whispering night 
 Beyond this impious hall ? Pale are ye now. 
 I hear the tread of armies : thou, O King, 
 Art nothing, for the Median will not spare. 
 Ye stand like sheep, and herd about the base 
 Of each dumb idol : surely these shall save, 
 For these are gods indeed, and they shall wake 
 From stony sleep and hurl the intruding host 
 Beyond Euphrates. They are gods indeed I 
 Down on thy knees, Belshazzar, for thy time
 
 128 DANIEL BEFORE BELSHAZZAR. 
 
 Is at its overthrow : thy sand is run : 
 Thy sceptre is departed evermore : 
 Entreat for mercy thine insulted God. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: — PRINTED HY JONATHAN PALMER, SIDNEY STREET. 
 
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