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 V27
 
 LEISURE INTERVALS
 
 LEISURE INTERVALS 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE RED WAY 
 
 i897 
 
 Q ? ? r: 1
 
 • t • 4 • _ 
 
 ■ ■ 
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 5-3 
 
 TO FAUNUS 
 
 WAa/ honour to my dear friend's son were here, 
 If all men were like merchants, who must get 
 Value for value ? But, lo ! I appear 
 With your sweet sanction to my labour set ; 
 N^ And you still live unconscious of my debt. 
 ^ For yoti're heir to an intellect, which lifts 
 These numbers to a rank with equal gifts ; 
 ^\\ And on yet untried ground we thus have met I 
 Some to the altar finer incense bring, 
 Some coarser. Faunus, this is all my store. 
 My Muse hath not learned many strains to sing : 
 vj Say that these please, and she will higher soar. 
 ^ A newer brood may prove, perchance, more sturdy on the 
 
 'A 
 
 wing, 
 And make amends to him, whose name my first-fruits bore. 
 
 V 
 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 pa(;b 
 
 TO FAUNUS V 
 
 EARLY POEMS 
 
 THE SEQUEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS ... 3 
 
 ENDYMION'S METAMORPHOSIS 9 
 
 HERO AND LEANDER (A FRAGMENT) . . . 13 
 
 MORNING (A FRAGMENT) 14 
 
 TO SYLVIA 15 
 
 A DIALOGUE BETWEEN SYLVIA AND HER HEART . 1 7 
 
 AMORET 19 
 
 'i prythee, what can fancy do ? ' . . . 20 
 
 the students' song 23 
 
 to the old year 24 
 
 to the new year 25 
 
 a dialogue 2s 
 
 a second dialogue 29 
 
 'it was a maiden, and she was fair' . . 32 
 
 'if i to roses should thy cheeks compare* . 33 
 
 love and fate 34 
 
 from catullus 35 
 
 to ccelia 35 
 
 lines suggested by a picture of my mother 36 
 
 julia (1867) 37 
 
 lines written in miss northwood's album, 1869 39 
 
 the maiden's nay 4 1 
 
 vii
 
 viii I on ri. NTS 
 
 TACE 
 
 ■ 1S75 44 
 
 4S 
 
 MY NEIGHBOUR 5 2 
 
 10 1 . a. I> 55 
 
 POEMS WRITTEN BETWEEN 
 
 lS66 AND 1876 
 
 \NDOKA, A RHAPSODY 59 
 
 •DO YOU ASK MK, WHENCE I DREW ' ... 84 
 HIE BARON'S DAUGHTER 86 
 
 LATER POEMS 
 j S75— 1891 
 
 11YI.AS, A MASQUE OF SEA-FOLK . . . . IO9 
 
 1 I.EGIAC I'OEMS :— 
 
 THE I'OET'S GRAVE .... 
 
 AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A II 
 
 DROWNED AT SEA 
 I HE father's ELEGY 
 hie BROl her's elegy 
 
 IF.ND 
 
 'JO 
 
 '33 
 
 [44 
 
 164 
 
 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES: — 
 
 i. perigot's departure 1S1 
 
 II. PERICOT*S RETURN IQ2 
 
 EPISTLES : — 
 
 I. TO I AUNUS 211 
 
 II. To HENRY HUTH 234 
 
 III. TO A YOUNG LADY 238 
 
 IV. TO CLYTUS 2 13
 
 EARLY POEMS
 
 THE SEQUEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 Once Venus lay in her fair land 
 
 Of Paphos in a bow'r, 
 A-twisting in her fragrant hand 
 
 A purple- fringed fiow'r. 
 
 " O flower," quoth the moodish queen, 
 " What, pry thee, canst thou be ? 
 
 What do the fair-hair'd Naiads mean, 
 Who say that thou art He ? 
 
 " O me, I lovM a dainty youth — 
 
 'Twas once upon a time ; 
 But he (poor boy), in art uncouth, 
 
 Imagin'd love a crime. 
 
 " For rude and shapeless beasts of prey 
 
 Were his untutor'd joy : 
 My presence chas'd the smile away, 
 
 Aid made him dull and coy.
 
 SEQUEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 " He fled my touch, and thought to kiss 
 
 But vain and idle toying, 
 Nor would hu stay to see, if bliss 
 
 Died always of enjoying. 
 
 " One morn, the sky was dark and dreary, 
 
 And the wind was hushed ; 
 And I felt of life a-weary, 
 
 As I fondly rushed 
 
 " Far from my bow'r, heart-sick, to look, 
 Where this dear youth might be, 
 
 Until at last I spied a brook 
 With velvet drapery. 
 
 " I am a goddess born, O flow'r, 
 
 And Venus is my name. 
 But unto Love is granted pow'r 
 
 The gods themselves to tame. 
 
 .-v 
 
 " My squeamish heart was all a-fret 
 At what time might disclose : 
 
 No scent seem'd in the violet, 
 No bloom upon the rose. 
 
 " He broke from me the eve before, 
 
 Vowing he was asham'd 
 To stay there dallying any more, 
 
 And my sharp wooing blam'd.
 
 SEQUEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 " He said that he would greet the day 
 With hound, and spear, and horn ; 
 
 Since I was not to be his prey, 
 I wish'd myself unborn. 
 
 " ' Think me/ quoth I, • a bristled hog 
 
 Or some swift-footed deer, 
 And hunt me, sweet one, with thy dog, 
 
 And make me prisoner. 
 
 " ' Belov'd boy, I will fly from thee, 
 Should that have greater charms, 
 
 And only pray my lot may be 
 A pitfall in thine arms. 
 
 " ' I'll run as fleetly as a roe, 
 
 To furnish thee delight, 
 Or feign myself a stricken doe, 
 
 And fall down in thy sight.' 
 
 " But he turn'd moodily away, 
 
 As I had done him wrong, 
 And said, with women so to play 
 
 To men did not belong. 
 
 *&• 
 
 " Since then my eyes have begg'd for food, 
 
 And I had none to give ; 
 For they all other meat eschew'd, 
 
 On his fair form to live."
 
 UEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 The flo\v"r repos'd itself quite flat 
 
 In Aphrodite's palm. 
 And seem'd to owe new life to that 
 
 Distillery of balm. 
 
 But, ah ! she nipp'd it hard again, 
 Scarce heeding what she did, 
 
 And when she saw the flower's pain 
 Her own unkindness chid. 
 
 Now hasted she the more to knit 
 
 Up her half-rinish'd tale : 
 "At last," said she, resuming it, 
 
 " I found my lov'd one's trail. 
 
 " Upon the glist'ning turf, a-heap, 
 
 My poor Adonis lay : 
 Methought the elfin creature Sleep 
 
 Might have made him his prey. 
 
 " But Death, a greater tyrant still, 
 Who owed me no despite, 
 
 This innocent sweet imp to kill 
 A monster did incite. 
 
 " I had propitiated him 
 
 With votive sacrifice: 
 For I make many a bright eye dim, 
 
 And many a brave heart ice.
 
 SEQUEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 " To think, when I paid him all hearts, 
 
 Which Cupid rave in twain, 
 That he should launch one of his darts, 
 
 And slay my own dear swain ! " 
 
 With that this lady paramount 
 
 O'er all loves but her own 
 Chang'd either eye into a fount, 
 
 Which had a river grown : 
 
 But Cupid chanc'd then to trip in, 
 
 His locks with roses bound, 
 And did to plant a kiss begin, 
 
 Where he a tear had found. 
 
 " Why weepest thou so, mother mine ? 
 
 Is every shepherd dead ? 
 O, do not for Adonis pine ! 
 
 Another take instead. 
 
 Though swains many, whom thou knewest, 
 
 To Pluto's court be gone, 
 How canst thou hope, who mortals wooest, 
 
 To woo for ever one ? " 
 
 " O, Time holds Beauty as his thrall, 
 
 And has done from the first ; 
 And all my lovers to him fall, 
 
 As bubbles swell and burst."
 
 SEQUEL OF VENUS AND ADONIS 
 
 "All Paphos," then the boy did say, 
 " Shall my wing'd shadow see, 
 
 Till I have hither brought away- 
 One full as fair as he." 
 
 Hut as the early tears were slak'd, 
 
 Fresh up began to well ; 
 And ere her nymphs could be awak'd, 
 
 Into a swoon she fell. 
 
 One blot on beauty is unkindness 
 
 To that it most regards : 
 ( )ne property of love is blindness 
 
 Its dearest ends towards. 
 
 So Venus clipp'd her fair Transform'd, 
 
 E'en while she lay as dead, 
 Till its whole fairness grew deform'd, 
 
 And verdure withered. 
 
 And when she woke again, she wept 
 
 To see the cruel case, 
 And blam'd herself that she had slept, 
 
 And chid her nymphs apace. 
 
 She said : " What, prythee, hast thou been ? " 
 
 The little weakling sigh'd, 
 Then curl'd its petals slowly in, 
 
 And droop'd, and died.
 
 endymion's metamorphosis 
 
 " O cruel fortune ! " was her cry, 
 When she won back her breath : 
 
 " Which suffers not the gods to die, 
 Nor yet to conquer Death." 
 
 But to the King of gods and men 
 She pray'd, that He once more 
 
 To his first likeness her lost swain 
 For her sake would restore. 
 
 And now in Jove's star-paved court 
 
 He serveth her as page, 
 Yet there he seldom findeth aught 
 
 But gentle vassalage. 
 
 ENDYMION'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 Lo ! how the Moon bath'd yesternight 
 
 Her tender beauty in the Sea, 
 And then, like sovereign lady dight, 
 Rose in effulgent majesty, 
 To meet her starry Court. But sorrow now 
 Has set his throne up on her queenly brow.
 
 io rndymion's metamorphosis 
 
 From her swift feet she shook the dew 
 
 In radiant flakes, last eventide, 
 Where thirsty summer breezes blew, 
 And starved sweets for moisture sigh'd 
 In Flora's treasury, but sorrow now 
 1 ias set his throne up on her queenly brow. 
 
 I saw her stoop, about the dawn, 
 
 To Latmos shyly, when the light 
 Still kept the fringes of my lawn, 
 
 And ere the Hours with blushes bright 
 Had pale Aurora's purple eyelids touch'd, 
 Where she on old Tithonus' breast lay couch'd. 
 
 I saw her hold her onward way, 
 
 Like one whose suit has poorly sped, 
 And her orb droop, as who would say, 
 " Why do I live, since he is dead ? 
 beauty's worth dwells in the beholder's 
 
 eyes, 
 And youth is nought without his properties. 
 
 " Eternal youth, eternal sleep ! 
 
 Take back, great Jove, the empty boon ; 
 And then the thriftless winds, which sweep 
 The world, my dear Endymion soon 
 Will carry, where he shall no longer be 
 A taunt to Time, and a sweet woe to me.
 
 endymion's METAMORPHOSIS II 
 
 " Or if there's pow'r to make stone breathe, 
 
 May my belov'd one's likeness yet 
 Survive, where I his brow can wreathe 
 With a fair silver coronet 
 On Latmos nightly ; and so he can keep 
 His state of lasting youth and lasting sleep. 
 
 " But let, O, let me once again 
 
 Recall the bloom to his young cheek, 
 And see those eyes which wrought my pain, 
 And hear him just a little speak." 
 Up to Jove's Court his own child's prayer went ; 
 And he returned a motion of assent. 
 
 His unheard presence Latmos owns, 
 
 In beauty likest some carv'd Faun ; 
 And his chill temples each night crowns 
 With azure glory : or at dawn, 
 Or at more early startide, when at first 
 The sun in ocean slakes his mighty thirst. 
 
 ii. 
 
 But lo ! for the young shepherd she lov'd best 
 Arcadia has donn'd her funeral weed, 
 And goes in green and gold no longer dress'd ; 
 Nor doth Pan care to play upon his reed. 
 And all good nymphs in memory of him 
 With sprigs of cypress set their tresses trim.
 
 12 ENDYM ION'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 Let favour'd Latmos her gay gown of green 
 Embroider with all dainty flowers, which 
 ( hi meadows or in shaded vales are seen, 
 Or that the margins of swift brooks enrich. 
 Let maids for him eternal chaplets make, 
 And each spring grow more fruitful for his sake. 
 
 Ye nymphs, whose frail life from the acorn-cup 
 To you is slowly, thread by thread, unspun, 
 Go, hang your bows and fallow quivers up, 
 And make fresh posies for Endymion 
 Who, save what to the outward view was fair, 
 Tenants some unseen mansion of the air. 
 
 Fetch jasmine, whence the bee much wealth distils 
 The primrose pale and modest virgin-bower : 
 The oxlip, borderer on laughing rills : 
 The pied carnation and the cuckoo-flower. 
 Gather all these, I pray you, where ye may, 
 And on his changeless brow in garlands lay. 
 
 Sometimes, ye Dryads, when the sun declines 
 From his hot prime, cup the encrystall'd dew, 
 Which has just lately rain'd on alley'd vines 
 And on the marybuds which peep at you, 
 Each from his leafy hermitage. Then trip it 
 To his cold home, and in his honour sip it.
 
 HERO AND LEANDER 13 
 
 And each new moon, elves, climb the tall hill's 
 
 side, 
 Your dimpled arms with tangled perfumes charg'd ; 
 And when you have his comely form espied, 
 Your fragrant loads are straight to be enlarg'd; 
 For it is meet to serve with this sweet rite 
 Your lady, the chaste empress of the night. 
 
 HERO AND LEANDER 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
 Great son of Venus, time-devouring god ! 
 
 Ah ! thou who wouldst drown all eternity 
 
 In one short hour, and with a frown or nod 
 
 Bid each transcendent moment last for aye ! 
 
 Thy fame is founded, Cupid, on a rock — 
 
 'Twas thou, that nerv'dst the arm, which stemm'd the 
 
 tide 
 Of Bosphorus, and sought the Sestian bow'r, 
 Where Hero dwelt, who stood, his course to 
 
 guide, 
 Holding a torch o'er the embattled tow'r — 
 Till, one dark night, the tempest howl'd : the sea 
 Danc'd madly to the sound, and seem'd to mock 
 Her ears and sight. It was the hour ; and he 
 Came not. " O Gods ! " she cried, "some cruel rock
 
 14 M O R N I N ' I 
 
 Or ruthless wave has torn him from my breast ! 
 
 Leander, love, thy Hero waits thee here" — 
 
 Just then a cry, borne o'er the foaming crest : 
 
 " Adieu, I sink : adieu, my mistress dear ! " 
 
 She shriek'd, then listen'd — one more feeble moan — 
 
 " ''Vis o'er, and I " the wind bore off the rest. 
 
 The maiden sank, and felt herself alone 
 
 In life, and thought to die with him was best. 
 
 She gave one look below and one above : 
 
 One parting glance at dreary, darken'd life, 
 
 And then beneath she thought she heard her 
 
 love, 
 Who said : " Come, sweet one, be the sea-god's 
 
 wife ! " 
 With desperate resolve she plung'd headlong 
 Into the huge abyss. 
 
 MORNING 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
 Lo ! now the perfume-freighted Morn 
 Comes forth from th' orient gate of heaven, 
 Borne on a crimson cloud. Before 
 Her chariot goes Lucifer 
 Her son — the Star-god, and behind 
 Lags Day, the wonder-child of Dawn
 
 TO SYLVIA 15 
 
 Who, while the black-wing'd Night held sway, 
 Hath slumber'd in some distant, fern-fring'd cave 
 Upon the margent of the restless sea. 
 
 Hail ! golden-tress'd Aurora, hail ! 
 
 The Hours attend thee on thy fragrant path, 
 
 And gentle spirits of the sweet, crisp air, 
 
 Which come to pay court to new-risen day, 
 
 Diffuse around thee odours, which 
 
 The Breezes, Nature's censers, waft 
 
 To all the corners of the jewell'd earth. 
 
 TO SYLVIA 
 
 I saw thee, when thy day first broke 
 
 So gently to unconscious men, 
 
 And, link by link, thy cruel yoke 
 
 Thou first begann'st to rivet then. 
 
 I saw from out thy cradle-folds 
 
 Thy fists in mutiny uprise ; 
 
 But, Sylvia, the world now holds 
 
 Thy arms less dangerous than thine eyes ! 
 
 What was a bud, a flower grew, 
 
 So fair, so pure, and, O, so dear ! 
 
 And many a gard'ner tended you, 
 
 That canker-worm might not come near.
 
 1 6 PO SYLVIA 
 
 Now, as a ship launch'd on the sea, 
 Thou steer'st thy way, and all seems fair. 
 Around thee few the perils be ; 
 But, ah ! of sunken rocks bewa: 
 Spurn not the counsel I thee gr 
 Now thy youth sheds its brightest rays : 
 With honour happiness must live, 
 And seldom beauty knows long days. 
 When men write sonnets to thy brow, 
 Painting it than all brows more white, 
 Whiter than ivory or snow : 
 Think this is but as poets write. 
 When they thy lips begin to praise, 
 Shewing how they the cherry outshine, 
 O, then take heed, that none essays 
 His poorer hue to blend with thine. 
 They'll vow thy step as elf's is light, 
 Excelling Nature's choir thy voice, 
 And that thy song, a summer's night, 
 Maketh the nightingale rejoice. 
 Perhaps they may call thy form divine, 
 And blest the ground, where thou dost go, 
 And swear, that stars above that shine 
 Borrow their lustre here below. 
 But when this incense comes to you, 
 When at your feet this tribute's laid — 
 Why, if the tale be something true, 
 'Twill be enough, my queenly maid.
 
 A DIALOGUE \"J 
 
 A DIALOGUE BETWEEN SYLVIA 
 AND HER HEART 
 
 " O, what is Love, I prythee say ? " 
 Quoth Sylvia to her heart one day. 
 " Is it a god, as some do deem, 
 Or is it but a sickly dream ? 
 Is it a pure and holy flame, 
 Or is it but an empty name ? 
 Is it a gross and soulless creature, 
 Or element divine of Nature ? 
 What is it ? " little Sylvia cried ; 
 " Love what it is," her heart replied, 
 " I straight will tell thee, lady fair, 
 That so thou mayst of Love beware. 
 O, Love is nothing, Love is all ; 
 O, Love is honey, Love is gall. 
 Love is a very pretty thing ; 
 Love is a very cruel sting. 
 Love doth inhabit here and there ; 
 Love doth inhabit everywhere. 
 Love may be deepest unexpress'd ; 
 But it is sweetest, when confess'd. 
 It is a spark, it is a fire : 
 A sacred flame, a loose desire : 
 A will-o'-wisp, a maiden's toy, 
 A shadow dim, a chubby boy.
 
 I > A DIALOG UK 
 
 Both Hatred's sire and Beauty's son, 
 
 (Proteus-like) Love can put on 
 
 All the airy shapes, which b 
 
 Embodied in our fantasy. 
 
 Such, then, is Love,'' the maid's heart said. 
 
 " Alack for Love, then ! " cried the maid. 
 
 " But, O, it cannot be, O, no ; 
 
 Love is not always changeful so ; 
 
 And thou, O heart, didst never find 
 
 Thy swain and mine to thee unkind. 
 
 So why shouldst thou and I not be 
 
 Believers in Love's constancy? " 
 
 Her Wish. 
 
 Behold! O deity of Love, 
 
 A maiden kneeling at thy feet, 
 
 Whose prayer is, that Love may pro 
 
 To her a passion soft and sweet. 
 
 Soft as the wind, which Juneward blows, 
 
 Too soft to please our milter's will : 
 
 Sweet as the parasite, which grows 
 
 Up round my bowery window-sill.
 
 A M O R E T 19 
 
 AMORET 
 
 Of all maidens that I knew, 
 Whether they be many or few, 
 One was always kind and true ; 
 And it is Amoret. 
 
 Fresh as is the breaking day : 
 Fragrant as a hawthorn spray : 
 Gentle, innocent, and gay 
 
 Is fair young Amoret. 
 
 She lends Cupid all the light, 
 With which he sees in the night ; 
 And yet her eyes are as bright. 
 How haps it, Amoret ? 
 
 I watch the breeze, as it sips 
 The dew from her sever'd lips, 
 For I'm jealous of those lips — 
 The lips of Amoret. 
 
 I will consecrate sweet hours 
 To gathering heart-speaking flow'rs, 
 To make garlands for the bow'rs, 
 Where dwells my Amoret.
 
 2D 'what TAN FANCY DO?' 
 
 For she's fair, and very fair : 
 She treads the earth, as 'twere air ; 
 And she's true as she is fair, 
 I- my young Amoret. 
 
 Nor is Amoret less kind 
 Than true; yet pure is her mind, 
 As are the lilies, that do bind 
 The brows of Amoret. 
 
 Then I'll sing of Amoret, 
 That ne'er such a jewel yet 
 In a monarch's crown was set 
 As peerless Amoret. 
 
 I PRYTHEE, WHAT CAN FANCY DO:' 
 
 I prythke, what can Fancy do? 
 O, ask not me, 
 Who from my English home 
 Had never call to roam, 
 
 Or to change old for new. 
 But him who over the billowy sea 
 Barters the sweets of life for hard-got gains : 
 The wistful squatter on the vast Australian plains.
 
 'what can fancy DO?' 2 1 
 
 II. 
 
 His hut upon the prairie looks ; 
 And, his work done, 
 He hugs his elbow-chair, 
 Though his heart be not there. 
 And as his shelf of travell'd books 
 He takes down fondly one by one, 
 His tatter'd primer he scarce bears to see, 
 For he thinks how he learnt it at his mother's knee. 
 
 in. 
 
 What, prythee, more can Fancy do ? 
 When day declines, 
 And I from toil retreat 
 Into my wonted seat, 
 
 I from my study casement view 
 The matted creeper, as it twines, 
 Making my feather'd pensioners a bow'r ; 
 And with half-curtain'd eyes I think I see Glendwr. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The man, whose inexhaustive brain 
 
 Delights to paint 
 On paper or on board 
 His fancies long up-stor'd, 
 
 Doth ill his joy contain, 
 When what pass'd but for something quaint, 
 The slow-grown fruit of one laborious mind, 
 A transfer from true life he happeneth to find.
 
 k WW AT CAN I ANCY DO ? ' 
 
 .- who (a rosc-check'd country girl) 
 Was woo'd and won 
 By one out of a town. 
 When she is smitten down 
 
 Amid a city's whirl : 
 Her Sleeting thoughts fast backward run ; 
 And her last hours ar« shar'd between 
 Her home, her youth, her courtship, and the vil! 
 green. 
 
 VI. 
 
 So one time the poor Huguenot, 
 
 When to our shore 
 1 le came in peace to live, 
 A welcom'd fugitive, 
 
 Pac'd his small garden-plot, 
 And stood in Perigord once mm 
 And so the inmate of the old Bastille 
 Dream'd of the freedom which he never was to 
 feel.
 
 THE STUDENTS' SONG 23 
 
 THE STUDENTS' SONG 
 
 Here's to the dark blue eye, 
 Which stars in northern sky 
 
 Transcends in brightness : 
 And here's to th' virgin brow, 
 To which all lilies bow, 
 
 Sham'd by its whiteness ! 
 
 Chorus. 
 Come, fill your glasses, fill your glasses ! 
 And let us toast all bonny lasses ; 
 O mighty Bacchus, at whose shrine 
 We freely pour tlie purple wine, 
 Drive, drive all care and thought away ; 
 For 'tis the students' holiday : 
 Away ! all carking grief s, away! 
 For 'tis the students' holiday ! 
 
 Here's to the cherry lip, 
 
 Where gods a draught might sip, 
 
 Than nectar purer : 
 And here's to the snowy breast, 
 Where ringdoves seek a nest, 
 
 No nest securer ! 
 
 Chorus. 
 Come, fill your glasses, &x.
 
 J 4 TO THi: OLD YEA R 
 
 Here's to the nature kind, 
 Which docs affection hind 
 
 By its own kindness : 
 And here's to the noble heart. 
 Which to a friend's weak part 
 
 Pretendeth blindness! 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 C 'ome, fill your glasses, &c. 
 
 TO THE OLD YEAR 
 
 Go, and with you all my sorrow 
 
 Take away ; 
 A new year will break to-morrow 
 
 With the day. 
 
 And yet I pray you give it me 
 
 Back again ; 
 For pleasure would not pleasure be 
 
 Without pain. 
 
 But still why not unto the old 
 
 Bid adieu, 
 Whenas the young year will unfold 
 
 Store of new?
 
 TOTHENEWYEAR 25 
 
 O, time with his mellowing strength 
 
 Yields relief; 
 And memory of griefs at length 
 
 Is not grief. 
 
 Then if old troubles, as time runs, 
 
 Grow less great, 
 I must try any coming ones 
 
 To tolerate. 
 
 And since my life is pois'd between 
 
 Two extremes, 
 All is not good or ill, I ween, 
 
 Which so seems. 
 
 TO THE NEW YEAR 
 
 O mighty wonder that art yet unborn ! 
 Before I see thee, I already know 
 The age and stature to which thou must grow ; 
 For he, who views the first blush of the morn, 
 Knows that each day has its allotted hours, 
 Just as of certain buds come certain flow'rs.
 
 2^ TO THE NEW YEAR 
 
 Rut what thy shape and fortune are to be, 
 If thou wilt be propitious or unkind, 
 Remains, ( > year, as dark and undivin'd, 
 As rites of old Eleusis are to me. 
 
 II. 
 
 Wilt thou come, leading Plenty by the hand, 
 
 With Peace and Pleasure on thy steps attending? 
 
 Or wilt thou come, the air with discord rending. 
 
 And with a fearful message to our land ? 
 
 Think that thou hast this mission and this power : 
 
 To bring down human science twelve moons lower. 
 
 For thou art heir to all the years gone by 
 
 And treasurer; and it is in thy charge 
 
 The store thou carriest with thee to enlarge ; 
 
 And, as the twelfth moon wastes, thou art to die. 
 
 in. 
 
 Come, then ; in thy prescriptive glory come, 
 Thy youth contracted to the wealth of ages ! 
 Lo ! what a noble work thy life engages, 
 All men thy courtiers, all worlds thy home ! 
 If each may have what he shall ask from thee, 
 Some of the spurn'd loves of gay hearts to me
 
 TO THE NEW YEAR 27 
 
 With sweet content and honest mirth bring hither. 
 But all my cares and sorrows take away ; 
 All thoughts, which on a too fine fancy prey, 
 And all the hopes which only grow to wither. 
 
 IV. 
 
 As, at a children's feast, some special guest 
 
 Enters, his arms like a rich galleon laden 
 
 With gifts for every lad and every maiden, 
 
 So thou, from thy yet unclasp'd treasure-chest, 
 
 Wilt draw enchantments for all states of men, 
 
 Not to be sung by unprophetic pen. 
 
 Art thou new riches for the rich preparing, 
 
 New sermons to the poor, to teach them what 
 
 Their duty is, and that it is their lot 
 
 To be poor — and industrious — and forbearing ? 
 
 Or is the lofty task reserv'd for thee 
 
 A lighter and more modern line of tracing 
 
 Between the orders, and of so effacing 
 
 The marks of vassalage among the free ? 
 
 Wilt thou put forth a hand to spread true light 
 
 And aid brain-power in its upward flight ?
 
 28 \ DIAL0G1 
 
 J'.ut in thine honour thou shalt have one writer, 
 If thou wilt prove more generous towards 
 Those studies, which the world too ill rewards, 
 And make the English scholar's household brighter. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Wilt thou wake with a soul and tongue of fire, 
 And shape forth utterances brave and burning, 
 Some more corrupt traditions overturning, 
 And fetich- worship, in thy righteous ire? 
 Or wilt thou whisper to the weary-hearted 
 The soft persuasions of the year departed ? 
 O, leave not to thine heirs too much to pay ; 
 For our inburn'd desires are usurers; 
 And we shall ask far more from future years, 
 Than we should take with thankfulness to-day. 
 
 A DIALOGUE 
 
 The woman pleads. 
 
 He. Dear, we must part. She. But, O, the pain ! 
 He. I would the whole on me might fall. 
 She. But may we never meet again ? 
 He. No, no, forget we met at all. 
 She. Are vows like footprints by the shore, 
 Whose span is but a single tide?
 
 A SECOND DIALOGUE 29 
 
 He. One kiss, and then we meet no more. 
 She. I die, if I must quit thy side. 
 He. Men lose a hand, an arm, an eye ; 
 
 And still do live — and cannot you ? 
 She. But do not men and women die, 
 
 If once the heart be cleft in two ? 
 He. What force so soon us can have knit ? 
 She. A force, that has done stranger things, 
 He. I see love in thy blushes writ. 
 She. Unto the elm the ivy clings. 
 He. Well, then, farewell ; for I must go : 
 
 The sun is shortening his rays. 
 She. Ah, didst thou reckon time up so, 
 
 When months seemed melting into days ? 
 He. The world is wide. But look around. 
 She. I look, and see no form but thine ; 
 
 Where thou art not, is desert ground— 
 He. O, cease ! thou must and shalt be mine. 
 
 A SECOND DIALOGUE 
 
 The ?nan pleads. 
 
 He. I'll turn, both heart and soul, to thee, 
 And cease henceforth to roam ; 
 And I will make, where'er thou be, 
 My country and my home.
 
 30 A SECOND DIALOGUE 
 
 She. Ah yes, ah yes; but I've heard say, 
 When youth and freshness fade, 
 That men turn cold, and fling away 
 The vows which they once made. 
 He. Bad men have grown so scarce, we deem 
 Such as are left the worse. 
 Report it boots not to esteem, 
 Nor poet's angry verse. 
 She. Too rapid streams soon spend their force 
 Too fierce a flame dies down. 
 Passion should run an even course : 
 The end the entrance crown. 
 He. Like eager brooks young lovers are, 
 Hasting to meet the river. 
 Our hearts grow soberer with care ; 
 But true love's true for ever. 
 She. Were hearts as true, as tongues do feign, 
 If lips ne'er utter'd guile, 
 Twould be the golden age again, 
 And ev'ry land would smile. 
 He. New crops of lovers each spring grows : 
 If, in a thousand, one 
 Turn false, straightway the rumour goes, 
 All maidens are undone ! 
 She. To ev'ry life there comes the day, 
 When leaves no more are green ; 
 And then thine eye to one might stray, 
 Who was, what I had been.
 
 A SECOND DIALOGUE 31 
 
 He. O, spare, O, spare our luckless sex, 
 Thou naughty unbeliever ! 
 Did Laura ne'er her lord's soul vex, 
 Or Alice prove deceiver ? 
 She. Fair tales are whisper'd in maids' ears, 
 And some to yield are fain ; 
 But many an one hath begg'd with tears 
 Her freedom back again. 
 He. If this is lady's justice, lo ! 
 To it I here demur. 
 Would you discredit all men so, 
 Because a few may err ? 
 She. But perhaps thou mightst come to forget 
 The morn, which saw us wed ; 
 Then I should wish we ne'er had met, 
 And pray that I were dead. 
 He. Resist no more. 
 
 She. Forbear your suit. 
 He. Consent. She. Consent? what then? 
 He. Say Yes. She. Say Yes. He. Joy makes me 
 
 mute. 
 She. God make you true. He. Amen !
 
 J- 
 
 2 * IT WAS A MAIDEN ' 
 
 •IT WAS A MAI 1)1 X, AND SHE 
 WAS FAIR ' 
 
 i. 
 
 1 1 was a maiden, and she was fair, 
 
 Ah me ! ah me ! 
 And there was poetry in her face, 
 And every motion breath'd with grace : 
 And the glory of morning was in her hair. 
 
 Ah me ! ah me ! 
 
 II. 
 
 It was a maiden, and she was fair, 
 
 Ah me ! ah me ! 
 Hut she was as false as false can be, 
 And I fled away over the sea ; 
 For the thought of home I could not bear. 
 Ah me ! ah me ! 
 
 ■ 
 in. 
 
 Tis pity, and it is sorrow too, 
 
 Ah me ! ah me! 
 That beauty should thus with falsehood dwell, 
 And why it is, O, I cannot tell ; 
 But it e'er has done, and e'er will do. 
 
 Ah me ! ah me !
 
 ' IF I TO ROSES ' 33 
 
 'IF I TO ROSES SHOULD THY 
 CHEEKS COMPARE ' 
 
 If I to roses should thy cheeks compare, 
 And say thy lips more pure than coral are, 
 
 How poor a due it were ! 
 
 Or should I feign thy hair 
 In threaded gold adown thy neck did fall, 
 And that thy features were angelical ; 
 
 My song 
 
 Would do thee wrong, 
 Who art thyself, and therein more than all. 
 
 ii. 
 
 If I to nightingales thy notes preferr'd, 
 To liken thee unto a lonesome bird, 
 
 That mourns her hapless fate, 
 
 Were ill to celebrate 
 Thy voice ; and then thine eyes if I should call 
 Two stars, which from their spheres were seen to fall, 
 
 My Muse 
 
 Would thee abuse, 
 
 Who art thyself, and therein more than all. 
 
 c
 
 34 LOVE AND FATE 
 
 III. 
 
 If I should thee a second Helen paint, 
 And vow that art to limn thee was too faint, 
 
 I should praise thee too much, 
 
 Uut yet the truth not touch. 
 < >r if thy form of heavenly mould I swore, 
 \nd that thy mind was rich in learning's store, 
 
 My pen 
 
 Would err again ; 
 For thou'rt thyself — thyself, and nothing more. 
 
 LOVE AND FATE 
 
 i. 
 Hencf., hence, 
 Vain influence ! 
 Away ! 
 Thy sway 
 I do disown : 
 My heart has grown 
 Mure hard than stone. 
 
 II. 
 
 Hence, hence ! 
 With frankincense 
 And odours new 
 I will bestrew
 
 TO CCELIA 35 
 
 Thy shrine no more, 
 Nor honey pour 
 Thy porch before. 
 
 in. 
 
 Fate ! 
 Too late 
 
 1 know 
 That thou 
 
 Hast laws, which I 
 May vainly try 
 To modify. 
 
 From CATULLUS 
 
 There is no man, my mistress doth aver, 
 E'en Jove himself, to me she would prefer. 
 She says ; but what girls say to lovers smitten, 
 In wind and running water may be written. 
 
 TO CCELIA 
 
 O Ccelia, may I be bold 
 To ask thee, if't be true, 
 
 That (as I have of late been told) 
 Thou hast a lover new?
 
 LINES 
 
 V :t that thy favour I have lost, 
 Why wonder or complain ? 
 
 When every day adds to the host 
 Of hearts that thou hast slain ! 
 
 Ah ! would that I had known, alas, 
 The oaths, that thou dost sv. 
 
 Thou lov'st to change, as often as 
 The fashion of thy hair ! 
 
 For then i might have let my heart 
 Follow its own sweet way, 
 
 And with the mistress gaily part, 
 Who pleas'd but yesterday. 
 
 Why, Coelia, if all thy kind 
 Match'd thee in cruelty, 
 
 No lovers would be left behind, 
 And Love itself would die. 
 
 LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 1 have thee with me (mother) still, portray 'd 
 In the rich bloom of maidenhood ; 
 
 But poetry too much has there o'erlaid 
 What better by itself had stood. 
 
 I have thee in a manner with me still, 
 Limn'd by a gross mechanic hand,
 
 JULIA 37 
 
 That wanted half the master's art : true skill 
 
 Is pow'r to feel as well as understand. 
 Then thou hadst entered something into years ; 
 
 And (though no tell-tale brow was thine) 
 The sun at sunset from us disappears, 
 
 And stars not after startide shine. 
 I treasure glimpses of thy prime of life, 
 
 Collected in my child's mind's eye, 
 When all the days I knew thou'dst been a wife, 
 
 And time seem'd to have pass'd thee by. 
 What stintless benisons I could have pour'd 
 
 On him, who might inspir'd have been 
 To trace with learned pencil on the board 
 
 A breathing image of thy girlish sheen ! 
 Yet perhaps the pleasure at the sight of thee 
 
 Would have been cross'd another way : 
 The thought so often must have haunted me, 
 
 Why are such forms not shielded from decay ? 
 
 JULIA (1867) 
 
 OBIIT AN. JET. 13 
 
 Lovingly she would sit on my knee, 
 And whisper to me : 
 Asking me why, 
 Telling me why, 
 It ever so pleas'd her there to be, 
 Dear little Julia ! 
 
 O* : I ' X.
 
 JULIA 
 
 And when she saw my brow overcast, 
 Then her words fell fast : 
 Comforting me, 
 And coaxing me, 
 Until she thought that the cloud had pass'd, 
 Good little Julia ! 
 
 " dive not too much of your love to me, 
 Although it may be 
 A childish one, 
 A sister's one. 
 Another shall come, and speak with thee, 
 Fair little Julia ! " 
 
 Another one came indeed one day ; 
 But he did not say 
 A word to her, 
 A word to us ; 
 And he bore her to some land far away, 
 Lost little Julia ! 

 
 LINES 39 
 
 LINES WRITTEN IN MISS NORTH- 
 WOOD'S ALBUM, 1869 
 
 When you ask'd me to write (lady) in your new book, 
 I was bound to obey you by hook or by crook. 
 And I turn'd the thing over and over again 
 In a place, where is room and to spare too — my brain ; 
 And I made up my mind that in some nook I must 
 Have a trifle or so, which would suit the case just. 
 Let me see, said I, musing, there's this and there's 
 
 that ; 
 But, ah ! this is too long, and ah ! that is too flat. 
 In my youth I have penn'd, though, a matter or two, 
 Which I could remember, p'rhaps, if they would do. 
 For ballads I've written on classical stories, 
 And novels, in which I assure you there store is 
 Of capital passages ; but the dilemma is, 
 I can make no one else see it, to which rhyme 
 
 Emma is. 
 Of ancient Philemon and Baucis his mate 
 I told once the tale, but I know not its fate. 
 My great Parrot Epic — with that you'd be smitten, 
 But alas ! who can read what an author's not written ? 
 The epistle which Lycidas sent to Iule 
 Is pretty, but puerile — I tell you truly. 
 I did it about eighteen hundred and fifty, 
 When my Muse of invention was barren and thrifty.
 
 LINES 
 
 It I'd now the time. I would do better things, 
 For my wit has grown riper, my Muse has got wings; 
 Ami O, could I grudge just a few stolen hours, 
 Where the Honour is mine, and the Pleasure is 
 
 yours? 
 I .ong since, when I wrote it, there seem'd something 
 
 smart 
 In "A Dialogue held 'twixt a Maid and her Heart." 
 The maid I call'd Sylvia ; for at the time 
 Mi -thought that that name sounded well in a rhyme. 
 And the myth of Adonis — a strange one, if true ; 
 But I scarce believe it — no more perhaps will you ! 
 Endymion, on whom the Moon doated, they feign, 
 Although how she made love to him isn't so plain ; 
 Again, the complaint of fair Hero for young 
 Leander her love, I, that sing this, have sung. 
 You remember you told me you did not care much 
 For copied-out matter, more valuing such 
 As I might out of my own fancy create, 
 And (too slight a tribute !) to you dedicate. 
 So commanded to write, and forbidden to steal, 
 At first I confess I was pos'd a good deal. 
 Then a happy thought struck me. What ! do I forget 
 The lines I wrote formerly on Amoret ? 
 But no ; 'twas a fancy, a humour, a whim ; 
 And the moral to you might seem just the least dim. 
 The song which I made of the Bellman was deem'd 
 Rather good, and to me so it certainly seem'd !
 
 THE MAIDEN'S NAY 41 
 
 But a bellman's too vulgar to have ought to do 
 With such pages as these and with such belles as you. 
 A mad-merry thing I contrived of yore, 
 Where students join chorus, while bumpers brim o'er ; 
 But the vein might too free be accounted, I ween, 
 The album to grace of a maid of eighteen. 
 So now, as I fear you will think my design is 
 To fill the whole book, I will finish with Finis. 
 
 THE MAIDEN'S NAY 
 
 1. 
 A young man came to a fair maid's door, 
 He was not rich, nor he was not poor : 
 To woo her, to woo her ; 
 And said he unto her : 
 "O, will you, O, will you be sped?" 
 But then she said : 
 " O, no, no, no ; 
 Pray, from me go. 
 
 I am too young to wed." 
 
 11. 
 He came again to his dear love's door : 
 Three long, long years had pass'd, and more 
 
 To woo her, to woo her ; 
 
 And he said unto her :
 
 42 III E M \ I DEN'S N \ Y 
 
 " O, will you, O, will you be sped ? " 
 
 But then she said : 
 "O, no, no, no ; 
 Pray, from me go. 
 
 I am too sick to v. 
 
 in. 
 
 Again (good heart) he came to her door ; 
 He was not richer, nor yet more poor : 
 To woo her, to woo her ; 
 And he said unto her : 
 " O, will you, O, will you be sped ? " 
 
 But still she said : 
 " O, no, no, no ; 
 Pray, from me go. 
 
 I do not care to wed." 
 
 IV. 
 
 But another came to the lady's door, 
 And he in his hand broad writings bore : 
 To woo her, to woo her ; 
 And he said unto her : 
 "O, will you, O, will you be sped?" 
 " No, no," she said — 
 She said : " Nay, nay ; " 
 She meant, " Ay, ay ; " 
 
 And he and she were wed.
 
 THE MAIDEN'S NAY 43 
 
 A letter was brought to the young wife's door ; 
 She took it, and broke it, and read it o'er. 
 Scarce her heart seem'd to beat, 
 As she sank on her seat ; 
 And bowing her beautiful head. 
 
 She murmured : 
 " Ere to his land 
 I pawn'd my hand, 
 
 Better I had been dead ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 " But the awe of the world its shadow threw 
 On my heart, like a chill autumnal dew : 
 And it seem'd so unlike true life 
 To become a poor man's wife, 
 That I married," said she, " an heir, 
 Who thought me fair ; 
 And now the past 
 Returns so fast, 
 
 It is too much to bear ! "
 
 ST AN'/. AS 
 
 S T A NZAS 
 
 WRITTEN IN I S 7 5 
 I. 
 
 The simple schoolgirl, who was once to me 
 As dear as I can think or say, 
 To one out of the North to-day 
 Leases her worth and beauty ; he and she 
 Have drawn for prizes in Love's lottery. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Why should I feel that I am more alone, 
 Now she has at a husband's feet 
 Laid all she had of good and sweet, 
 Or think myself so much the poorer grown, 
 Because she is no longer all her own ? 
 
 in. 
 
 Within the summery circuit of her eyes 
 My youth pass'd in a dream sublime, 
 A rebel both to toil and time. 
 ])ut now my happiness with lost things lies, 
 As to the waking brain some fancy dies.
 
 STANZAS 45 
 
 IV. 
 I court the open, unobstructed air, 
 
 And summon back the old time, when 
 
 A pen to me was but a pen ; 
 And she seem'd so superlatively fair : 
 A gem to study, but too rich to wear. 
 
 v. 
 I knew her first a merry round-cheek'd thing, 
 
 With eyes that look'd you through and through, 
 
 And a voice that you to her drew ; 
 And each year some new virtue seem'd to bring, 
 And vary without stint the offering. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But that delightful season pass'd away : 
 
 An Arctic summer was its life ; 
 
 And now she writes herself a Wife ! 
 His eyes are not my eyes, thank God, and they 
 May see perfection, where I see decay ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 The chosen partner of my walks is gone ; 
 
 The voice, which once was music-clear, 
 
 Is no more mistress of my ear. 
 A rich clown her ambitious fancy won, 
 And I with hoping have for ever done.
 
 4 r > STANZAS 
 
 vm. 
 
 To me, yet not to others, chang'd she seems ; 
 For only they, who saw the morn, 
 Know with what glory it was born. 
 But what she was across my memory gleams, 
 Like the short vivid light of early dreams. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The world warps what is of the world : and she, 
 Like golden daybreaks, which our eyes 
 See disappear in neutral skies, 
 Fell from the promise of her youth to be 
 A lodestar to one different from me. 
 
 x. 
 For, O, the hopes I had nurs'd in my mind 
 Of what she might, and what she would 
 Be, when she came to womanhood, 
 Like some phantasma of the brain, I find 
 Shatter'd, scarce leaving any trace behind. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The graciousness, which in those early days 
 Through all her being seem'd to shine, 
 Lending a radiance to mine, 
 Has vanishd like some revel of the Fays, 
 When midnight the unwist convention stays.
 
 STANZAS 47 
 
 XII. 
 Dissolv'd for ever is my vision glad, 
 While she was but a fair-hair'd child, 
 Bred amid fields and woodlands wild, 
 That she was some bright essence in flesh clad, 
 And of my own gross nature nothing had. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 What I so lov'd in her exists no more. 
 Like daffodils, which Nature dooms 
 To death, before the summer comes, 
 She gave to her superb spring her whole store, 
 And leaves me but a shadow to adore. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 There was no bond betwixt us to be knit, 
 Closer than that which fortune made : 
 No wanton tide my pulses sway'd, 
 A sister's love was all I look'd to get, 
 Thinking how rich I was to grow with it. 
 
 xv. 
 Had we but parted, while she yet was young, 
 
 And I have borne away with me 
 
 Only that early memory, 
 I should have been inspir'd to tune my tongue, 
 And on her praises all ears must have hung.
 
 OLD BROMl'TON 
 
 XVI. 
 
 I could have drawn her, in my fancy's eye, 
 Unfolding beauties, one by one, 
 As she had in my sight begun, 
 Till it might have become a question why 
 Men for a perfect woman still should sigh. 
 
 OLD BROMPTON 
 
 MDCCCXL 
 
 I i.ove the spot, which fancy keeps 
 Still green for me, while nature weeps 
 
 O'er charms departed ; 
 Though, as it groweth day by day 
 More throng'd and cold, I turn away 
 
 Vex'd and low-hearted. 
 
 The builder there his crude art plieth : 
 There now no more the woodcock crieth : 
 
 And beauties perish. 
 But I have yet, where my heart dwelleth, 
 And with fond memories oft swelleth, 
 
 Enough to cherish.
 
 OLD BROMPTON 
 
 When it was different, I knew it, 
 And my unvalued youth gave to it : 
 
 Strange, mix'd reflexion ! 
 Yet I live there an older man, 
 And own no thought more tender than 
 
 That recollection. 
 
 Amid the world of stone and bricks, 
 Athwart house-eaves, I scan the ricks 
 
 Of our sweet village : 
 For me, beneath these pavements, sleep 
 Fields, where the herd-boy watch 'd his sheep, 
 
 And widths of tillage. 
 
 Upon the site of our gaunt square, 
 With its trim hedge and formal air, 
 
 And gay gilt railings, 
 My uncle's garden lay ; and we 
 Trac'd lately, where were wont to be 
 
 His orchard palings. 
 
 It seems to me but yesterday — 
 I know I must be, any way 
 
 I feel no older — 
 Where John's house stands, a hawthorn hay, 
 From which I have pluck'd many a spray, 
 
 Grew to my shoulder. 
 
 D 
 
 49
 
 50 OLD BROMPTON 
 
 Where smoke the bloom and herbage stains, 
 I see in mind the deep green lanes, 
 
 With bits of wild wood; 
 I see the cowslip-dotted croft, 
 And that dear Vale, where I so oft 
 
 Have stray'd in childhood. 
 
 While palaces erect their heads 
 
 er silene'd brooks and ruined meads, 
 
 My thought reposes 
 On scenes and names of other days ; 
 Kirke's vines, the shrubberies at Gray's, 
 
 And Rigby's roses. 
 
 1 recollect, it was a place, 
 
 On which the livers shed some grace — 
 
 Men wise and witty ; 
 They were the hamlet's genii, 
 And vanish'd with its bluer sky 
 
 And shepherd's ditty. 
 
 O, I will stay no longer where 
 There's all the tumult and the glare 
 
 Of human centres ! 
 The sun may rise, and it may set, 
 Behind those chimney-stacks, and yet 
 
 It never enters.
 
 OLD BROMPTON 51 
 
 Far hence, on some new soil, I'll dream 
 Of Brompton as it used to seem 
 
 In my young knowledge ; 
 Where our small homestead stood, I'll make 
 The place into fresh life awake, 
 
 And touch the foliage. 
 
 Brompton, I leave to thee in trust 
 A mother's and a brother's dust, 
 
 Whene'er I quit thee ! 
 My brain their images shall hold, 
 Till to some near or neighbour mould 
 
 My own commit me. 
 
 I do not value thee the less, 
 
 Though thou hast witness'd, I confess, 
 
 Much early sorrow ; 
 Though almost all that I lov'd best 
 Is gone, and (it may be) the rest 
 
 Will go to-morrow. 
 
 With thee was cast my early lot, 
 And thou wast what no other spot 
 
 Can seem to me ; 
 I spent my school-days in thy sight, 
 And now, when I have learn'd to write, 
 
 I think of thee.
 
 MY NEIGHBOUR 
 
 MY NEIGHBOT'R 
 
 THOUGH what he is, I scarce can tell, 
 I love my next-door neighbour well ; 
 
 And so I ought — a. 
 He lias a dog which seems a pet : 
 One son just come home from Thibet, 
 
 And one plain daughter. 
 
 My housemaid says she hears he made 
 A fortune in the blacking trade — 
 
 The postman told her. 
 I laugh'd at the idea somehow, 
 And then I could not knit my brow, 
 
 Poor girl, and scold her ! 
 
 He has no turn for those few things 
 Which I affect. His daughter sings : 
 
 He plays the fiddle. 
 He does not care for coins or sticks, 
 Books, china, prints, or politics — 
 
 He's quite a riddle. 
 
 He is a good man in his way, 
 He goes to Church three times a-day — 
 I mean, on Sunday.
 
 MY NEIGHBOUR 53 
 
 But, O that fiddle ! O my woes ! 
 I feel so sorry that he goes 
 
 There only one day ! 
 
 A warmer Royalist than me 
 
 This gent'man is ; and, dear soul ! he 
 
 Views with dismay 
 My doctrine, when I put it thus — 
 That governments exist for us, 
 
 Not t'other way. 
 
 This theory, I freely own, 
 
 Was common ; but it long has grown 
 
 Absurd and hateful. 
 No doubt, to have kings ne'er so bad, 
 We ought to feel not only glad, 
 
 But even grateful ! 
 
 &' 
 
 Of Cleopatra's Needle once 
 
 He spoke, and said, " A horrid dunce 
 
 I fear you'll call me. 
 But, looking at her needle's size, 
 The lady — this is my surprise — 
 
 Would rather tall be ! " 
 
 I fear I shook his faith a bit — 
 At least, he did not see the wit : 
 For which I'm sorry —
 
 5 | MY NEIGH BOT R 
 
 When I said Balaam and the Ass 
 In my sincere opinion was 
 An Ass's story. 
 
 That Holy Writ was written by 
 God's holy fingers, to deny, 
 
 Were worse than libel ; 
 He counts, I think, to go some day. 
 Where people are so good, that they 
 
 Don't want the Bible. 
 
 The Gospels he calls glorious reading, 
 Though such as I judge them misleading 
 
 Just here and there ; 
 But — Matthew, Mark, or John, or Luke, 
 Which of them, quoth he, wrote the Book 
 
 Of Common Prayer? 
 
 He cares not for geology, 
 
 Nor for the thing call'd Social Science — 
 
 Mere crude suggestions. 
 He thinks the best theology 
 [s on God to have full reliance, 
 
 And ask no questions. 
 
 Last Christmas it was plaguy hot, — 
 •• Aha ! " quoth he, " for the good o' the town 
 I know 'twas done.
 
 TO L. A. D. 5 5 
 
 For God keeps watch on the poor man's pot, 
 And loves to bring the butchers down, 
 All rogues, bar none." 
 
 He takes the " Times," you may conceive, 
 And I have seen the news-boy leave 
 
 The " Advertizer." 
 He seems far happier than me ; 
 I'm sure he has more friends to tea — 
 
 And am I wiser ? 
 
 TO L. A. D. 
 
 [LAURA ANNE DAVISJ 
 
 Dear LAD ! 
 
 Dear Lass ! 
 O, thou art not to blame, 
 That under one sweet name 
 Two natures thou dost carry. 
 But I feel sad 
 That thou must pass 
 Away, and never marry. 
 For how shall Lad with Lad 
 Be join'd in wedding glad — 
 To give the world its due, 
 And thy proud youth renew ?
 
 56 TO L. A. D. 
 
 It seemeth hard that thou alone 
 
 Shouldst be two sexes met in one. 
 
 But stay ! 
 
 I see a way. 
 
 Be no more sad : 
 
 Thou art not LAD, 
 
 But an unquestion'd She, 
 
 A very pretty young LA D.
 
 POEMS WRITTEN BETWEEN 
 
 1866 AND 1876
 
 PANDORA 
 
 A RHAPSODY 
 
 Tell me not, that I do myself a wrong 
 
 To love, where loving is so vain : 
 
 I love for love and not for gain. 
 My passion now has liv'd with me so long, 
 'T hath grown too proud to yield, to die too strong. 
 
 Forbid me not, dear, still to call thee mine 
 (Though mine thou canst not ever be), 
 If it lend some content to me : 
 Must he, that once had all, now all resign, 
 Nor keep one place in that cold heart of thine ? 
 
 We miss not, what we know not ; and had you 
 
 Refus'd my suit in early days, 
 
 Before to you I shap'd my ways, 
 My fancy, while it yet was young and new, 
 I might have learn'd by little to subdue. 
 
 59
 
 60 I'ANDOR A 
 
 Content ant] riches march not hand in hand : 
 Think'st thou thy hearts-ease, cast away, 
 May be recall'd some other day? 
 Too late wilt thou begin to understand, 
 What 'tis to marry but a house and land. 
 
 No, no ; complain not, should thy new choice seem, 
 Though rich in purse, yet poor in heart : 
 The baser warps the better part. 
 
 It may be that my life has been a dream ; 
 
 But life is as each liver doth esteem. 
 
 A lesson, set to six, six kinds shall see 
 
 Of handling, as the scholar goes. 
 
 What fits his bent each haply knows : 
 Vet are there men who choose to flout at me, 
 Saying : " Heigho ! at what end aimeth he?" 
 
 Or, look, Pandora ! some may argue so — 
 
 " He was a poet who did this ; 
 
 And poesy gross fiction is. 
 Perchance, we yet but half the story know ; 
 What, if the lady had a cause to shew ? " 
 
 Fools' questions let fools answer. My career 
 Like an unfinish'd column stands, 
 Since it must want thy crowning hands. 
 
 My hopes as jetsam on the rocks appear ; 
 
 What ship can prosper, where there's none to steer?
 
 PANDORA 6l 
 
 To minister to him, his board to grace : 
 If he were dull, to him to sing : 
 When he would rise, his staff to bring : 
 What foolish damsel with a comely face 
 Might not, as well as you, have fill'd the place ? 
 
 I give great thanks, that it was my rare lot 
 To view your splendid youth so near, 
 And see the height of spring appear ; 
 
 And now on this inhospitable spot 
 
 I dream of what might have been, and was not. 
 
 Ask thy dear lord, what store he would lay down 
 To have the witness of my eyes, 
 With all the wealth that in them lies — 
 But, no ! be wary : move him not to frown : 
 His anger might bar thy next trip to town. 
 
 " Their ages are not equal : he is old," 
 
 To me of late one whispered ; 
 
 "And when her lord is dead, 
 Ere the fix'd sum of moons has been well told, 
 She will lay at thy feet the greybeard's gold." 
 
 But life is love, and love is poetry, 
 
 And love's the poetry of life ; 
 
 And what were it to take a wife, 
 From whose name, voice, shape, features I 
 Should draw nought but a broken melody ?
 
 62 PANDORA 
 
 The woman, who remarries, seems to ni< 
 
 But parcel-wed to two in turn : 
 
 Slackly the flame in her should burn, 
 For if the first incomer wastes his fee, 
 The next a lean remainder-man must be 
 
 What makes me shun those scenes I once most sought ? 
 To leave the world it seems full soon, 
 While still my hour-glass marks but noon. 
 But you had me to that religion brought : 
 You were my world, and all the rest was nought. 
 
 Why do I these harsh-tun'd regrets express ? 
 
 Why do I mourn o'er riches lost? 
 
 Too much my driftless love has cost : 
 Yet I prefer, and lo ! it here confess, 
 To think of you, than any else possess. 
 
 But she who links all beauty to all grace, 
 
 Will ne'er bestow a serious thought 
 
 Upon a tale so weakly wrought, 
 And even those who listen to my case, 
 Will shew me pity, when they see her face. 
 
 If such your virtues be that, to excel, 
 
 A woman need have only one, 
 
 Bestow your bounty, like the sun, 
 Upon your bankrupt sex, ere they rebel, 
 Seeing now Love with you alone doth dwell.
 
 PANDORA 63 
 
 Who else but you could stock the world with good, 
 
 And still have greater goodness left 
 
 Than that of which you were bereft ? 
 Be poorer, and yet richer ? — like a wood 
 Clear 'd, where before the trees too thickly stood. 
 
 Nay, as its starry riches serve to shroud 
 The world's vast ceiling from our gaze, 
 Dazzling our organs with their blaze : 
 
 So, if you were less lavishly endow'd, 
 
 You might more human seem, less wrapp'd in cloud. 
 
 What but the chaster loveliness of Night 
 
 Makes us enamour'd of the Day ? 
 
 To what but winter owe we May ? 
 And other eyes might seem less void of light, 
 Were thine not so inexorably bright. 
 
 Thou shouldst a generous allowance yield 
 
 To such as Nature hath endow'd 
 
 With qualities which fit the crowd. 
 Thy higher form of beauty is reveal'd, 
 Like golden bars upon a sable field. 
 
 There is no other planet where salt tears 
 
 Are sacrifices to despair : 
 
 What we deem fair, may not be fair. 
 And what we call thy charms, to other spheres 
 May be no more than our poor days and years.
 
 P \NDOR A 
 
 O, once my own and only lov'd, forgive 
 
 The raptures of a mind distraught : 
 
 None who has in the battle fought, 
 Knows the eternal foes, with whom I strive, 
 But comes back home at last in peace to live. 
 
 Pardon, O great Pandora, my rash speech ! 
 
 My anger shrewdly serves my wit, 
 
 And sorrow little chastens it. 
 Put your example must be used to teach 
 The world what height the Rural Mind may reach. 
 
 Thou art so interwoven with my brain, 
 
 Thou seemest more than any wife, 
 
 To be a parcel of my life : 
 And little worth the housing would remain, 
 If thou shouldst take back all thy own again. 
 
 My fancy is no pensioner of time : 
 
 It is a palace, where thy praise 
 
 Is sung for ever, and thy days 
 Pass in a strange and everlasting prime, 
 And foolish love is not esteem'd a crime. 
 
 Sometimes our love seems to be young and fair, 
 As if we had just lately met, 
 And thou hadst not forsworn me yet : 
 And I wait on thy beauty everywhere, 
 Courting thine eyes, and studying thy hair.
 
 PANDORA .65 
 
 Methought I made a crown for thee one day 
 
 Of flowers fairer than fine gold, 
 
 In which a tale of love was told. 
 But I lack'd heart the words of price to say, 
 And like June garlands kept till Yule it lay. 
 
 Thou snatchest from oblivion little things : 
 
 The faces of the clowns we met, 
 
 When we once walk'd home through the wet, 
 Thy sorcery to my remembrance brings, 
 And thy blue rain-bedabbl'd bonnet-strings. 
 
 I else should have forgotten long ere now 
 
 The stanzas made by rhymer Fred 
 
 Upon his grandmamma in lead, 
 Which by a dainty pucker of thy brow 
 Thou didst with immortality endow. 
 
 An army of old phantoms tracks me still, 
 
 As I sit maund'ring on the gate, 
 
 Where I for thee was wont to wait ; 
 How fares the master of the haunted mill? 
 Where are the tales of Johnny Bobadil ? 
 
 Like turns to like, where likeness may not shew : 
 My instinct was too proud for my desert ; 
 But love my heart with courage girt. 
 I dream'd not to what height I had to go, 
 So well that form and face I seem'd to know. 
 
 E
 
 P \NDOR A 
 
 Art thou, as when we parted, yet as fair 3 
 My eyes so long have wanted thee, 
 And whose but mine could judge for mo 5 
 Hast thou, too, had thy reckoning with care 3 
 Did youth engross the lustre of thy hair? 
 
 Ah ! to be so admir'd, ere thou hadst learn'd 
 
 The art of judging life at all, 
 
 Was too unkind an ordeal. 
 And when thy years some common truths discern'd, 
 Thou hadst with me from heaven to earth returnd 
 
 Yes, yes, the world some toll of thee hath taken ; 
 
 And thou art much as others are : 
 
 Only more good, only more fair ; 
 But my religion and my creed are shaken, 
 And as from some long reverie I waken. 
 
 I write to one grown mortal Wast thou so ? 
 
 When thy first smile uprais'd my lot 
 
 Skyward, I know I felt it not : 
 Beyond Pandora's Paradise below 
 I could not see— my feet refus'd to go. 
 
 We are ordain'd to suffer final waste, 
 And only see our types renew'd : 
 O, that the ages could have view'd
 
 PANDORA 67 
 
 Some faint reflection of a form, which grac'd 
 This planet once, and then itself effac'd ! 
 
 We quit not when we will, but when we must, 
 And to ourselves new times to bind, 
 We leave what part we may behind. 
 
 Some ever-living gifts hand down in trust : 
 
 Some an unechoing heritage of dust. 
 
 The alchemists, who labour to renew 
 
 Our globe, and turn us to fresh use, 
 
 Shall thee to their hard law reduce : 
 Thy pale cheeks shall not feel the vernal dew, 
 Nor thy veil'd eyes obscure the sun from view. 
 
 The earth hath a gross, boundless appetite, 
 And feeds on all that air downpours, 
 And all that nature back restores, 
 Nor knows the children of unending night 
 From their own era's honour and delight. 
 
 11. 
 
 Ah ! I am poorer and yet richer, too ! 
 
 Poorer in this my publish'd wrong ; 
 
 Richer in such a theme for song ; 
 And e'en my verse you make your pleasure do, 
 And give you back the life it had from you.
 
 PANDORA 
 
 For I am not at least as one of those, 
 Whose grosser spirits share with ni'- 
 The bounty of the earth and w a. 
 The briar takes his honour from the ro 
 And mine from my poor pen, Pandora, flows. 
 
 Ask me not, why I still refuse to smother 
 A love, which should by right have died : 
 My love is dead and deified. 
 
 He has but what you hold from your fair mother 
 The nobler share pertaineth to another. 
 
 Wide is the gulf, that severs me from you : 
 
 Your lord elects the country life : 
 
 To be retir'd becomes a wife ! 
 There you must fade, and your unkindness rue. 
 Vet year by year for me your youth renew ! 
 
 It seems as if your features in my heart 
 Were burnt, to live and die with me, 
 Like Hamadryad with her tree. 
 Your being of my being makes a part : 
 I ween, if you were stricken, I should smart. 
 
 Your image is impress'd upon my brain, 
 
 Imperishably bright and deep : 
 
 There I shall it for ever keep. 
 Your girlish beauty cannot long remain ; 
 The copy I possess will never wane.
 
 PANDORA 69 
 
 So I, who once beneath a southern sky 
 View'd the rich glory of the spring, 
 To that fine recollection cling. 
 And daintiness so rules me, that my eye 
 Disdains all scenes cloth'd in a poorer dye. 
 
 True passion is like the immortal Ones. 
 Whatever space lies us between, 
 The flame you kindled burns as keen ; 
 And beauty's heat doth differ from the sun's, 
 Since it most scorcheth him, who from it runs. 
 
 And e'en now, when thy heart in a strange breast 
 
 Nestles itself, and thou to thee 
 
 Tak'st his in sweet security, 
 I think how oft a certain one profess'd 
 My heart her lodger, and her heart my guest. 
 
 I call thee wayward ; but what then am I, 
 When I straight pass from chiding thee, 
 To say how dear thou art to me ? 
 But my mind thus will waver, till I die, 
 And with my quenchless flame forgotten lie. 
 
 As boundless as thy beauty is my love : 
 As boundless as the ocean is thy beauty : 
 And how do I transgress my duty, 
 When who so long and valorously strove 
 To break the fetters, in which I still move ?
 
 70 I' \N DORA 
 
 1 picture thee some strange new Sun below. 
 
 A daughter of the Sun above : 
 
 Too glorious for human love, 
 lor thou attendest me, where'er I go, 
 And neither time nor distance seem'st to know. 
 
 There are degrees of spirits, we are taught ; 
 
 The next life with our own accords, 
 
 And angels have their angel-lords. 
 There, too, sway intellect and force of thought, 
 And by strong gifts the mastery is wrought. 
 
 Thou shalt come to fresh honours. Thou who here 
 
 Art mistress, wilt be ill-content 
 
 Without some taste of government 
 Where'er in subtler guise thou shalt appear, 
 Thou canst not prove less powerful or less dear. 
 
 Vet hadst thou been a deity indeed, 
 
 And I but what I am, should I 
 
 Have been so fond as thus to sigh 
 For riches, on which I could scantly feed, 
 Or gifts, which a sublimer nature need ? 
 
 Yea, thou art such as those of yore thee viewing, 
 And doubting what their gods should be, 
 Would have kneel'd down, and pray'd to thee : 
 Thy glory in carv'd images renewing, 
 And on thy altars holy incense strewing.
 
 PANDORA 71 
 
 Our fathers, in the gloaming of the day, 
 Conceiv'd their makers scarce to be 
 So fair as thou didst seem to me ; 
 And all their beautiful and mighty they 
 Grav'd upon brass, or moulded in the clay. 
 
 These fantasies awaited not our rise ; 
 
 And where the waves for ever swell, 
 
 Now Aphrodite loves to dwell : 
 On British ground, beneath less clement skies, 
 And men, not gods, are fetter'd to her eyes. 
 
 Had I had something of the limner's touch, 
 To paint one in a world, and not of it, 
 Or something of a poet's wit : 
 
 I might have shown, how I was such and such ; 
 
 How little I owed myself, to thee how much ! 
 
 Ah ! it is not so long, since I outgrew 
 My innocence, how each year ran : 
 Where winter ceas'd and spring began. 
 
 My world within a world its changes knew ; 
 
 But they were only to Pandora due. 
 
 How precious art thou to me still ! And now 
 The light of love has set in night, 
 Making thee (star-wise) seem more bright, 
 I muse if thinking on thy unkept vow 
 Doth ever call a shadow to thy brow.
 
 I' AN DORA 
 
 / - 
 
 My heart shall be a casket to enshrine 
 
 The likeness which I treasure of your feati. 
 When you seem'd fairest of God's creatures ; 
 And when I thought, so soon as you were mine, 
 I should be one half human, one divine. 
 
 For then the year was one life-lengthen'd spring ; 
 
 O, it seem'd one long April day ! 
 
 Vet have I known thee sometimes sway 
 For me the seasons, as may some great king 
 His lieges, and in June December bring. 
 
 Once and again my thoughts took higher aim, 
 Till I had crown'd in my mind's eye 
 The summit of felicity : 
 To hear you bless the bearer of my name, 
 And see the son eclipse his father's fame. 
 
 Yet what do I not owe to One, who led 
 
 Me in the youth of life away, 
 
 A nobler summons to obey : 
 To thoughts and fancies, which my being wed 
 To a new creed of Liberty and Bread ? 
 
 O, lead me, where the sun may heal my eyes : 
 O, take me from the parching wind : 
 O, let me go, and leave behind 
 The anger, on dull ears which wastes its cries, 
 And the dead hope of making folly wise !
 
 PANDORA 73 
 
 Guard me from all of mean and narrow ken : 
 
 Keep far away the godless throng : 
 
 For I must work till evensong, 
 And then to die, but reappear again, 
 The honorary guest of coming men ! 
 
 Let me not dwell with those, whose only care 
 
 Is how to make a richer morrow, 
 
 Let fall where'er it may the sorrow ! 
 Sometimes I might our differing aims compare : 
 More oft the touch would prove too coarse to bear. 
 
 I ask'd too wide a homage for book-learning ; 
 
 I su'd a country maid, and thought 
 
 I had a fairy conquest wrought ; 
 I pictur'd her coy heart in secret yearning, 
 And what seem'd ice with hidden passion burning. 
 
 Too coldly looks the world on such as choose 
 Rashly their partners in the wedded state : 
 Beauty for poverty is no fit mate. 
 Nay, more — she might her perfidy excuse, 
 Saying : " That man was married to his Muse ! " 
 
 So now the glory, which my young heart fed, 
 Seems no more worth than any weed, 
 For I am from thy service freed. 
 
 In bondage all my happiest hours I led, 
 
 And o'er my liberty hot tears I shed.
 
 74 r AN DORA 
 
 Lo ! I am as the man who, after he 
 Had in the Fairy I>and sojourn'd, 
 To this gross upper soil return'd ; 
 And my life so impoverished I seer, 
 That what remains seems little worth to me. 
 
 Farewell for ever ! dreams of bygone days, 
 Which shap'd a heaven in my thought, 
 More glorious than priest has wrought ! 
 
 Farewell ! my early faith in women's ways ! 
 
 Farewell ! my early faith in foolish lays ! 
 
 I pray to God that we may never meet ; 
 For I can still in fancy trace 
 The outline of that child-like face, 
 And that frail form, which us'd to be the seat 
 Of something that for me was proud to beat. 
 
 I pray to God that He may love me so, 
 That He will call me hence some day, 
 When I from thee am far away, 
 And through the darkness I shall groping go, 
 Till Life and Death into one current flow. 
 
 Let me live something longer than my care : 
 Let my late toil be rul'd by me, 
 And be from other masters free : 
 To my first home let my last thought repair : 
 Let my last breath inhale the autumn air.
 
 PANDORA 75 
 
 As lief would I sleep by the vast sea-strand, 
 
 Making some quiet cave my home, 
 
 As lie in oak or marble tomb, 
 Till a new age might please to till the land, 
 Or yield it up to savage builder's hand. 
 
 As lief would I men did my body burn, 
 
 And let my spirit go forth free 
 
 To what may be its destiny. 
 If ashes ashes dear to them discern, 
 Would mine with thine were mingled in one urn ! 
 
 The sunlight, in which I rejoic'd so long : 
 The womanhood on which these eyes 
 Have look'd, as on some sovereign prize : 
 
 The tie, which prov'd so frail, and seem'd so strong : 
 
 Are more to me than any gods of song. 
 
 I bear to a new century with me 
 
 The memory of my golden age, 
 
 Like some fine old initial page, 
 Which in the antique written books we see, 
 When all the rest is mean obscurity. 
 
 Who loves, and prospers poorly in his suit, 
 
 More than his time and labour earns, 
 
 If, as year buries year, he learns, 
 How oft the stalk breaks promise with the root, 
 How oft the bloom bespeaks a wealthier fruit.
 
 PAN DOR A 
 
 I lov'd not vainly, if I lov'd too well ; 
 For time the alchemist distils 
 Wisdom and sweetness from our ills ; 
 And I see, stretch'd beneath my feet, the hell, 
 Where once I fear'd I might for ever dwell. 
 
 Ah ! he who loves too well, ne'er loves in vain, 
 When he can turn base ore to gold, 
 And sorrow to a new shape mould. 
 I have begotten of my early pain 
 A realm of light and gladness in my brain. 
 
 If I had loved thee less, no verse of mine 
 Would have aspir'd to celebrate 
 A common man's uncar'd-for fate ; 
 
 And she might have been judg'd too near 
 divine, 
 
 Who all her sex in all things did outshine. 
 
 '.-■ 
 
 I might have lost (if I had lov'd thee less) 
 The influence of my good Lar, 
 Whose genius urges me so far 
 As of thee my unripe thoughts to express, 
 And charge perfection with imperfectness. 
 
 Now into strange new worship I shall grow 
 With many a maiden of this land, 
 When they can rightly understand, 
 How large a gratitude to me they owe, 
 In humbling, e'er so little, their great foe.
 
 PANDORA JJ 
 
 " Lo ! it is something," I shall hear them say, 
 " To think that her too praised name 
 Will not fill the whole roll of fame, 
 And that her dream of universal sway 
 Begins, as all dreams do, to melt away." 
 
 Vet I were then like that man of the sea, 
 Who had his treasure carried down 
 To glorify King Neptune's crown, 
 And wrapp'd his passion in an elegy, 
 As if a life's worth in a verse might be. 
 
 •-■ 
 
 Or as one who a moving tale invented 
 Of some lost gem unparallel'd, 
 And half a nation wondering held : 
 Till he, with his fair fortune not contented, 
 In what was faultless one great fault lamented. 
 
 in. 
 
 Of blended souls speak now to me no more ; 
 But let me still my passion cherish, 
 Not in yours see it melt and perish : 
 As do the sea-waves, when they clasp the shore, 
 Or as rash brooks each into other pour. 
 
 May-be I'll seek a marriage of two minds, 
 Such as a man forms with a man ; 
 Where be at liberty I can 
 To study thought in all its several kinds, 
 And break my yoke, if it too strictly binds.
 
 7S PANDORA 
 
 Restore my youth, and take away those eyes, 
 Which tried to penetrate the gloom, 
 And give me Benson's in their room ; 
 Then I, too, may to undream'd greatness ri.se, 
 And in like manner all the world surprise. 
 
 Let none his vagrant fancy nourish more; 
 
 Let none the Muses' call obey ; 
 
 Let none desert the beaten way ; 
 I et none seek beauty in the rock-bound shore ; 
 Let none his passion to the woods outpour. 
 
 Let all be well content to understand 
 
 Only as much as they shall find 
 
 In any coarse provincial mind ; 
 Let all unite together, hand in hand, 
 To scorn what's great, and hate whatever's grand. 
 
 May honour wait upon the brimming purse ; 
 May hunger and contempt attend 
 The fool, who does his hours misspend, 
 
 Whether in writing prose or writing verse; 
 
 May all books fall beneath the papal curse ! 
 
 Well, art thou happy, then, in thy new state ? 
 1 last thou a taste, has he a care, 
 Which he enjoys, which thou canst share ? 
 
 Dost thou upon his wants, as bounden, wait ? 
 
 !-Ves he thy merrier humours tolerate?
 
 PANDORA 79 
 
 I know not how to name thee in my thought, 
 
 Seemeth to me so strange thy lot, 
 
 That thou art married, yet art not. 
 Thy lord of thee no sureties hath sought : 
 Marriage on thee no lovely change hath wrought 
 
 Beauty, like some estate in tail, should be 
 
 Pass'd from one tenant to another ; 
 
 And thou dost wrong unto thy mother, 
 Who left our age her portraiture in thee, 
 Not doubting that the next thine own would see. 
 
 To take so much, without bequeathing aught, 
 Is to misuse the trust, which Nature 
 Reposed in so fair a creature. 
 
 The world would soon to beggary be brought, 
 
 If women were by thy example taught. 
 
 Or is thy charity to it so great 
 
 That thou leav'st nought behind to vex 
 Yet more the pride of thy poor sex, 
 And suffer men, who knew the world too late, 
 To envy mine, and mourn their own worse fate ? 
 
 All things have their set office and deep use ; 
 
 Each star pays his fix'd sum of light, 
 
 As feudatory of the Night. 
 So life is a mix'd privilege : we lose 
 In honour what to duty we refuse.
 
 So PANDORA 
 
 (Jnkindness, like a worm, sweet beauty blight 
 
 For that with love must be a liver; 
 
 And either sex will scarce forgive her, 
 Who quenches, whilst she lives, all lesser lights, 
 And when she vanishes, the eartli benights. 
 
 The roses of this summer left their heirs 
 
 To answer to the call of spring ; 
 
 And all the coming years will bring 
 New life. Nature replaces and repairs ; 
 But not beyond their season any spares. 
 
 Doth not compunction ever lodge with thee, 
 When thou regardest thy foreshorten'd years, 
 And life its term by little nears ? 
 For thou wilt be the first and last lessee, 
 And, if thou livest, thou must live through me. 
 
 Ah ! let not this memorial of you writ 
 
 Be your sole witness by-and-by ! 
 
 Uncoin'd and sunless it may lie, 
 Or else please only some love-blighted wit, 
 Who reads a fortune like his own in it. 
 
 Who lends first borrow'd what he lends. The sun 
 
 Collects the light, which it diffuses, 
 
 And what it gains, the giver loses ; 
 And so each helps to shape the other's ends, 
 And each on each throughout our scheme depends.
 
 PANDORA 8l 
 
 But as from fair things fairer oft evolve, 
 
 Did you to yourself picture one 
 
 Outshining you, as you outshone 
 The rest of women, and so did resolve 
 To close the mint, and the grand spell dissolve ? 
 
 Yet think, what glory to your name had grown, 
 
 If it had kept age after age 
 
 In a continued vassalage : 
 Where now your empire is to you alone, 
 And then the world will some new mistress own ! 
 
 Thy influence reveals a power new, 
 By which thou drawest to thy sphere 
 Objects remote as well as near ; 
 And as the sun from far draws up the dew, 
 So thou from far dost draw my heart to you. 
 
 O, do not lean too strongly on the power, 
 Which married youth and beauty lend : 
 An honeymoon and then an end ! 
 
 The fairer 'tis, the sooner fades the flower ; 
 
 The lightning smiteth first the topmost tower. 
 
 Thy charms, though now they seem so infinite, 
 
 Thou canst not carry with thee far. 
 
 Time will not pity thee ; 'twill mar 
 That beauty, which was once my soul's delight. 
 And pale those orbs, to day which turn the night.
 
 PAN DOR A 
 
 Spurn all those treacherous delights, which eat 
 Into the sinews of our life : 
 Teach what men prize most in a wife. 
 Promote those arts, that for thy state arc meet, 
 And prove thy pow'r of turning all to sweet. 
 
 Lay up thy beauty, as it were some treasure 
 
 Too rare to meet the common view : 
 
 Use frugally God's gifts to you. 
 Harder toil none than they who toil for pleasure, 
 And that toil slays, which never knoweth leisure. 
 
 Be not like to those spendthrift heirs, who throw 
 
 Their life into a summer's day; 
 
 All things one common god obey : 
 Time's plough will drive, where now is pathless snow 
 'Twill come, where now the rose and cherry grow. 
 
 Go not abroad the thriftless sort among, 
 Hoard up thy youth, as men do gold ; 
 And when thou growest old, 
 'Twill be a thing on every maiden's tongue, 
 To say : " How fair was she, when she was young ? " 
 
 Eschew those garish lights, which soon will kill 
 The tender bloom upon thy cheek — 
 Or hast even thou grown vain and weak ? — 
 Too frail to shun the sweets, which work us ill : 
 Too prone thy froward fancies to fulfil ?
 
 PANDORA $3 
 
 Is it that those incomparable eyes, 
 
 Which, while the day his journey runs, 
 Enrich the world with two more suns, 
 Will make so many advocates arise, 
 That what I write shall seem but calumnies ? 
 
 Is it the crowning fortune of thy lot 
 To dazzle so our purblind race, 
 Till men see nothing but thy grace ? 
 Till we thy fickleness have quite forgot, 
 Or for thy sake hold fickleness no blot ? 
 
 Perhaps I might once have wish'd to see thee have 
 A higher trust in things, in which 
 None of thy sex can be more rich : 
 Faith in those virtues, which outlast the grave, 
 And for thyself a nobler name to save. 
 
 Still, when thou canst no longer with us stay, 
 
 The loss of thee alone will be 
 
 A system of philosophy. 
 If death hath leave to summon thee away, 
 'Tis vain to question the whole world's decay. 
 
 How many a flow'r, now bedded in the stone, 
 
 Had once, as any flow'r we see, 
 
 Its vigour and its liberty ; 
 Till Time, which maketh all our world his own, 
 Turn'd it to rock, and rock where it had grown !
 
 84 ' i>o YOU ASK m i; ' 
 
 3o vanish finest natures, and nowhere, 
 Save on a wall or in some page, 
 l'aint to the eye of the next age 
 The regal minds and shapes divine which dare 
 To bid all others wonder and despair. 
 
 'DO YOU ASK ME, WHENCE I DREW 
 
 I. 
 
 Do you ask me, whence I drew 
 The likeness which I sent to you, 
 And if, or no, I ever knew 
 One so divine ? 
 
 ii. 
 Was the colouring too rich? 
 Did I strike too high a pitch, 
 When I sang the rare parts, which 
 In her do shine ? 
 
 m. 
 
 Thus, then, it was first begun : 
 Through the sex I had to run ; 
 Of their charms each lent me one 
 To make Pandora.
 
 ' DO YOU ASK ME' 85 
 
 IV. 
 
 When a man gives fancy reins, 
 Great the labour, small the gains 
 Who would credit the vast pains 
 I took o'er her ? 
 
 To paint a moonbeam, ere it flits : 
 To draw our kitten, while she sits 
 In some brains to find the wits : 
 Were as simple. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Skin not too white nor too brown : 
 Breath as sweet as rose new-blown 
 Here a smile, there a frown : 
 Here a dimple. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I took light from Dora's eyes, 
 The sunshine, that in Mildred's lies, 
 And the red with coral vies 
 'Twixt Ida's lips.
 
 the baron's daughtkr 
 
 \ III. 
 Lillian ceded me her nose: 
 Muriel's azure veins I chose : 
 Gertrude gave the pearly rows, 
 Where Cupid sips. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Mill, to make a perfect fair 
 I begg'd dear Lucy's hair, 
 And Maud had her form to spare 
 AngelicaL 
 
 x. 
 But I found, when I had done, 
 And had to sweet Ferrers gone, 
 I could paint from her alone 
 These beauties all. 
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Speak no more of the Baron's Daughter ! speak of 
 
 her, my friend, to me no more ! 
 Ah ! well enough we lov'd each other — thou hast 
 
 heard me tell the tale before ? 
 That meeting on the swollen river, and those last 
 
 words on the lone sea-shore.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 87 
 
 Ere my foot was uplifted from English ground, the 
 
 glory had gone from the tree. 
 Twas a sweetly importunate friendship, which then 
 
 launch'd me upon the sea, 
 A scholar uncouth and companionless, save the 
 
 thoughts which travell'd with me. 
 
 Although I may place betwixt me and England a 
 
 viewless expanse of foam, 
 And beyond the cold watch of the white bear it may 
 
 happen to me to roam, 
 My fancy obeys my bidding, and spreads its wings, to 
 
 carry me home. 
 
 I lay at the Golden Pelican in Tours, in the eye of 
 
 the Mairie, 
 And parcell'd my days out among the pleasures which 
 
 crowded to wait on me : 
 An husbandman, storing unwinnow'd grain for labours 
 
 that were to be. 
 
 The peaches I bought upon the quay have pow'r to 
 cloy my palate still ; 
 
 And I recollect the old Rouge's discourses on Provi- 
 dence and Will ; 
 
 And, withal, the affair which went so far my measure 
 of sorrow to fill.
 
 THK BARON 5 DAUGHTER 
 
 I <\in speak of it now quite calmly; for the passion 
 
 went down long ago. 
 Tens of thousands, and tens of ten, since then h. 
 
 pass'd above and pass'd below : 
 
 the spirit has left the waters, and they like all 
 
 other waters flow. 
 
 by the river or on the bridge I lov'd to wander o' 
 
 nights from my inn ; 
 For the breeze and the current nurs'd the young and 
 
 succulent fancies within ; 
 And the grass, sky, and water to those I had left 
 
 behind seem'd much akin. 
 
 Once I stray'd, as my use was, riverward, and the 
 
 bridge was surging with men ; 
 And as I press'd, where the tumult was loudest, the 
 
 old city clock struck ten : 
 When I list, in spots and in times far distant, it strikes 
 
 for me over again ! 
 
 All voices were singing a common burden, like some 
 hoarse unearthly quire ; 
 
 And the torches of tow were hissing like the heather 
 in a prairie fire ; 
 
 And the billowing northern wind wreak'd on the rain- 
 glutted river its ire.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 89 
 
 " Who will save an old man's only daughter, let him 
 
 ask from me what he will," 
 Resounded a voice, and an English voice, which 
 
 seem'd my ears to thrill ; 
 " O Death, let the old life redeem the young, if thou 
 
 must one of us kill ! " 
 
 The foreigners stood, and the foreigners shouted ; but 
 
 ne'er an one leapt in ; 
 And her strength wax'd weak, as the tide wax'd strong, 
 
 till the stream was over her chin. 
 Betwixt life and death the struggle began, and death 
 
 appear'd liker to win. 
 
 I sprang, by a kind of wizard impulse, to a place by 
 
 the speaker's side : 
 " Launch a boat from the shore ! to the rescue ! " 
 
 with a voice like a bell I cried. 
 'An Englishman ought to disdain to shrink back, 
 
 and what can be done must be tried ! " 
 
 A weird new impression possess'd me, of having 
 
 ascended an height, 
 Where below me I saw, in a turbid pool, by the 
 
 moon's unsteadfast light, 
 A lily, as it were crush'd and rent by a passionate 
 
 breeze in the night.
 
 90 Tin. B a ron's DAUGHT i R 
 
 For a moment, on the low parapet, like one irresolute 
 
 I stood : 
 In a moment more from the parapet I had plung'd 
 
 into the flood : 
 The winter, which lay about me. was thaw d by the 
 
 midsummer in my blood. 
 
 There was one red moon in the water, and another 
 
 red moon in the air ; 
 And between them there glimmer'd and quiver'd, I 
 
 thought, a white moon thrice as fair ; 
 And I snatch'd up the white moon under my arm, 
 
 and I left the red moon there. 
 
 l-'or it was the Baron's Daughter ; and it was a sadness 
 
 enough to see 
 Her soft bloom nipp'd, like a maiden rose sorely 
 
 wounded by a bee. 
 But I had replied to a challenge, and might ask to 
 
 have the winner's fee. 
 
 All the rooms of the Pelican appear'd wrought into 
 
 one by sorcery, 
 When I woke in my lord's Touraine chateau with a 
 
 start and with a sigh : 
 "Are you better?" ask'd he; "my daughter will see 
 
 you " " Who might she be ? " quoth I.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 91 
 
 Quoth I: "0, you have a daughter? 'Tis good. 
 
 Look, sir, I dream'd last night, 
 That I sav'd some old man's only child, when she 
 
 was drowning in his sight ; 
 And now I bethink me, the old man, sir, was much of 
 
 your hair and height ! " 
 
 I saw certain wrinkles muster, and his tremulous lips 
 
 contract as with pain ; 
 And I felt on the sudden, as if a film were uplifted 
 
 from my brain ; 
 And my thoughts seem'd to reunite once more, like 
 
 the links of a broken chain. 
 
 My honourers were of the Dear Ones of Britain, whose 
 
 lot the gods forecast ; 
 And my life on the Loire my visions of dreamy 
 
 Phaeacia surpass'd ; 
 Till my happiness, like some Eastern's fairness, seem'd 
 
 too exquisite to last. 
 
 Our friendship appear'd in its early youth almost on 
 
 ancient lines to run ; 
 So strange and romantic, they said, was the way in 
 
 which it had first begun ; 
 And her beauty rose up like a flow'r, which unjewela 
 
 itself in the sun.
 
 92 thi: baron's daughter 
 
 I might have prolong'd my content, and made the 
 
 journey with them in the spring ; 
 r>ut I pleaded a pressure upon me, or some other 
 
 such wayward thing ; 
 For I thought of the Lotos-eaters, and desir'd to be 
 
 my own Wise King ! 
 
 They bade me farewell with the warmest expressions 
 
 and with the tenderest grace ; 
 And something was said of my coming about the 
 
 autumn to Marmion Place : 
 But her lips spoke to me a language weaker than the 
 
 language of her face. 
 
 She question'd if time could have strength to chasten 
 a remembrance now so dear, 
 
 In accents so low, that she seem'd far away, though 
 her breath embalm'd my ear ; 
 
 And the fringe of an eyelid was gemm'd with some- 
 thing which glitter'd like a tear. 
 
 My exploit had travell'd, prospering, as it went, like 
 
 a nurse's tale ; 
 And ere I came home to sing it myself, I found the 
 
 song was growing stale. 
 Then who but a lover wore brows so wintry and a 
 
 cheek so starv'd and pale ?
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 93 
 
 The current of common experience flow'd as yet in a 
 shallow course, 
 
 And it asked not a seer's eye to trace my new alliance 
 to its source ; 
 
 But there was the influence, which gave to it a pre- 
 cocious age and force. 
 
 She was in a manner free to choose, though her 
 
 father's heir was she 
 Of all the broad tract which lay in the sun, and was 
 
 neighbour to the sea. 
 O, she might have been wedded to whom she listed ; 
 
 she might have been wedded to me ! 
 
 Her father was aged, and crav'd sea-change, in the 
 
 lady's own hand came word ; 
 And he wonder'd why of their young knight (this was 
 
 I) no tidings had been heard ; 
 And nothing would serve but I must go down to the 
 
 South, and make the third. 
 
 I heard a voice saying : " Grasp the occasion, which 
 
 waiteth on no man twice ; 
 For shall not the heiress of Marmion thy unschool'd 
 
 ambition suffice? 
 Every one in this world has his time ; everything in 
 
 this world has its price."
 
 94 THE baron's daughter 
 
 Hut a second rose, answering the first, like some shrill 
 
 bugle on a wold : 
 '' Shun the greatness that cannot enrich thee, the 
 
 height where thy foot cannot hold, 
 So long as the land must marry the land, and the gold 
 
 must marry the gold." 
 
 She call'd me her noble preserver : said from me that 
 
 she took back her life ; 
 In a sweet still voice she said that she might have 
 
 been some river-god's wife ; 
 J [er words to my ear were fairy music ; her words cut 
 
 my heart like a knife. 
 
 I urg'd her to look beyond honours, whose fountain 
 
 was only in the brain ; 
 But her thoughts gave me rank, she said, which none 
 
 of the honours of blood could gain ; 
 And her eyelashes grew like silken curtains, besprent 
 
 with the summer rain. 
 
 Then she chid my too doubting temper, asking, who 
 
 knew so well how to dare ? 
 Asking, if I had doubted upon the Loire bridge, could 
 
 she have met me there ? 
 And she laid her hot eyes on my shoulder and the 
 
 affluence of her hair.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 95 
 
 I felt the tears gushing from both my eyelids, like 
 
 globules of scalding brine. 
 I said : " On the bridge, in the river, that night, my 
 
 life should have ransom'd thine ; 
 But, O, ere I saw thee and sav'd thee, would some 
 
 other had taken mine ! 
 
 " O, would I had been such an one as a purseful of 
 
 thanks could have paid, 
 Or would (for thy sake) that I could on thy temples 
 
 a coronet have laid ! 
 But let the debt be its own quittance, or let it an 
 
 heirloom be made ! 
 
 " Even if in my own mind's vision the ends of the 
 
 earth upgather'd were : 
 And I could the palm from all collegians and from 
 
 all professors bear : 
 I might have seem'd more heroic in some academic 
 
 chair. 
 
 " Could I have had pow'r to summon down the ages 
 
 which time doth owe : 
 And to make the mute future before us both with life 
 
 and beauty glow : 
 It would have been better, if I had been such another 
 
 as manv I know.
 
 9 r > THE baron's daughtir 
 
 " Although I were crown'd King of science, and all 
 
 wisdom were my free-hold : 
 Had the labours of my poor life surpass'd those of 
 
 others an hundredfold : 
 It would have been better, if I could have had a 
 
 city's ransom in gold. 
 
 " Though I were as steadfast and true, as is the golden 
 
 eyed sun to the sea, 
 That all lovers in all the time to come might draw an 
 
 example from me, 
 It would have avail'd me far more, had I had a volume 
 
 of pedigree. 
 
 " I had striven with my whole gallantry for the prizes, 
 
 which ought to fall 
 To the stronger in brain and thought, to the freer 
 
 from fear and thrall, 
 but wherever I look'd, the publican throve, and I 
 
 found nor favour nor call. 
 
 " For he, that desires more knowledge than others, 
 
 must at his life's price be taught ; 
 And he that would have more wit than his fellow, it 
 
 comes to him dearly bought; 
 And he that all wit and knowledge has conquer'd, 
 
 what is his guerdon but nought ?
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 97 
 
 "Cease to weep, Edith Marmion," I cried, "O, cease, 
 if only for his sake, 
 
 Who fortun'd once from too early a slumber thy list- 
 less heart to awake ; 
 
 I am what I am, Edith Marmion ; I cannot my nature 
 unmake. 
 
 " Thou wilt marry one, who has a master-key to open 
 
 the hearts of men : 
 Who holds horses more precious than scholars, and a 
 
 whip more worth than a pen. 
 But though our paths lie far apart, at first I shall rule 
 
 thy thoughts now and then. 
 
 'Thou wilt marry within thine order — such a man 
 as I think that I know ; 
 
 He will warp all thy nobler nature, though his influ- 
 ence be slow ; 
 
 And my name and my voice will wax fainter and 
 fainter, as the seasons come and go. 
 
 " I foresee the confiding humour ; some of thy earlier 
 
 story he will seek. 
 I hear thee tell all our adventure to him far better 
 
 than I could speak, 
 Thy tones somewhat shaken by feelings, and the 
 
 purple mantling thy cheek.
 
 98 the baron's daughter 
 
 " Though I acted a common part, I picture thee paying 
 
 me a sweet rite-, 
 When a sound like an ice-burthen'd torrent takes thine 
 
 ear in a winter night. 
 Till thy husband has ask'd to he pardon'd, and his 
 
 lip begins to bite." 
 
 "Ah! you lords of letters are prouder," she said, 
 
 "than any lords of the land ; 
 And I feel that the culture you worship must be 
 
 something sweet and grand. 
 But will you not leave poor titled folk just room 
 
 enough to stand ? 
 
 •• My father, and his, and all our line, as over the 
 
 lengthening past I look, 
 Were soldiers who loyally answered their call, as you 
 
 do yours to the book : 
 And never a Marmion yet," quoth she, " his honour 
 
 or duty forsook." 
 
 I saw a shy pensive expression come, as she turn'd 
 
 her face half away, 
 As if more than kindness warranted she had suffer'd 
 
 herself to say. 
 But the light broke soon through the passing cloud, 
 
 like the sun on an August day.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 99 
 
 I call'd all the years behind me, and they came like a 
 
 Masque of Sleep : 
 And when I look'd back upon it, the path I had 
 
 trodden seem'd long and steep. 
 Some much of the corn I had sown was rotten ; but 
 
 some little was to reap. 
 
 I said : " I might draw near to thee, Edith, and thou 
 
 mightest draw near to me, 
 If the world as the stars and the tide was from all 
 
 lowering passions free ; " 
 And I led her eyes up with mine to the heaven, and 
 
 led them back to the sea. 
 
 " Yester even with our orb's dusk shadow the moon 
 
 shrouded her flushing face, 
 Till her beauty reveal'd itself only as a bride's through 
 
 the bridal lace, 
 And the earth and its freight, and thou and I too, 
 
 were dwarf'd to a cubit's space. 
 
 " There is stillness, so far as my eye can range ; there 
 
 is stillness on the shore ; 
 And the discord is only within my own breast and 
 
 round my own heart's core. 
 But the swallows draw narrower circles now, and the 
 
 curlew calls no more.
 
 IOO THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 
 
 " I have sat on the rocks in the sunshine, by a pool 
 
 like a mermaid's glass, 
 When the vast liquid volume before me lay lifeless as 
 
 summer grass, 
 Till my heart turn'd against the thrilling silence, and 
 
 I pray'd that it might pass. 
 
 M I have crouch'd, while the gale was angriest, in the 
 
 bowery brow of a clift, 
 And seen the vex d ocean itself, like a giant, in 
 
 paroxysms lift ; 
 Till the sands lost their yellow lustre, and grew 
 
 swarth with the wreckage and drift. 
 
 " Look now, where the storm-cloud cometh, and 
 where the wind maketh ready to blow ! 
 
 If I were alone, it might lighten my bosom to watch 
 the tempest grow ; 
 
 But thou hast been tenderly nurtur'd ; — look! it 
 neareth, and we must go." 
 
 She smil'd, and said : " Marmion Place will please 
 you. In the autumn the mellow rind 
 
 May bring with it mellower counsels and a something 
 cooler mind." 
 
 But the strengthening swirl of the sea-wind quench'd 
 her speech, and our throats enbrin'd.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER IOI 
 
 I call'd all the years from the future, and they came 
 
 like a pageant-play; 
 My fancy was throng'd with figures, and my unspent 
 
 life in my mind's eye lay. 
 I scorn'd all the witcheries of the world, I thought, 
 
 and kept my own fix'd way. 
 
 I felt that my life, like a wheel on the lathe, was 
 
 shap'd to a certain end ; 
 And it seem'd like a jest of fate, even in an angel's 
 
 garb, to send 
 One whom birth made too great for a wife, and who 
 
 had grown too dear for a friend. 
 
 We parted at last in the saddest of moods beneath 
 
 the brightest of skies ; 
 I knew that for me my action was foolish, although 
 
 for her it might be wise ; 
 But I borrow'd the glow of her cheek and the light of 
 
 her glorious eyes. 
 
 I re-enter'd the world, as one who hath with a wealthy 
 
 new fancy slept — 
 O, the grief that we pay with tears dies sooner than 
 
 the grief which lives unwept ! 
 O, the memories, costliest to keep, are e'er the longest 
 
 to be kept !
 
 102 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER 
 
 I regarded all those about me, and they seem'd so 
 
 strange and so cold, 
 As if I had slumber'd, and in my slumber grown some 
 
 lifetime old. 
 But my tranquiller brain recall'd me, and the too true 
 
 story told. 
 
 Let the wind and the sun use me gently; let me 
 
 have, while I live, bread to eat ; 
 My eyes cannot see through the vapour the world 
 
 where she and I are to meet. 
 What seem'd to be glory proves weariness : what 
 
 seem'd to be bitter proves sweet. 
 
 God forbid I should ever be tempted by lands or the 
 
 value of lands, 
 To dwell where the master the servants, and the 
 
 mistress the master, commands ; 
 Where the wife overshadows the husband, and the 
 
 reins change the sex of her hands ! 
 
 My sorrow belongs to the winter-time, as methinks 
 
 that all sorrow should, 
 When the days are short, and the nights are long, 
 
 and the bud is enwomb'd in the wood. 
 If such a thing must be, the mirthless season best 
 
 answers the mirthless mood.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER IO3 
 
 For, le>! in the spring the pulse beats quicker, and 
 
 the heart of a man grows young, 
 While the new year is yet of tender age, and the old 
 
 year's knell hath been rung ; 
 And, besides the love of a woman, there are things 
 
 to be ponder'd and sung. 
 
 I seem to hear something, which calls me away from 
 
 fostering vain regrets, 
 When the wayward wind of March uncanopies the 
 
 Lenten violets, 
 Saying : " Whoso too long houseth trouble, his mission 
 
 and manhood forgets." 
 
 '& % 
 
 When the life of the night is shortest, and men tire 
 
 of the sating days : 
 In the summery time, when it comes, with its burthen 
 
 of blossom and praise, 
 My Muse claps her wings in the sunshine, and builds 
 
 me serener lays. 
 
 But my trouble returns in the winter, when the air is 
 
 hungry and clear, 
 As it was on the night, when I cross'd the bridge, 
 
 and her sharp cry smote my ear ; 
 And I think, how it might have been for us both, 
 
 had I not then been near.
 
 104 the baron's daughter 
 
 I think of the scruples, which so many judg'd to be 
 too generous then ; 
 
 And I feel that they grew out of a too narrow com- 
 munion with men ; 
 
 For of my whole youth and my manhood chief com- 
 rades had been my thoughts and my pen. 
 
 Vet what was I but a student, without even a yeo- 
 man's fee, 
 
 In a country where every merchant seem'd to rattle 
 his purse at me ; 
 
 And again and again comes the feeling that it was as 
 it was to be. 
 
 It brings the dead past back to me, when I look at 
 
 my trophy of toil, 
 And read in the mirror'd lines of my brow the story 
 
 of tillage and spoil ; 
 And I poise the dominion of the mind with the 
 
 dominion of the soil. 
 
 When I muse on my humble fortune and a laborious 
 
 life misspent, 
 And think of the chateau on the Loire and a statelier 
 
 dwelling in Kent, 
 I laugh, as men laugh at the follies, which they learn 
 
 too late to repent.
 
 THE BARON'S DAUGHTER IO 
 
 Still hath sorrow its own enchantment, which none 
 
 but the sorrower knows, 
 As to me across dim ice-girt tracts the pulseless 
 
 March wind blows, 
 To rifle the odours of southern springs, and dwell 
 
 with the youth of the rose. 
 
 Or as the sweet spice asks the bruiser's hand to make 
 
 its privy sweetness known, 
 So I think out of grief how to many ere now strange 
 
 happiness has grown ; 
 And sooner than any false, narrowing tie, let me live 
 
 darkly alone. 
 
 I met her first upon the river, and I met her last 
 
 upon the shore. 
 O, enough ! O, enough ! the garland I won a still 
 
 unworthier wore : 
 Speak no more of the Baron's Daughter, speak of her 
 
 no more, no more ! 
 
 A stranger snatch'd from me a conquest as noble 
 
 as many an one of the sword ; 
 I rail'd at my moody pride, saying, " Well, a fool has 
 
 a fool's reward ! " 
 I lov'd her too well to meet her again, or to be a 
 
 guest at her board.
 
 io6 the baron's daughter 
 
 1 could DOt have sat at her board, unless it had \» en 
 
 in the master's place. 
 But I wish her happy, God knows, and often call 
 
 back, her young and happy face — 
 Well, there is the story, my throat is parch'd ; pray 
 
 you, go a gentler pace.
 
 LATER POEMS 
 
 1875-1891
 
 HYLAS; OR, A VISION OF SEA-FOLK 
 
 A MASQUE. 
 
 The Prologue. 
 
 De!ive7-ed by Pan. 
 
 The scene, a wood. 
 
 I pray you all of your sweet courtesy 
 
 To understand that I, renown'd god Pan, 
 
 Whose home is in the broad Arcadian woods, 
 
 Am honour'd by the duty of demanding 
 
 Your pardon and your favour for the tale, 
 
 Which certain dwellers in the watery deep 
 
 Present to-night to you, sway'd by the hope 
 
 Of drawing their requital from your smiles. 
 
 The story is in part of a sweet youth, 
 
 Whom once the tenants of these pleasant glades 
 
 Woo'd, striving which should win him for her own, 
 
 For he was of a most mark'd comeliness. 
 
 And while the Nymphs were in a sharp debate, 
 
 Which should possess young Hylas all alone, 
 
 109
 
 I I O IIYLAS 
 
 A strange thing chanc'd, which you arc soon to 
 hear. 
 
 Hut 'tis not in my charge to tell you more ; 
 I must away, and so for now farewell. 
 
 I He descends. 
 
 scent opens, and discloses a grotto of pCi.ul, sup- 
 posed to be at the bottom of the sea. Several 
 NYMPHS are seated by it. One of them rises 
 and sings. 
 
 The Song. 
 
 As there are spirits of the air, 
 So there, too, of the water be : 
 All. And such are we. 
 
 N\ m. O, we cannot live anywhere. 
 
 Only beneath the deep blue sea. 
 From mom till eve 
 We sit and weave 
 Grass, rush, and leaf 
 From rock and reef ; 
 Which for our lovers garlands be : 
 Here and here, 
 Par and near, 
 About and beneath the deep blue sea. 
 
 [She retires. 
 
 A second rises and sings.
 
 HYLAS III 
 
 The Song. 
 
 Of coral are our houses made ; 
 With amber combs we dress our hair 
 All. So green and fair. 
 
 Nym. We sit all day in the sweet cool shade, 
 
 And certain to us from earth repair. 
 All. They lead a life 
 
 Free from all strife ; 
 Nym. And p 1 rhaps a wife, 
 
 Who thought that she had paid Death his fee, 
 Finds a 7iew home, 
 Through the salt foam, 
 Down in the heart of the deep blue sea. 
 
 [She retires. 
 
 A third rises and sings. 
 
 The Song. 
 
 On speckled dolphins' backs we ride 
 Bravely through the twilight dim, 
 All. Nimble and trim. 
 
 Nym. Or through the azure waters wide 
 We joyously and deftly swim. 
 Sometimes we sport 
 In merry sort : 
 Sometimes we bring 
 Gifts to our king, 
 And for him sing.
 
 112 II Y LAS 
 
 And for our love the mermen bold 
 
 Search without fee 
 
 I Uder the sea 
 For shipwreck? d treasure and sunken gold. 
 
 [She retires. 
 A fourth rises and sings. 
 
 The Song. 
 
 These liquid realms one king obey ; 
 And all rivers, which court the sea, 
 All. His vassals he. 
 
 Nym. No lords of earth possess such sway, 
 Nor have such large domains, as he. 
 
 J J 'hen shies he foul, 
 
 And ihc 'winds howl : 
 
 Wheti waters roar, 
 
 And clouds down-pour, 
 
 He loves the shore ; 
 For 'tis blanch 'd with the earthmen's bones. 
 
 And many a ship 
 
 His minions strip 
 Of gums, perfumes, and precious stones. 
 
 [ They all retire. 
 
 The grotto descends, and behind it the scene opens, dis- 
 covering the court of the Sea-King, in a chamber 
 walled with agate, and floored with variegated 
 marbles. Around him Tritons, Nereids, arc, 
 all suitably arrayed. Tlie King is dressed in a
 
 HYLAS II3 
 
 rich green vesture, fastened with emeralds and 
 sapphires, over which is a robe of cloth-of-gold. 
 He wears a crown of coral set with gems. In 
 his hand a golden trident. A chain of amber 
 and gold round his neck. 
 
 He rises and speaks. 
 
 King. I am the King of the vast and fruitful ocean. 
 And every mortal man, who these realms enters, 
 Forfeits his breath, and into some form groweth 
 Of strange sea-property : yet are there earthmen, 
 Between whose natures and our own a kinship 
 Reveals itself, and we have art and power 
 Such to convert into new shapes of beaut)'. 
 My kingdom is of years with Space and Time, 
 And all throughout its large and varied area 
 I have my royal seats ; but these do chiefly 
 Neighbour upon the hungry-hearted English, 
 Whom I love foremost : for above all other 
 Their keels go laden from the fairy Orient 
 With gather'd spoils of Western enterprising, 
 Of which they pay rich tribute to my treasury. 
 And when the tidings come of wealthy ventures 
 Carving the surface of this watery volume, 
 I straight enlarge the winds, and move the billows 
 To a strange fury ; and (above the tempest) 
 My spirits utter shrill and horrid noises : 
 Till all the life there has been quench'd and drowned, 
 
 H
 
 M4 ' i v L a s 
 
 And Death and I have prov'd the greatest merchants. 
 We have store of such things of fear and pity, 
 Which certain learned mermen, for their pleasure, 
 Knit into tales of mix'd delight and wonder, 
 To whisper in the ears of our sea-maidens. 
 So it was in the flow'ry days of Sidon, 
 ( arthage, Phoenicia, and the Hellenes ; 
 And 'tis of our sea-government the policy, 
 Which from our first beginning hath descended. 
 
 As he concludes, twelve Tritons and twelve NEREIDS, 
 suitably apparelled, enter, and dance together. The 
 
 dance ended, one of each advances, and they sing 
 alternately. 
 
 The Song. 
 
 Come unto this watery home, 
 
 All dwellers on the dull old earth : 
 
 To this watery mansion come, 
 
 And lengthen out your days with mirth. 
 
 Only zve, that live below, 
 Are from pain and sorrcnv free. 
 Come to us, and you shall knmv 
 The precious mysteries of the sea. 
 
 We have grottoes and recesses, 
 Where the fern and sea-thorn grozv : 
 We make fillets for our tresses 
 Of the pinks, that there do blow.
 
 HYLAS 115 
 
 Nature is no prude to us : 
 Her whole beauty 7ve enjoy. 
 Mortals do not give her thus 
 Her full scope, and she turns coy. 
 
 Ner. Mortal lady once was I, 
 
 Though my name be out of mind, 
 I was all too young to die, 
 When Fate provd unkindly kind. 
 
 Tri. She whom you a Nereid see, 
 
 Wore not always that blest guise ; 
 Her love was the life of me, 
 And her beauty chain'd all eyes. 
 She was Hero 
 
 Ner. Yes, and you ! — 
 Were Leander cali'd tofore. 
 Us the sea-god to him drew 
 
 Tri. And we are to part no more. 
 
 Echo through the caves. Part no more ! 
 
 The King rises again, and speaks. 
 
 King. Tritons, enough. Time out of mind, my 
 lieges, 
 I now have rul'd o'er you your kingly father. 
 I was, ere you had Being. The beginnings 
 Of these vast tracts, which belt the earth, I knew not,
 
 I ! 5 HYLA8 
 
 I refer myself and my sea empire 
 To workings of the Universal Nature, 
 Which wrought us of some texture more than 
 
 human : 
 Not perishable particles, begetting 
 Others as perishable down the centuries, 
 But one continuous individual Being : 
 mpt from all terrestrial ordinances, 
 And from the laws, which other systems govern. 
 ( '.ill me my Hylas. He was of those creatures, 
 Which in the confines of the Moon more nearly 
 Than us live and inhabit, till his moment 
 Of happiness arriv'd, and of this region 
 Of cloudless joys he was confirm'd a freeman. 
 Hark! from the nearness where good Hylas com< 
 His tuneful throat the herald of himself ! 
 
 The Song of Hylas. 
 
 (As from within) 
 
 Under the earth, under the sea, 
 Aferrily, merrily, 
 We do the tasks, 
 Which our life asks : 
 We dig for gems. 
 Which some of us do wear 
 
 In diadems, 
 And some about their hair.
 
 HYLAS Ii; 
 
 And we gather mosses and all choice shells 
 
 Which we 
 
 Can see, 
 When the phosphorus kindles glens and dells. 
 
 When as the wind is hush'd and still, 
 Then sounds the Triton's conch more shrill, 
 Through all the caves, 
 Up to the waves, 
 And the answer comes from the sea-bird's throat 
 In air 
 Somewhere ; 
 For he knoivs, where he is, the merman's note. 
 
 Under the sea, under the earth, 
 There is more pleasure and mirth, 
 
 Than mortals know, 
 
 Who come below, 
 
 Only to be 
 Chang 'd into something new, 
 
 Save two or three, 
 Whom Death does but endue 
 With gifts not dreamt of in their native sphere, 
 And such a lot was mine, when I came here. 
 
 When so the wind is loud and wroth, 
 And whips the waters into froth, 
 
 Scarce any breath 
 
 Is heard beneath ;
 
 Il8 H VI AS 
 
 For the elements may not tenet? . 
 1 1 'ith brawl 
 
 Or Si/ //ill/ 
 
 The place, where the sea -god keeps his statr. 
 
 [ lie appears. 
 
 Hail to my ever-gracious prince and master ! 
 
 King. Thanks, trusty Hylas, for the swift obedience, 
 That honours our commands. Our clemency 
 And the benign complexion of our reign 
 1 >o worship to the yielding love of them, 
 Whose eyes are bred in serving to see fitness, 
 And only mutual bondage in all lordship. 
 Now earward bend thy wit. These passed few seasons 
 Those who work under ocean for our profit 
 1 lave tax'd the patient earth more than seems honest. 
 For come to me new rumours from the mines, 
 Which through uncounted ages we have tilled, 
 ( )!' something like a growing neighbourhood, 
 In depths that lie beyond our present ken. 
 To that vast region of perpetual fire, 
 Which thou didst once deliver in a council 
 To be in thine opinion the complexion 
 Of the most inward entrails of the earth. 
 
 ffyl. Those, O my king, who worship your desirt !S, 
 And change your thoughts into responding works, 
 Where all around the sea's unstinted labours 
 Have so prevailed upon the sterile rocks, 
 That their first nature in a sort is varied.
 
 HYLAS I IQ 
 
 Come freighted with such tidings, as I hope 
 May shew their fancy wealthier than their wit. 
 
 King. You said it was a wondrous new emotion, 
 Giving a sudden pulse and vital faculty 
 To that immeasurable and monstrous world, 
 Which makes the bound of our antique domain. 
 
 Hyl. It may be warrantable, sir, to think 
 That there is, bordering on our utmost confines, 
 A country and a people, to whom fire 
 Is what these waters are to us : their life, 
 Their breath, the fabric of their souls. 
 There seethes, perchance, a molten burning volume 
 Beneath us, as I speak, which will dissolve, 
 Like errant glaciers in a tropic sea, 
 This pebbled barrier, this rock-built bed, 
 And so two worlds — of water this, and that 
 Of flame, shall each the other ruin — 
 
 King. Foreshadow nought so terrible. But, Hylas, 
 Thou traffickest in visions, as do most 
 In pearls and shells and usual commodities. 
 Often and often, as I recollect, 
 Thy king's ear has been taken no loth captive 
 By stories of some mint, when thou and thine 
 Were shepherds there in Mysia, sire and son, 
 Which took the mother gold, and gave it back 
 With some terrestrial similitude, 
 Deeply and lively cut upon its face : 
 May-be a lamb or ox, or e'en an archer ;
 
 I 2 HYLA8 
 
 And thou hadst seen, thou saidest (O, most strati] 
 \ piece which shewed a nymph upon a dolphin — 
 Well, such is thy poor brain : tor ever frothing 
 With some fresh-wcan'd conceit — 
 
 Hyl. Ah ! dearest mast'-r, 
 
 Forgive me, if I chide you yet once more 
 For letting your affections run too much 
 In a strait sea girt circle. Prythee think 
 The earth and sea more interchangeable ; 
 J or such as are not drawn toward the plough, 
 Among those, whose frail nature I once shar d, 
 Or to the business of a shepherd's life, 
 Till this vast plain of water at their will ; 
 And there is no such fruitful husbandry. 
 These merchants must be gamesters or no merchants, 
 And they who play at fortune with the sea, 
 Find it a kinder servant than a master, 
 And staking his whole treasure on one cast, 
 Often the poor adventurer descends 
 Unpiloted to this broad-bosom'd haven. 
 And leaves your highness his unschedul'd heir. 
 
 Kin*. They covet the whole vantage ; but we claim 
 To be coparceners. Is it not just ? 
 They tender us no freedom of their lands ! 
 
 Hyl. My king's words are like truth exactlypainted — 
 
 King. But our thoughts journey, as the sea-fowl flies, 
 And whence they started, thither they return. 
 I like not this discourse of novel sounds,
 
 HYLAS 121 
 
 This talk of motions fretful and unquiet, 
 
 On the imagin'd verge of life and space ; 
 
 As though the ancient fixity were gone, 
 
 And the broad floor, whereon our kingdom rests, 
 
 Were but the ceiling of some blazing world, 
 
 Whose thirst, if once the flame should pierce an inlet, 
 
 The ocean twenty-fold might fail to slake. 
 
 Then, Hylas, think, this dear time-honoured fabric 
 
 Would crumble into chaos ! O, 'tis horrible ! 
 
 Wherefore I charge you, as you rate our friendship, 
 
 To wing throughout the realm our wish and edict, 
 
 That all henceforth forbear to search for treasure, 
 
 Or fashion to their use the clouded jasper, 
 
 Till our swift messengers more surely learn, 
 
 What truth resides in this perplexing tale. 
 
 Byl. It asks but your good will to make our duties 
 Wear both the name and quality of pleasures ; 
 And so our pleasures, by a kindred sorcery, 
 Are chang'd into the likeness of our duties. 
 Ah, dear my lord, this enjoin'd term of pastime 
 Will be the sweetest and the fruitfullest fallow. 
 For we have mermen, who can coin the onyx 
 Into fair standing cups for our high feast-days, 
 And make all things which (or in hills or valleys) 
 Have their peculiar seat beneath the waters, 
 Each in its turn, serve and fulfil our uses. 
 Sometimes we'll penetrate the ice o' winters, 
 And force the Arctic bears to do our bidding,
 
 122 HVI.AS 
 
 Making them carry us whole leagues unbridled 
 
 Upon the bosom of the Frozen Ocean. 
 
 Ami otherwhiles we'll track the fearful walrus 
 
 To his cold dwelling in some icy fastness ; 
 
 Or, marking where the seal has left his footprint, 
 
 vestments for our monarch and his nobles, 
 And gallant trappings for our pageant-players. 
 ( >r, borrowing the shape of a tall Polack 
 Or brawny Zeelander, we'll shoot like lightning 
 Along the horny crust of silent Volga 
 Or of more southern Scheldt, to the amazement 
 Of many a worldling. 
 Nor will our Tritons fear to offer battle 
 In middle stream to the weird octopus, 
 And drag him down to untried depths their captive. 
 Now we shall snare the sturgeon, as he slumbers 
 Upon some tract of slimy, unctuous herbage, 
 By a tall mountain's side, about the summer. 
 Then the rich-freighted whale, inertly floating 
 Upon the tide, like a new-risen island, 
 Shall fall to our fleet spears ; and Indian fishers, 
 I >iving for pearls, what time the Dog-star ruleth, 
 We'll seize at unawares, and take their gettings 
 To hang them at the ears of our sweet sea-nymphs. 
 Hey for this frolic life ! Cloy with long use 
 Much ease and little care : but for the nonce 
 They daintily unite. 
 
 King. 'Tis now, good Hylas,
 
 HYLAS 123 
 
 Full twenty centuries since first your beauty 
 Robb'd of their heart's-ease certain water-ladies 
 Who, as their chief-rent for the running season, 
 Brought you to us by sundry secret channels, 
 For which they stand discharg'd from farther tribute. 
 Then, as your years came, harvested with virtues, 
 Of which the buds lay couch'd beneath your nonage, 
 You grew to be our treasurer and steward. 
 
 Hyl. Methinks I can yet in some deeper study 
 Discern the limpid voices of the Naiads, 
 As I emerg'd from my sharp drowning ecstasy : 
 " O, speak to us, if it be but a little, 
 Young Hylas, gentle Hylas, mystic creature, 
 Too like ourselves not to quit your humanity, 
 And be a liver in a less gross region." 
 O my most gracious prince, my loving labour 
 Has been a partner with my wit by piecemeal 
 To make me less a debtor to your highness ; 
 And I have heard that, jealous of my traffic, 
 The gnomes, who guard the Earth's untravell'd centre, 
 Have mark'd me of all other for their quarry. 
 For by my chemistry I first discover'd 
 In subteraqueous rocks unnoted properties : 
 The homes of precious oils, volcanic fluids ; 
 Salts, ductile ores, and earths of divers service. 
 But, far above them all, the noble mystery 
 Of fire, which men hold erringly we have not. 
 These benefits have brought me place and honour
 
 I 2 | IIV LAS 
 
 Beyond the merchandise in sheep and oxen, 
 Which my old shepherd father did in Mysia. 
 O, to have been a man, and grow immortal, 
 Is something rapturous: our life abstracted 
 From hopes and fears, and all corrupt emotions : 
 And our delighted souls left at their liberty 
 To dwell in viewless depths of unstain'd azure, 
 Beyond the scope and empire of the wind-god. 
 Yet, even as I am, I know of seasons, 
 When I return to earth, as in a day-dream, 
 Clothing myself again with flesh and passions, 
 And in my foregone being see a sweetness, 
 A warmth, a motive pow'r, a form and colour, 
 Which seem to seek in this sea-bound divinity. 
 Ah me ! just here a rose my nostril punctur'd, 
 Ere I learnt how all sweets are match'd to dangers ; 
 And still I keep the taste of the wrath master's sapling, 
 When I went, one of four, to rob a neighbour orchard. 
 I know the Mysian blood's, too, in a sort within me ; 
 For to my palm for ever and for ever 
 Cleaves something which for me has a strange dear- 
 
 ness, 
 Since last my fingers furr'd themselves in groping 
 Through our ewes' fleeces in the second winter. 
 Nor have I lost the beauty of the water-lilies, 
 Which fring'd our forest pools : when so I wander'd, 
 .My charge safe-folded, through the pathless thickets, 
 In mid-year twilight, when the leaves are longest.
 
 HYLAS 125 
 
 King. Ah ! Hylas, wilt thou still be so disloyal, 
 As 'twixt the earth and sea to halve thy fealty, 
 And to thy prince be but a moiety bounden — 
 Thy prince, who sav'd thee from a meaner fortune : 
 The fickle passion of the river-spirits, 
 And then the common crown of every mortal — 
 To be (like us) unchang'd, unchangeable ! 
 O, it is time that thy unschool'd affections 
 Should turn, as doth the needle, to one centre, 
 Not like some swain, new-parted from his lady, 
 lie ever casting backward love-sick glances. 
 Vet it goes so with all the sons of women ; 
 For of thy humour is our fair young poet 
 Who, if return were not denied, would ransom 
 The sedges of the Cam e'en with his godhead. 
 He has a thirsty heart, not sweetly languid, 
 Like the true sea-born. I can well remember, 
 Though ages have since seen their circles rounded, 
 How, on an inky night in middle winter, 
 I found him, panting and three-quarters senseless, 
 In the black furrows of the Irish Ocean ; 
 And singling him by my divine foreknowledge 
 From out his shipmates, bore him to my palace. 
 \Yhere I caus'd nymphs, sprung of no mortal mothers, 
 To minister to him ; and there his manhood 
 Suffer'd conversion, and he woke a Triton. 
 The name which he had worn on earth was blotted 
 Out from his brain, and in our crystal chamber
 
 1 J 6 11Y1.AS 
 
 The style of I.yeidas he took upon him, 
 
 And to be our chief poet and musician — 
 
 But since your thoughts so love to act the truant^, 
 
 Tell me, dear Hylas, if across your fancy 
 
 Steals not at times some lay you us'd to homeward — 
 
 Some tale of shepherds' life, their loves and fortun 
 
 May-be, it might be pleasant for its strangeness, 
 
 Which in things unaccustom'd ranks a virtue. 
 
 Hyl. My lord, your grace can best of all remember 
 What my years were, when first the tricksy Naiads 
 Snatch'd me from I know not what different future. 
 And (mite exempted me from all probation. 
 Believe I only sorted with the younger striplings, 
 And life to me was like a schoolboy's lesson. 
 But since you put your high command upon me, 
 We had in my old home such things as these are— 
 
 The First Song. 
 
 When violets draw to their prime, 
 And meadows wear their saffron coats, 
 O, then it is the sweet spring-time, 
 And nestlings warble prentice notes. 
 
 1 1 'hen dainty almond-buds appear, 
 And new green glitters on the boughs, 
 The youth has come of another year, 
 And lovers think of Christmas votes.
 
 HYLAS 127 
 
 When cowslips stoop to sip the dew, 
 And daisies pie the shelter d croft, 
 Then comes once more the arch cuckoo* 
 And chants the lark his hymn aloft. 
 
 When dust-stain 'd March must go his way, 
 False April enters as his heir : 
 Then country lasses choose for May, 
 And country lads the young birds snare. 
 
 Or thus sometimes it pleas'd a lordlier gallant 
 To build a trophy to his round year's wooing : — 
 
 The Second Song. 
 
 When winter winds blow strong and shrill : 
 When mantling snow drifts up the hill : 
 And when the redbreast haunts my sill — 
 I think of a lady I love — 
 Ah ! a lady that loves not me ! 
 
 When spring reclothes the shivering trees : 
 When th' young grass shoots along the leas : 
 When busy housewives tell their bees : 
 I think of a lady I love — 
 Ah I a lady that loves not me ! 
 
 * " Somer is icumen in, 
 Lhude sing cuccu." 
 
 — Earliest English Song.
 
 ! 2S HYLAS 
 
 When summer tuns shine hot and clear: 
 
 II 'hen the corn 'gins ripen in the ear : 
 
 When the sward hath grown both parch' d and tear 
 1 think of a lady J love — 
 Ah I a lady that loves not m • .' 
 
 When autumn leaves are shed aground : 
 When harvest-lads drink glasses round: 
 
 When hunter dreams of horse and hound : 
 J think of a lady J love — 
 ( \ a lady that loveth me ! 
 
 Then here is one more strain, and I have finish'd ; 
 I had not thought my memory half so fruitful ; 
 And I must end, lest it outlive your patience: — 
 
 The Third Song. 
 
 A fair girl sat by a leafless tree : 
 her cheek on her hand was pillmved ; 
 And all that J heard was, " Woe is me ! 
 My love is dead.'" 
 
 She sat there all the sweet summer day. 
 And many and many a tear she shed, 
 But she seem'd to me only to say : 
 "My love is dead I"
 
 HYLAS 129 
 
 There was music of birds not far away ; 
 But little, I wot, of it she knew. 
 " My lover is dead,''' I heard her say. 
 " Would 1 were too I " 
 
 King. Those songs content me rarely ; for I find 
 them 
 Not thin and sapless, like our own sea-music, 
 But th' have a substance, Hylas, and a purpose, 
 Which make me own myself the too late father 
 Of a desire to see this thing reformed — 
 For melody, more earnest and more solid 
 Than that of shells and rushes, well-applied 
 To our sea-story, might a spirit awake, 
 Unwitness'd by my earlier years of kingship, 
 And prove a strange new spur to lofty exploits. 
 
 Hyl. Sir, there were other ditties meet for battle : 
 For we made music wait on all occasions. 
 
 King. Ah ! those that we have heard were pitch VI 
 too low. 
 I would have such as should upon the ear 
 Burst like a trumpet, and give sudden wings 
 E'en to a dullard's courage. Think on this, now. 
 
 Hyl. Thou recollectest, O my lord, the time, 
 When I deliver'd hardly from the grip 
 Of some sea-faring wretch a hollow cane, 
 Pierc'd half along with oilets, which he hither 
 Had borne unanswerably? —
 
 130 H Y L A 8 
 
 King. I remember. 
 
 IIxl. He was. I think, a player, who had ventur'd 
 On our too unkind clement, and perish'd 
 With a last dream of music gone to sleep, 
 And on his fast-lock 'd lips a seal of foam — 
 
 King. Well, what of that? Such chances are but 
 common — 
 
 //iY. I hold that cane. Hark ! now my tale grows 
 pointed. 
 We have, as well your highness knoweth, tracts 
 Of coral fineless, wheresoe'er the ocean 
 Your royal treasures keeps from mortals secret — 
 Tracts yet to no use bent ; and rocky shelves, 
 Where amber is most usual. Dearest master, 
 Forgive me, if this one and only time 
 1 have a little lost the line of duty, 
 And put myself too boldly in your room — 
 
 King. Hylas, thy known discretion buys thy pardon. 
 
 Hyl. Lo ! then, I have, as leisure suffcr'd, wrought 
 With such art as a Mysian boy could compass, 
 Out of these twin growths of our own dominion, 
 Twelve cylinders in fashion like to mine, 
 Six amber, coral six ; and twice six Tritons, 
 Whose genius seem'd tractable and kind, 
 Our Lycidas, on my demand, has school'd, 
 Till, at the next high court your grace shall summon, 
 They are prepar'd to shew you new delights. 
 
 King. This is thy last reform and noblest; and thy plot
 
 HYLAS 131 
 
 Has been, methinks, kept private to a wonder. 
 
 But then, alas ! our ancient poetry, 
 
 The music of our caves, our vocal shells, 
 
 Will be despis'd and lost, when a new era 
 
 Of light and science doth begin to dawn. 
 
 For change, my Hylas, is a two-edg'd blade, 
 
 Cutting before and after, and the hand 
 
 That plucks should have a nice and learned touch, 
 
 Lest with the weeds go flowers. For all that 
 
 Thy Mysian blood stands sponsor : yet thou studiest 
 
 In it our dignity and good — 
 
 Hyl. Great thanks. 
 
 The sight and scent of e'en the humblest flower 
 Are not what one would choose to lose for ever, 
 When one thinks well upon it — [Aside. 
 
 King. Hark ! his mind 
 
 Is earthward once again ? It is a fault ; 
 But 'tis a sweet one — 
 
 Hyl. Did your highness speak ? 
 
 King. Yes; but 'twas nought — I was, as we say, 
 musing. 
 Haste now to make our new desires familiar. 
 
 Hyl. It shall be done to point, my royal master, 
 And they'll as soon grow into love as knowledge. 
 
 [Exit King with his attendants. 
 Lo ! there goes one, whom, if some earthly king 
 Should, in a king's true likeness, seek his mirror, 
 I could to him most soberly commend.
 
 I 5 2 1 1 V I. A S 
 
 I or he has drawn us into such compliance 
 
 With his most holy mandates and his wealth 
 
 Of immemorial wisdom, that compulsion 
 
 And sacrificial honours paid to justice 
 
 Were still unknown, both name and thing, to these, 
 
 Till I reported, how the newer princes 
 
 Of my first country — that impassion'd world, 
 
 The home of my yet untransfigur'd being — 
 
 Had, just before my happy passage hither, 
 
 Enforc'd themselves to lay a weighty hand 
 
 On certain young corruptions in the State. 
 
 Which tale of mine with our sea-folks' experience 
 
 So little sorted, that it might have been 
 
 A new-found sense, of which I broke the tidin. 
 
 Or some strange history of Tritons found 
 
 With human faces. Such impure persuasions 
 
 Are not demanded of my gentle king. 
 
 Our only books of statutes are our hearts, 
 
 Wherein we have, as in a volume, written 
 
 In characters for fairness far exceeding 
 
 The boasted ordinances of the Mysians, 
 
 His highness's most fatherly decrees, 
 
 Which are without a side-look fram'd for all, 
 
 And put the law on its best use and worth :
 
 HYLAS 133 
 
 The Song of Hylas. 
 
 When I kept my good father's kine in Mysia lately, 
 I had a shepherd's life before me in my fancy. 
 I knezu nought of the sea : I knew nought of its riches. 
 The earth seemed as one wide extent of fat green pasture, 
 And all beyond I judged ivere others such as we ivere : 
 Taller perchance, and richer in estate, but shepherds. 
 So pass'd my earliest youth in a soft pastoral dimness, 
 Among the flocks I lov'd, among the swains my equals : 
 Equals in all things but in an unkinder fortune. 
 For while those with whom I once vied in making 
 
 music 
 To keep the birds in fuller throat till after sundoivn, 
 Descended, one by one, to fathomless Avernus, 
 Alone I kept unchanged the essence of my being, 
 And clos'd my lips against the waters of oblivion. 
 For that chandd to me, which can chance but once to 
 
 mortal ; 
 Ere my acts had to any of the gods stood cause of 
 
 umbrage, 
 I was transpher'd ; and, while my birth was merely 
 
 human, 
 My soul ne'er went a pilgrim to the court of Pluto, 
 But stiffer'd in its time a different migration. 
 I had not years to see Death darkling in my future, 
 When a strange theft, in which both gods and men 
 
 were partners, 
 Carried me in the newly-budded spring of boyhood 
 Across the gulf , to mortal sense not palpable,
 
 H YL A ] 
 
 Which parts the known and unknown life a world 
 
 asunder. 
 So /, who first at fool of 'Jove-belov 'd Olympus, 
 
 my small herd, and only knew remote Propotltis 
 By a dull rumour that it did exceed in volume 
 ( htr country rivers, as these do a wayside <wan , s pool, 
 Have grown to be the friend and foremost minister 
 Of him 'who reigns king of the universal ocean ; 
 
 i of his higher nature I am a partaker. [Exit. 
 
 The scene changes to a wood. 
 
 PAN rcascends. 
 
 The Epilogue, delivered by him. 
 
 Kind friends, adieu. Our pageant is perform'd, 
 
 And here back to the old Arcadia 
 
 1 am return'd from witnessing the sport, 
 
 Seeing, unseen, as I have privilege. 
 
 I do protest, this only once have I 
 
 Quitted the scenes, which I love all too well, 
 
 To view the revelry of other spheres, 
 
 For woods and waters have their several charms. 
 
 These, then, all counterfeit presentments are : 
 
 This a device in which, as in a glass, 
 
 You may behold, to our best skill portray'd, 
 
 The life and humours of a merrier world. 
 
 [Descends.
 
 ELEGIAC POEMS 
 
 THE POET'S GRAVE 
 
 His cold heart rests by the willow-tree, 
 And I call, but he cannot answer me ; 
 And whether I pay my orisons there, 
 
 When the tree is bare, 
 Or when its leaves play with the lush summer air, 
 
 I hear no sound 
 
 Come from the ground. 
 But the feather'd creatures his lodging know, 
 And their notes, as they pass, are soft and low. 
 
 ii. 
 
 For he was a singer once like them, 
 
 And they give him a loving requiem. 
 
 O, the voice of my friend is quench'd and dead, 
 
 And here his bed ; 
 135
 
 i $6 in e poet's grave 
 
 And the winds make music over his head, 
 
 In this very spot ; 
 
 Hut he hears it not. 
 For his spirit is spent, and the battle is o'er, 
 And the seasons for him can vary no mure. 
 
 in. 
 
 Let not marble make light of his name, 
 
 Which is writ in the volume of Fame. 
 
 All that made him so dear to us lingers behind 
 
 In many a mind, 
 And the least part of him has to earth been consign'd. 
 
 For his song will live, 
 
 And its echoes give ; 
 And the pilgrim will stand at his honour'd shrine, 
 ^A'hen the lot that is his shall long have been mine. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let not moles build their homes with his dust, 
 Lest the churl's heel and the wintry gust 
 Scatter the particles through the air, 
 
 Some here, some there : 
 To grow into food for the harrow and share. 
 
 But let it rest, 
 
 By foot unpress'd, 
 Till the masterless sweep of the distant sea 
 From their bondage shall set his still ashes free.
 
 THE POET'S GRAVE I37 
 
 V. 
 
 He studied no arts, which riches bring, 
 For he held his calling a sacred thing ; 
 And he was content with the praise of a few, 
 
 Who his worth knew, 
 And whose worship by little and little grew. 
 
 But he valued not, 
 
 Nor heeded one jot, 
 Those who their opinions from others took. 
 Now he has his glory, and we have his book. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Once, at eve, I came to the willow-tree, 
 And my friend rose up to welcome me : 
 Rose up from the stool, which he used to bring 
 
 On a day of spring, 
 When I sat there beside him, to hear him sing. 
 
 But now he sang 
 
 Some words, which rang 
 In my ear like a dirge, so sad, so sad ; 
 Yet his voice was clear, and his eye was glad. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I had not marked the set of the sun, 
 And night drew on, ere his song was done. 
 The light of the moon was pale and weak, 
 But paler his cheek ;
 
 I38 AN BLBOI 
 
 And he scem'd like one with whom 1 >eath would speak. 
 
 Then from my sight 
 
 1 [e faded quite-. 
 But rny brain with the trouble was faint and hot, 
 And my lips form'd his name, though I spake it not. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 O, earth's bondsman for ever and ever is he ; 
 But his shape and his features linger with me 
 And whenever I visit his resting-place, 
 
 I see his face, 
 And I fondly think of his culture and grace. 
 
 And such memories 
 
 My humour please 
 Far beyond all problems and blessings to be, 
 Which appear less real and human to me. 
 
 AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A 
 FRIEND DROWNED AT SFA 
 
 The purple moor was cross'd, and he and I 
 Stood on the margin of the rippling main. 
 I took his hand, and, "shall we part again ? 
 And must you winter under an Italian sky? "
 
 AN ELEGY I39 
 
 I saw the moisture gather, as he turn'd 
 Shamefastly from me, and a film of dew 
 Suffus'd his eye. Quoth he : " Of seeing you 
 The privilege how dearly have I earn'd ! 
 
 " Earn'd it with six months' exile from the land, 
 Which seems to me most human and most kin ; 
 Where I child, boy, and man have been," 
 Freeing, as thus he spoke, his prison'd hand. 
 
 "Time is a snail beneath the southern sun ; 
 Time is a bird when I regain this shore, 
 With new strength bursting out at every pore : 
 There six months seem as twelve, here six as one. 
 
 " Yet how can I be ask'd too great a price 
 
 For those hours which I thus snatch back from death? 
 
 In other latitudes I draw a freer breath ; 
 
 But every tongue is mute, and every heart is ice. 
 
 " The languid, soft, and fruitless life men lead, 
 Where nature her best gifts loves to bestow, 
 And air, sky, water, can no further go, 
 In English eyes seems manhood run to seed." 
 
 I watch'd his figure lessening, as the boat 
 Was swiftly row'd into the deep, still tide : 
 " A last farewell, a long farewell," he cried ; 
 " See, where she lies so sleepily afloat ! "
 
 I4O AN ELECV 
 
 I heard no more ; no more he spake to me ; 
 The air seem'd charm'd, the night he went away ; 
 ])ut some unpitying wind close-ambush'd lay, 
 And his voice comes up murmuring from the sea. 
 
 Not unto him but me was death unkind, 
 In leaving our sweet converse incomplete : 
 I scarce should feel that we had ceas'd to meet, 
 If he had made me heir to all his mind. 
 
 Think of the myriads, man-fashion made, 
 Whose bones the sea turns to its unknown uses ! 
 And could not this disciple of the Muses 
 Among the scenes and men he knew be laid ? 
 
 We learn'd our book together, and his frame, 
 As even then methought, was something frail : 
 His cheek too brilliant, and his brow too pale, 
 And his fond cra^e for study I would blame. 
 
 My labour was his sport ; he us'd to play 
 With abstruse subjects, and with his low laugh 
 Cut at a word some knotty point in half, 
 Which he call'd whiling idle hours away. 
 
 He had his graver and his gayer moods ; 
 The scholar and the schoolboy both were there : 
 And I have seen him wildly pull his hair, 
 When we once miss'd a snipe among the woods.
 
 AN ELEGY I4I 
 
 Death came to him, dear youth, before the world 
 Had warp'd his soul to its own narrow stature, 
 Or spoil'd what was sublimer in his nature, 
 And at him lovingly his weapon hurl'd. 
 
 The ocean has seem'd calmer, since he died, 
 And every fragile craft can ride the bay : 
 Like some huge monster gorg'd with living prey, 
 It sleeps, with its full banquet satisfied. 
 
 The thoughts of him my past and future bind, 
 And, as years come and go, gain added force ; 
 And with them there is something like remorse, 
 That I too lightly valued his rare mind. 
 
 For he topp'd all his fellows, as the pine 
 Doth proudly overpeer the foresters ; 
 Most gifts he had, save that of years : 
 But too much he endeavour'd to combine. 
 
 Yet, while he stay'd with us, he seem'd of stuff 
 Not so much different from other men : 
 What I so well feel now, had I felt then, 
 I could not have consider'd him enough. 
 
 Other companions, other friends, I know ; 
 But not amongst them all shall I e'er find 
 The riches of that many-sided mind, 
 Which seem'd to take in all this star can shew.
 
 I 4 2 AN BL EG V 
 
 1 have none now to tell me why the gorse 
 Renews itself more oft than other thin. . 
 And give a name to every fiow'r that sprin 
 Or say what makes the raven's throat so hoarse. 
 
 No more shall we upon the hillside sit, 
 Untwisting some entangled mesh of thought ; 
 When he his own great parts would set at nought, 
 And vex me by o'erpraising my thin wit. 
 
 No more shall we commune, our studies done, 
 Upon the changes which the world has borne, 
 Or roam together on a fragrant morn, 
 Holding good talk and skirmishes of fun. 
 
 No more shall we midway 'twixt houses meet, 
 And ramble on a versifying task. 
 The germ was seldom mine ; but he might ask 
 .My help sometimes to make it run on feet. 
 
 No more shall we kneel on the cliff's green verge, 
 And see the sunset gild a distant reach, 
 Or, stretch'd luxuriously upon the beach, 
 Watch all the varying prisms in the surge. 
 
 For me the sea has lost its old delights, 
 Unless I might be free to choose my grave, 
 And lie by him in some crystalline cave, 
 Where he lives, may-be, with the water-sprites.
 
 AN ELEGY I 43 
 
 Lives, may-be, in a kind of reverie, 
 His head crown'd with a coral diadem : 
 Loving the nymphs, but more belov'd of them ; 
 And dreams sometimes of earth, and home, and me. 
 
 I love, yet shun, those scenes, which were so dear, 
 When we all times and weathers journeying went ; 
 For his mysterious tact and knowledge lent 
 New beauties to each quarter of the year. 
 
 The moor would sometimes be a trysting spot, 
 And every pool be ransack'd for its trout ; 
 And if a hare rose, when we two were out, 
 To Wat's Elysium he his passport got. 
 
 But he was soft of heart, and lov'd far more 
 To view the lay'rs of clouds for ever changing, 
 And watch the sea-birds at their freedom ranging ; 
 Or loiter pensively along the shore. 
 
 Rich as old Tagus were our haunts to him, 
 Whose eye found form and colour everywhere ; 
 And what was beautiful, and what was rare, 
 He has oft seen, when all to me was dim. 
 
 But once I found myself upon the shore, 
 Looking for something which I could not see, 
 And there was none to speak a word to me, 
 For all was dumb except the billows' roar.
 
 144 THB FATHER'S ELEGY 
 
 The fields, the moor, the sea, and e'en the sky, 
 Borrow'd some charm from him, I scarce know how : 
 For they appear to me so different now — 
 Or do I view them with a different eye? 
 
 I stood, as we had stood, when he was there ; 
 But he in his sea-bed deep-slumbering lay ; 
 And when I turn'd again upon my way, 
 The loneliness seem'd more than I could bear. 
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY 
 
 [A son loses his father, who has been the companion of 
 all his later years, and has shared every pleasure 
 and every sorrow .] 
 
 The new rain glitters on our garden wall, 
 And in the sludge the blackbird dips his bill : 
 But here, indifferent to the seasons, still 
 A winter lives, which nothing can recall. 
 
 The loud autumnal billows have long laid 
 The leaves in ruins on the wooded hill ; 
 Yet comes anon another spring, to fill 
 With youthful fervour every holt and glade.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY 145 
 
 But not for me renews its buds the thorn : 
 I shrink from thought of the returning leaf: 
 The mirth of nature adds a sting to grief; 
 And I shall scarce know where to go and mourn. 
 
 The sear, dank, trodden herbage is more meet 
 Than all the ripening glory of the wood 
 To wait on me in my unjoyous mood, 
 When sweetest things seem only sadly sweet. 
 
 The vernal dews and shadows still are mine, 
 And gild for me the livery of the field ; 
 But this deep wound they find and leave unheal'd : 
 The sick man loathes the odour of the brine. 
 
 Laden with perfumes borne from softer skies, 
 April returns to England and to me : 
 The young grass shoots once more along the lea, 
 And all the meads once more the daisy pies. 
 
 But moons must waste, and grow, and waste again, 
 And print their fickle shadows on the sea, 
 Ere I shall cease to ponder upon thee, 
 Or think how long thou hast in exile lain. 
 
 The summer cloys with sweets the languid wind, 
 And makes the bird forget its leafless home ; 
 But let the seasons go, and let them come, 
 An unfilled void I shall not cease to find. 
 
 K
 
 I46 THE FATHER'S ELEGY 
 
 Thou restest somewhere sacred from all eyes : 
 Seated upon two thrones, thou and another : 
 My two Elected Ones, thou and my mother ! 
 Pray (led all worships be as true and wise ! 
 
 Thou hast into the dark, still country cross'd, 
 And shaken off this life-long dream of pain ; 
 And since thy most lov'd attributes remain, 
 Let us reflect how little we have lost. 
 
 The wind and sun yet use their ancient right, 
 And do their office on thy changing form ; 
 I muse on thee, when comes the wizard storm, 
 And trespasses upon the peace of night. 
 
 We use in common thy sequester'd breath ; 
 The breeze which fans my brow, took toll of thee ; 
 Yet my pen traces what thou ne'er canst see ; 
 I cannot shake the witchery of Death. 
 
 But I lie under his transforming spell, 
 Which turns to holy relics common things ; 
 The grave its mournful privileges brings, 
 And sends a houseless spirit with me to dwell. 
 
 How many a word and gesture, which to-day 
 Come back to me with cruel tenderness, 
 Seem'd only such a lesson to express, 
 As anything which I might do or say?
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY I47 
 
 The posy which I fasten'd near thy heart, 
 Will soon convert thy bosom to an urn : 
 Its early beauty thou couldst not discern ; 
 Its ashes of thy own shall make a part. 
 
 Thy untun'd ear is bent upon the ground, 
 Incurious of glory and report, 
 And soldier-like, the manful battle fought, 
 Thou slumberest, insensible to sound. 
 
 Farewell, O spirit buoyant as a feather ! 
 Farewell thy pleasant songs and sprightly jests ! 
 When thou cam'st hitherward, the guest of guests, 
 And thou and John, and I, were all together. 
 
 Thy lips are silent, and thy brow is cold : 
 Thou hast withdrawn thyself from common gaze ; 
 But I can see thee through a sort of haze, 
 And in my hand thy hand I think I hold. 
 
 I, that without thee had been nought, am grown 
 Two substances, two beings, and two shapes : 
 Within my mind a certain power drapes 
 Thee all exact, as thou to me wast known. 
 
 Our unperfected nature cannot soar 
 To that port of sublime repose, where thou 
 Dwellest, transfus'd into some essence now : 
 We realize thee as thou wast before.
 
 14S i in: PATHBr's elegy 
 
 Vet thou hast laid thy earthy vesture down, 
 As though it were the garment of a season, 
 And it lies far outside our narrow reason 
 To judge of what weird presence thou hast grown 
 
 For what are spirits but such forms, as we 
 Ourselves command, to wait upon our wills? 
 My labouring fancy with its offspring fills 
 The gloom, in which thou hast envelop'd me. 
 
 Of thee all that I saw snatch 'd from my view 
 Is added to the volume of our sphere : 
 It profits little, though from year to year 
 Thy bones may slowly grow to something new 
 
 It nought avails thee, though in time to come 
 Those virtues which we priz'd may seem more rare : 
 To all that once was thine the world is heir : 
 Thy part is played, and the performer dumb. 
 
 What is it, if in yet unstoried days 
 
 Our planet is to hold some nobler race ? 
 
 To hear thy voice, again to see thy face, 
 
 Far more than unknown good my weak heart pray-.. 
 
 O, thou art gone beyond the range of sound, 
 Where time is not, and where no planet shines : 
 To darkness longer than Siberian mines : 
 In shadowless seclusion thou art bound.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY 149 
 
 II. 
 
 The garland, which I lay upon thy grave, 
 Should have been woven by some master's hand. 
 But scorn and pity for thy sake I brave, 
 Although I be as one, who writes in sand. 
 
 The world grows daintier in those rhym'd schemes, 
 And doles the architects a lean renown, 
 And many an one it frowns or murmurs down, 
 And many an one worse than it says it deems. 
 
 Yet what is there should stir the sluggard wit, 
 And make the veins wax pregnant with new heat, 
 If this occasion does not urge my feet 
 Toward the hill, whereon the Muses sit ? 
 
 I left thy side so newly, yet how long, 
 Since thy life ebb'd upon my lips, it seems ? — 
 Thy life which is the riches of my dreams, 
 And may be all the riches of my song. 
 
 Forgetful of the garner'd fruits of years, 
 Forgetful of the monuments of time, 
 I have become a dotard ere my prime, 
 A dotard through too great a thrift of tears.
 
 I 50 TH I. PATH Kr's ELEGY 
 
 My sorrow pastures inly, like some worm 
 Within the frost-bound earth : it keeps 
 I vigils, while all other sorrow sleeps, 
 And it is void of gross and outward form. 
 
 I lov'd thee loyally : yet day by day 
 A coinage of new thoughts adds to thy store 
 ( )f titles to my worship more and more : 
 And now what profits all that I can pay ? 
 
 I lov'd thee, as no other did, or shall ; 
 And though I may not be discern'd by thee, 
 Where thou hast gone new mysteries to see, 
 I live prepar'd to answer to thy call. 
 
 I lov'd thee, as no other did, save one, 
 Who bad us both a so unripe farewell : 
 Her wedded story she was wont to tell : 
 The trials, and the strength at last foredone. 
 
 My mother was thy handmaid and thy friend, 
 After the antique fashion now grown stale : 
 She seem'd beyond a mortal measure pale, 
 When lately over me I saw her bend. 
 
 Just as the liquid south wind bears to me, 
 Across deep gardens and embroider d fields, 
 All fragrant odours, which the summer yields, 
 Leaving rank tares and bitter herbs toll-free :
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY I 5 I 
 
 So holds the tide of thought its backward course, 
 Renouncing some crude fancies of the past, 
 To that sad moment, when we parted last, 
 But carrying with it a profound remorse 
 
 That I should have let the occasion pass 
 Of suing for thy pardon on my knees ; 
 And now how vain it were to bring my pleas, 
 And bury my wet eyes beneath the grass ? 
 
 I scarce can bear to feel that thou'rt remov'd 
 So far from him whom thy affection rear'd ; 
 How many have to their own themselves endear'd, 
 And still not have been lov'd, as thou wast lov'd ! 
 
 My grief foreruns the daybreak of new thought, 
 Teaching me lessons from our change of state, 
 And certain sweeter uses of our fate, 
 When life and death beneath one roof are brought. 
 
 For if thou couldst have dwell'd with me for ever, 
 And the pale light had linger'd in thine eyes, 
 I should not be so sorrowfully wise, 
 In knowing what it cost the bond to sever. 
 
 Sorrow is heir to pleasure's empty throne, 
 And parting gladness frets at its glad birth ; 
 Should I so mourn thy passage from the earth, 
 Hadst thou not made thy life so much my own ?
 
 i C2 THB father's elegy 
 
 I >idst thou not open me the gates of light, 
 And lead my tremulous steps toward the day, 
 Helping mc- strongly on my chosen way? 
 The life thou gavest me thou madest bright. 
 
 My fond election was debated long, 
 And thou was oft a prophet on the craze : 
 I liv'd to see my labours win thy praise, 
 And thy high sanction honour my poor song. 
 
 III. 
 
 I do thee life-long homage for my birth, 
 
 And lest time re-unite not thee and thine, 
 
 My love hath built an altar and a shrine, 
 
 To raise thee from the harsh and heartless earth. 
 
 Thou wast the witness of those years, when I 
 View'd all thy words as passing daily speech, 
 And when thy gracious lessons seem'd to teach 
 Me more than I should ever fructify. 
 
 All other loves seem modern to me now ; 
 None my most inward feelings understands ; 
 Thou couldst make past and present join their hands 
 Thou sawest the young bloom upon my brow.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY 153 
 
 For all the sweet warm life, which thou on me 
 Didst erst bestow in thy impetuous prime, 
 What recompense is this unpolish'd rhyme ? 
 Thy gift requited with a beggar's fee. 
 
 The giver may not take his gift again ; 
 
 I cannot guard thy whitening bones from rust, 
 
 Nor reillumine thy imprison'd dust; 
 
 My heart is willing ; but the hope is vain. 
 
 O, dost thou hear me? listen, while I speak! 
 Thy seed upon a thankful soil was thrown, 
 And I am as one of the faithful grown : 
 My soul is steadfast, though my hand be weak. 
 
 Yet I will use such prowess as I may 
 To keep thee to thy friends' remembrance dear, 
 And make thee seem a part of each new year, 
 As if thou only hadst gone far away. 
 
 For while thou wast yet a sojourner here, 
 
 My love to thee remain'd for shame part-told : 
 
 Now all the passionate story I unfold, 
 
 As one that knows no more whom he should fear. 
 
 We like to think of thee as of one sped 
 Upon a distant journey, which shall end 
 In some undream'd-of life ; or as' a friend, 
 Whom duty from our shores has banished.
 
 1 54 ' r,IL; father's elegy 
 
 Yet cometh, through the grossncss of our hearts, 
 A certain discontentment with the fate, 
 Which calls thee to a new hut unknown state, 
 And thee and thy compeers for ever parts. 
 
 It seems to us so undeserv'd and strange, 
 That thou'rt like an abstraction in our eyes, 
 And we may only, e'en for thee, surmise 
 A happy, though inaugurable, change. 
 
 The god wars with the creature in our blood, 
 And of ourselves we are but parcel-seis'd. 
 Conceptions, which our finer fancy pleas'd, 
 A base-born impulse kills, or wayward mood. 
 
 I held not in thy heart the lowest place, 
 And sweeter than all speech my home in it : 
 Thou thought'st that there were some of humbler wit : 
 Thou thought'st me capable of nothing base. 
 
 Thou shew'dst in me a mother's touching trust : 
 Child, boy, and man, I seem'd to thee the same ; 
 Thy fair opinion I preferr'd to fame. 
 It was enough : thou saidest I was just. 
 
 Thou wast my Sire, my Fountain, and my God : 
 Thou gavest me all that I am and have : 
 Thou gavest me all that thy father gave ; 
 And now thy manhood fades beneath the sod.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY I55 
 
 Thy sentient existence was too brief; 
 But we are not like creatures of the air, 
 Which leave no chronicle of what they were, 
 Or like the tree, where leaf replaces leaf. 
 
 No man can turn his pale face to the East, 
 Whence he first watch'd the sun emerge in 
 
 glory, 
 Without bequeathing to the world some story, 
 Unless he be no more than bird or beast. 
 
 Death is no sorrow to the dead. We weep 
 For those that have no tears to add to ours : 
 Thou giv'st no thought to thy relinquished 
 
 pow'rs, 
 Nor viewest me in thy unpeopled sleep. 
 
 The living rose mourns not the dead. The grass 
 Thinks not of what is in the grazer's mouth : 
 Unpitied falls the lily to the drouth, 
 And dirgeless to their rest the sweet birds pass. 
 
 But we are natur'd differently. Tears 
 Forestall our accidence — a common tongue, 
 Which old men use to them that die too 
 
 young, 
 And which I speak e'en to thy fuller years.
 
 156 the father's blbgt 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yet since thy life was happy, let us rather 
 Rejoice that thou couldst tarry here so long : 
 My elegy grows a triumphal song : 
 Thou art not dead; thou livest still, my father ! 
 
 Why should we think thee dead ? does yonder star, 
 That pays its glorious light for our mean praise, 
 Suffer our touch ? and when our eyes we raise, 
 It seems than thee a million times more far. 
 
 Thou art not dead. So long as honest fame 
 Is judg'd a lustre and a rank to lend, 
 Thou shalt not die, my best and oldest friend, 
 Nor perish the good odour of thy name. 
 
 Thy ashes hold communion with the ground ; 
 But all that we had leave and grace to save 
 From the unseal'd enchantment of the grave, 
 Hovers, like a chaste influence, around. 
 
 Thou minglest with our daily life and thought ; 
 The children ask me when thou wilt return, 
 As if it were a lesson hard to learn : 
 Thou art into their beings so close-wrought.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY I 57 
 
 This new-found fellowship outbids all price : 
 We haunt together still our favourite nooks ; 
 And when I ruminate among my books, 
 Thy gifts are there, thy taste, and thy advice. 
 
 Our life is much what thou might'st recollect, 
 Hadst thou not ceas'd to study human things ; 
 The fragrance of thy memory yet clings 
 To our boy's mellower wit and intellect. 
 
 The little maid, who had not tun'd her throat 
 Quite to the compass of thy name and style, 
 If thou hadst waited only for a while, 
 Would by some prettinesses gain thy vote. 
 
 Where lay a parcel of mute lumpish earth 
 But yesterday, a precious temple stands, 
 At which we reverently lift our hands : 
 Which from its new dear tenant holds its worth. 
 
 For thy dissolv'd existence, like some flower, 
 That leaves its germs of sweetness in our hands, 
 Above the cold and pulseless level stands, 
 Nor parts with its benign and solid power. 
 
 To me thou art more than the moon or sun, 
 
 Or than the stars, which vex my questioning brain ; 
 
 For on thy sheltering bosom I have lain ; 
 
 And these for all alike their courses run.
 
 1 5 S tiii; father's blbgy 
 
 Ask me not where my father's memory lives, 
 Or where his earth-bound ashes lie : 
 I can no whit more through the gloom descry : 
 My challeng'd heart dim utterances gives. 
 
 My wishes are the measure of my power : 
 One stern scheme of succession governs all : 
 I know not, if thou hast another call, 
 Where ampler is of life and thought the dower. 
 
 I play two parts : the questioner and his foil : 
 I call, and try to feign what thou would'st say, 
 As if thy shadow in our orbit lay, 
 And was not lost in death's ungenerous spoil. 
 
 Our voices hold a colloquy ; and thine, 
 Like the bird's song in mid-air after day, 
 Seems to be stolen by the breeze away, 
 Or can it be the echoing tones of mine ? 
 
 Thou hast departed. On my eyelids weigh 
 What, if the grief were lighter, might prove tears : 
 My voice was once a gladness to thine ears, 
 But it had not the pow'r to make thee stay. 
 
 For death has borne thee in his arms beyond 
 Those weak and vain desires, which we yet keep : 
 O, is not life itself a sort of sleep, 
 When ends we judg'd so great are prov'd so fond ?
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY I 59 
 
 Thy mission was fulfill'd. Thy days were long. 
 But we know not what fortune hath in store : 
 We may be lost, ere we can reach the shore, 
 Where thou consortest with the Just and Strong. 
 
 Thou wast a modern worthy ; let us use 
 To thee the language, then, of modern days : 
 Thy ways of thought were as our ways ; 
 One of ourselves 't has been our lot to lose. 
 
 Of late I saw one standing by a door, 
 And ask'd him leave to enter. It was where 
 Thou cam'st to seek the freer Brompton air : 
 Thou and my mother, happy, young, and poor. 
 
 I said to him : " 'Tis now some fifty years, 
 Since my good parents dwell'd here, and here I 
 Part-spent my youth, and saw a brother die "— 
 His eyes were stoic ; mine were stills of tears. 
 
 New-married folk were doing what you did : 
 Building at a like venture their first nest : 
 Cast is the bell shall ring them to their rest ; 
 And so from age to age the world has slid.
 
 160 the father's elegy 
 
 But thou rememberest the old retreat 
 And its melodious boscage, ere his hand 
 The unkind builder laid upon the land, 
 Leaving no space for nature's pulse to beat. 
 
 O, come away with me from those dense hives. 
 Where nought is left but groundlings of the age ! 
 What value they the singer's thriftless rage ? 
 What value they the epos of our lives ? 
 
 'Tis but our common property I have, 
 That raises up in vapour thinner far, 
 Than is the argent glory of a star, 
 Thee in thy old proportions from the grave. 
 
 Thou lodgest in the chambers of my brain ; 
 I see thee, as thou sittest in thy chair ; 
 Thy voice is lower, and thy face more spare ; 
 And to collect thy words my ear I strain. 
 
 I fashion this slight trophy to thy worth, 
 Because I prize thy benefits above 
 The world's dear-bought and unheroic love : 
 Thou'rt more than all the Great Ones of the earth. 
 
 Thy influence its shadow shall prolong 
 O'er days to come and yet unfolded scenes, 
 When time from its old home my memory weans, 
 And my frail nature does thy bounty wrong.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY l6l 
 
 Forgive me, if thy figure and thy voice 
 Withdraw by little into middle space : 
 I shall not cease to idolize thy face, 
 Or in our old companionship rejoice. 
 
 If I stay'd not sometimes to look aside, 
 Where other soft endearments round me grow, 
 Consider, I could scarcely love thee so ! 
 And who but thine with thee my love divide ? 
 
 For Duty is two-handed, and has eyes 
 Both after and before. Ah ! prythee think, 
 The chain of ages lengthens link by link, 
 And half our love in death's chill shadow lies. 
 
 This loss is ours. The echoes of thy feet 
 Have pass'd away, like thunder on the hills : 
 Thy unforgotten form our fancy fills ; 
 But in our home thy steps no longer beat. 
 
 This loss is mine. Though some of ampler gifts 
 Should call me friend, and hold me by the hand, 
 In thy vacated room they cannot stand : 
 My staunch love thee beyond all honours lifts. 
 
 This loss is common. Nought that we can do, 
 Will make a world without thee seem the same : 
 Thou also held'st in trust a father's name, 
 And didst thy part his memory to renew.
 
 1 62 tin: father's blegt 
 
 This loss is mine. My love hath thee endow'd 
 With such a votive crown as I might knit, 
 And I have plac'd thee, where thou mayest sit 
 Above the undistinguishable crowd. 
 
 This loss is ours. Thy intimates partak<- 
 With me in my privation and regret : 
 I [aw i;reat the void is, we are learning yet ; 
 Distance a wider chasm seems to make. 
 
 This loss is mine. In thy sublimer moods 
 Thy talk o'ertopp'd by far the common reach ; 
 Twould make me lose the treasures of the beach 
 Twould blunt my ear to the harmonious woods. 
 
 This loss is common. Yet no eyes but mine 
 Kept vigil with thee through the anxious night : 
 The rest beheld thee only at thy height ; 
 Nor knew how late thy star began to shine. 
 
 l-"or She, who for the dawn had looked out long, 
 Growing full weary of the watcher's place, 
 To the unpitying heaven turn'd her face, 
 And shut her ear to hope's deluding song. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Although thou wast familiar to mine eyes, 
 Till thou hadst to a wondrous dearness grown, 
 Whose is the consolation but my own ? 
 Thy sense of earth with unsolv'd problems lies.
 
 THE FATHER'S ELEGY 163 
 
 With us thy name for thee stands substitute ; 
 But if, may-be, thou'rt parcel of some sphere, 
 Where from this one my voice may reach thine ear, 
 Thy life's wise dedication has its fruit. 
 
 Too soon we miss'd thee. O, thou should'st have 
 
 stay'd 
 With me a little longer in the world, 
 To see the pennon of revolt unfurl'd 
 Against the errors which our life degrade. 
 
 Against the vices which our statecraft stain : 
 Against the hateful lordship of the fool : 
 Against the Levites' dark and selfish rule : 
 Against the falsehood which corrodes the brain. 
 
 Against the law of Millions made for Few : 
 Against the warping mastership of gold : 
 Against the enemies of all that's Old : 
 Against the enemies of all that's New. 
 
 Some things, which saw thy coming, wait behind ; 
 For they from ours a varying law obey : 
 The grass, the lark's song, and the hawthorn spray : 
 The monuments of man's eternal mind : 
 
 The grand accomplishments of human thought : 
 The broad-leav'd painting of the autumn sun : 
 The brook which runs, where it has ever run : 
 And all the marvels that free hands have wrought.
 
 164 THE BROTHER'S ELECN 
 
 I grew beneath two shadows. She was one, 
 Whom I saw guard her youth so long from time. 
 That I surmis'd for her a godlike prime. 
 But death awoke me, and my dream was done. 
 
 Thou wast the other. Now I fold my wings 
 Over the aery which thou saw'st me build : 
 The cup of grief must be no further fill'd : 
 So farewell, till we meet hence some few springs. 
 
 For in time's increase, what make one man's year-. 
 
 An atom comprehends thy life and mine. 
 
 The pedigree of some ancestral line 
 
 Think that perhaps this vase of jasper bears. 
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY 
 
 [A beloved brother meets with a disappointment in early 
 life. Circumstances preclude his mistress and him 
 from marrying. They resolve to remain single.'] 
 
 A grief so true, 
 So long, so keen, 
 I ne'er had seen, 
 Till this I knew.
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY l6$ 
 
 'Twas not my own : 
 'Twas his, who scorn'd 
 To weep, and mourn'd 
 Nobly alone. 
 
 Alone, although 
 We all were near, 
 And held him dear, 
 As kin could do. 
 
 One early loss 
 Our love o'erbore, 
 And evermore 
 He clasps his cross. 
 
 Alas ! how young 
 For such a care ! 
 The warp and wear 
 His bloom have stung. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Ah ! his heart is like another's ; 
 
 But the trouble it hath to keep — 
 His trouble, my friend's, my brother's, 
 
 Is a thousand fathoms deep.
 
 thi; brother's elecy 
 
 It maketh my eyes wax w 
 
 When I see him, as he is now : 
 
 The ruin'd pride of the check 
 
 And the tilth of the seamless brow. 
 
 I knew him in other days, or I think 
 I should not have borne to hear 
 
 The tale of his life and its wanting link 
 Retold me from year to year. 
 
 I knew him, when he and she were younj, 
 
 When the old long summers were ; 
 And my fancy sometimes heard the church-bell 
 rung 
 
 In the spring, in the crisp, new air. 
 
 I knew him in days, when his mind was free, 
 As the wind or the masterless bird ; 
 
 And he had no thought but he gave it to me 
 And grief was an empty word. 
 
 So I play the good listener there for the sake 
 Of a thousand old stor'd-up things ; 
 
 And to the consoling pretences I make 
 With the faith of a schoolboy he clings. 

 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY \6j 
 
 I have seen him in all his moods ; I have stood 
 
 At his side, when on love he rav'd, 
 And call'd it a thing too great and too good 
 
 For a heart by the world deprav'd. 
 
 I have sat with him, when he has tilted at life, 
 
 Its follies, its errors, its woes, 
 And has pitied the man, who devotes to a wife 
 
 The thought that he elsewhere owes. 
 
 For, quoth he, if one has but a grasp and a reach, 
 And a mind that can mould and lead, 
 
 The world is one's home, and one's pen and one's 
 speech 
 To a million firesides plead. 
 
 O, he comes in the lee of the daylight, to tell 
 
 What the flow'r-girl said yestere'en, 
 When he met her by chance, and she wanted to sell 
 
 Him a posy so trim and green : 
 
 How he turn'd half away, and " Never, never more 
 Can such toys touch my fancy," quoth he ; 
 
 "When I came so light-heartedly to thee before, 
 There was one, who would take them from me.
 
 i6S Tin: brother's elegy 
 
 " But now she has gone, and I am alone, 
 Though some call me friend," he said, 
 
 " Even yet ; O my Ciod, I would give all I own- 
 I lov'd her so well — to know she was dead I 
 
 " She was young, and they fear'd that the lessons of life 
 Might ask too large tribute from such tender years ; 
 
 And they moralized on the demands of a wife, 
 And vividly painted the young mother's tears. 
 
 " We were poor, and she pin'd at the too long delay — 
 I have told thee this, pah ! half a million times — 
 
 And her friends (as you know) judg'd her foolish to stay 
 For a man, whose brain seem'd to run riot on rhymes. 
 
 " Then we parted for ever — it seems but to-day — 
 My grief has liv'd long, yet it never grows old. 
 
 Other faces and shapes have since cross'd me ; but they 
 Rise and vanish like shadows, as dim and as cold." 
 
 He gave her, he said, for old times' sake, 
 A trifle, just adding : " How gladly I would, 
 
 To have the pass'd years blotted out. thee make 
 As rich, my good girl, as a poor man could."
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY 1 69 
 
 The narrow provincialism, you see, 
 
 Against which it boots no mortal to fight, 
 
 Peep'd out, and made wreck of my courtship 
 and me, 
 And cozen'd my eyes of their first young light." 
 
 in. 
 
 " Her people were true-blue Rurals, who view'd a 
 
 devotion to Art, 
 To Books, and such other things, among the faults of 
 
 my London breeding ; 
 They follow'd one rule in judging a horse, or a man, 
 
 or a cart, 
 And jested at time misspent by a blockhead in idle 
 
 reading. 
 
 " Unless, by your leave, it happen'd to be some Work 
 
 of the Day, 
 Prepar'd by the Author to make grist for the dealers 
 
 in waste. 
 And who knows it was not as well the affair fell out 
 
 in that way, 
 When my raw town-born notions lagg'd so far behind 
 
 the country taste ?
 
 I 7 O THE BROTHER'S ELEiiV 
 
 " 1 or a man firuls it hard, u:ii for a wife, to give up 
 
 early views ; 
 And I might perhaps have had feelings, against which 
 
 her friends would have jarr'd. 
 So now and again I fancy it was no great matter 
 
 to lose, 
 When one sees so many a good man's days by his 
 
 wife's shrewd people marr'd. 
 
 " For the honest folks, who were hers by birthright, 
 were proud, forsooth, 
 
 As persons are apt to be, who have a stocking some- 
 where, thank God ! 
 
 Though they had not follow'd learning so hard, as I 
 did in my youth, 
 
 And studied Walker On Spelling mainly, and 
 Bradshaw, and Dod. 
 
 " One may toil, like any beast of burthen, all the prid-- 
 
 of one's years, 
 For blood and bone, till the honour of youth deserts 
 
 one's brow and one's eyes ; 
 i)ut what, without the oil and the myrrh, were this 
 
 life of bondage and tears ? 
 And unkindness is unkindest, where the heart of a 
 
 true man lies.
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY I 7 I 
 
 " But I see her sometimes, and she turns her eyes, 
 As the horses bear her and her friends along, 
 
 With a look breathing sorrowful, shy surprise, 
 Turns them from me and the rest of the throng. 
 
 " I see her sometimes at the play, when I 
 Go thither, and sit unmark'd apart : 
 
 Her party is merry ; the light jests fly ; 
 And I hurry away with a bursting heart. 
 
 " Once we met in the tall arcades of pine, 
 
 Where the wind comes up from the sea to moan, 
 
 And to mingle its stronger sighs with mine, 
 Not willing that I should sorrow alone. 
 
 "It was when the fingers of autumn had play'd 
 With the July leaves, and had stain'd them to gold, 
 
 Save only there, where the swarthy shade 
 Of the colder blood of the fir-tree told. 
 
 " We met, and the feelings of long-spent years 
 Revisited me, like some lost sense ; 
 
 And a voice of the past thrill'd in my ears, 
 And the silence about me seem'd intense.
 
 \"]2 the brother's elegy 
 
 •• Then drew she nigher and nigher to me ; 
 
 And I think I shall ne'er forget her words : 
 ' And so you love solitude still, I see, 
 
 And pay your old court to the woods and the 
 birds?' 
 
 " ' Alice,' I said, ' I have kept my vow. 
 
 I go much abroad, but not to woo. 
 What you remember me, I am now : 
 
 A lover of Nature, honour, and you. 
 
 " ' Alice, I once had a heart and a life, 
 
 To give or to keep ; both might have been thine ; 
 But now have I neither mistress nor wife, 
 
 Save the woods and birds, and the sea divine. 
 
 " ' I saw a strong tree, which a gale had riven, 
 And left upon the ploughless wold to bleach : 
 
 It had, like us, too soon its youth up-given ; 
 It seem'd, dear, a lesson like our own to teach. 
 
 "'Those two scorch'd arms met once in wedlock 
 true, 
 
 And tender" d yearly tribute to the spring — 
 I turn'd away, and wept, and thought of you : 
 
 Ah ! in their leafage would the throstle sing ! 

 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY 173 
 
 " ' I saw a portent of our sever'd hearts : 
 Fie on mistrusting friends ! fie on false life ! 
 
 Fie on a world which troth-knit spirits parts ! 
 Fie on the once so precious name of wife ! ' 
 
 " She caught my shoulder, and drench'd it like 
 rain : 
 
 1 Arthur,' she stammer'd, ' say, O, say no more ! 
 Would to heaven we never had met again, 
 
 Since we might not meet, as we met before.' 
 
 " Then she rose up, and she staunch'd her tears, 
 As she said : ' I am something calmer now. 
 
 But the thoughts and the hopes of brighter years 
 Came crowding in here' — and she touch'd her 
 brow. 
 
 " ' Some ask'd for me, and call'd me fair, 
 
 And mus'd why I so loth should be 
 With the bridal wreath to wreathe my hair. 
 
 But they had not the tale from me. 
 
 " ' In the way of love some came and sued ; 
 
 But they had not the tale from me. 
 For I answer'd then : Marriage is good 
 
 For such as in it good may see.'
 
 [74 the brother's ELECY 
 
 • l'ressing her arm : 'The die,' I said, ' is cast ; 
 It was not our act — but the hour grows late '- 
 And I kept her side, till the wood was pass'd. 
 Within a stone's range of her father's gate." 
 
 IV. 
 
 He wooes my companionship in the spring, 
 When the trees begin coining new gold, 
 
 And the woods with their choristers merrily ring, 
 And he grieves that the year must grow old. 
 
 The young flow'rs probe his soul to the core, 
 And he cries : " What blessings we have ! 
 
 How gracious to let me behold them once more, 
 When they might have grown over my grave ! " 
 
 Anon he will mutter : " Sir, marriage is nought, 
 Since it ceas'd its old true self to be ; 
 
 O, commend me, my friend, to your bachelor sort 
 It is best to be merry and free." 
 
 I know for how short a space 
 
 A happier humour lingers, 
 Ere the cloud repossesses the face, 
 
 And the twitch comes back to the fingers.
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY I 7 5 
 
 But when he smiles, I am saddest ; 
 
 For I feel that his thoughts have stray'd 
 To the time, when his life was gladdest, 
 
 Before visions began to fade. 
 
 I take him apart, and I reason thus : 
 
 " My brother, my friend, thou hast full breadth of 
 scope 
 In the future. Consider thyself: think of us ! 
 
 Thou hast youth ! O, renew thy old treaty with 
 hope ! " 
 
 But he whispers me back, as time upon time he 
 
 will do : 
 "She was fair, she was good — ah! goodness than 
 
 beauty is better ! 
 I have learn'd with a different eye and a different 
 
 feeling to view 
 Mere beauty in woman, since first (to my sorrow) I 
 
 met her. 
 
 " I break from my sleep sometimes with a cry, like a 
 
 child unwholesomely dreaming ; 
 For I think she is mine, and they tear her away, and 
 
 my feet lie under a spell ;
 
 I76 THE BROTHER S BLBGY 
 
 And my overwrought muscles grow rigid as stone, 
 though the sweat from my pores is streaming, 
 
 Till I wake with a shudder, as if I had seen the 
 gaping portals of Hell. 
 
 " Is it righteous, that my blood or thine from our 
 
 hearts should be wrung, 
 Because some doll of a girl has eyes, and a mouth, 
 
 and a skin ? 
 I thought, as most others do, I dare say, when I was 
 
 young, 
 And every winsome woman seems a goddess, when 
 
 we begin. 
 
 " Now I look on the mutable forms around me with- 
 out concern, 
 
 As the fancies of youth grow stale, and the world is a 
 burden to me ; 
 
 But an endless succession of men will arise, and 
 yearn, 
 
 As I once did, for the things I here commit to the 
 sea." 
 
 Yet sometimes, like one that hath dream'd, and wakes 
 
 In his former world again, 
 On a sudden into his old humour he breaks, 
 
 And his favourite bantering vein.
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY I77 
 
 "I have heard," quoth he, "that Mistress 
 Madge Owl, 
 
 That mopes and winks in yon tree, 
 A long time ago was as blithe a fowl, 
 
 As you might in the greenwood see. 
 
 " O, what does she say ? O, what does she say ? 
 
 ' To-whit, to-whoo 1 to-whit, to-whoo / 
 Until I was crossed in love one day, 
 
 I could sing as sweetly as you I ' 
 
 Then he question'd of one, " When we men err, 
 
 Who to make us are inducers ? 
 Women, who cast on us the slur, — 
 
 Women are our abusers." — 
 
 " To watch the sun's retiring light 
 Some few may turn their heads ; 
 
 But to see the sunrise after night, 
 Brutes only leave their beds. — 
 
 " The day and night are our coparceners, 
 And share our years, as we hold best ; 
 
 To him too short's the life, the wise man fears, 
 Too short the life, too long the rest. — 
 
 M
 
 178 THE BROTIIF. R's r.LE(.V 
 
 " What seems to he stands proxy for what is : 
 Ah me ! the world is full of guilr ! 
 
 But Let us wait a little while, 
 And Holy Church will mend all this!'" — 
 
 These and a parcel of other conceits, 
 
 Some guilty of wit, he nurs'd ; 
 ! 01 he was, beyond most men that one meets, 
 
 In a kind of learning vers'd. 
 
 I could, if I dar'd, shed tears to see 
 A joyous spirit so quell'd ; 
 
 For I think how jocund he us'd to be, 
 And the talk that we have held ! 
 
 His art in a tale, his eye for a jest, 
 
 Who among us can forget ? 
 And the hand, which our own so gaily press'd, 
 
 When in the old time we met? 
 
 But winter came, too early a guest, 
 And touch'd his lips with frost ; 
 
 And the smile and voice, which us carcss'd, 
 To our riper days is lost.
 
 THE BROTHER'S ELEGY 1^9 
 
 VI. 
 
 What shall I do 
 To save my friend 
 From some sad end ? 
 O, that I knew ! 
 
 O, that I knew 
 How to recall 
 His youth, and all 
 That charm'd and drew 
 
 And that good time, 
 When I was first, 
 Who prais'd and nurs'd 
 His turn for rhyme ! 
 
 I plead in vain 
 Our rights, his years ; 
 He sighs, and wears 
 A look of pain. 
 
 Precious as now 
 To me and all, 
 Whate'er befall, 
 I see him grow.
 
 iSo THE BROTHER'S ELEGY 
 
 But I must lose 
 Much that above- 
 Its worth I love 
 From ancient use. 
 
 For he with me 
 Was wont to share 
 One father's care, 
 One mother's knee — 
 
 And then to think, 
 That with the past 
 He is my last 
 And only link ! 
 
 No other ear 
 My old tales would 
 Invite, nor hold 
 Them half so dear. 
 
 For who but he 
 Can tell to-day : 
 Viewing the faded eye and frost-girt chin, 
 What I have felt and I have been ; 
 
 Or through these tresses scant and grey 
 A little school-boy see !
 
 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 L— PERIGOT'S DEPARTURE 
 
 Philos. Perigot. Thyra. 
 
 Ph. The news has gone abroad ; and we all grieve 
 To hear that we shall miss you from our fold. 
 Come, tell me, Perigot, what makes you leave 
 The home, where we had thought you would grow old? 
 
 Per. Philos, I have well meditated this ; 
 Within my time — it is not very long — 
 Our City has increas'd to what it is ; 
 And I am weary of the bustling throng. 
 Away from that great centre, where mine eye 
 Sees scarce a leaf unsullied by the smoke, 
 I go a pilgrim ; and my heart will lie 
 Far from where it first timidly awoke. 
 
 Ph. Will you forsake the sharers of long years, 
 Whose homage slowly widening I see ? 
 To one, whose mind such a complexion wears, 
 The country must a sort of exile be.
 
 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 His eye longs, Philos, for the forest-side ; 
 prattles in his sleep of fields and brooks, 
 And Ciytus, who, you know, is his chief pride, 
 ( !an study what he lists there — saving Books. 
 
 Per. Dooks were my lotos tree. I pluck'd and ate- 
 They gave me, Philos— why, a sort of fame ! 
 But I would give all back — ah ! think of that — 
 Not to have tarnish'd so my hands and name. 
 
 Ph. Dear Perigot, you jest ; your books rank high ; 
 And I hear them adjudg'd among the best. 
 What certain men may censure, set nought by ; 
 Nor let a cyclops censor spoil your rest. 
 You hatch these monsters in your seething brain, 
 And then pull out your pen to smite them down ; 
 And while you're in this comfortable vein, 
 You ban your books, their critics, and the town. 
 
 Per. Well, there's a tale best left half- told. But stay — 
 " The valued friends," quoth you, " we leave behind ? " 
 To meet each other we must find a way : 
 I know I cannot spare one kindred mind. 
 Our married summers, Thyra, have been ear'd 
 Thinly with friendships. Look around and see ! 
 Is it that we or others once appear'd 
 So different ? A friend's a friend to me. 
 But he should be one who can fill a part : 
 A man, who loves to teach and to be taught. 
 And uses his endeavour and his art 
 To set back the too narrow lines of thought
 
 perigot's departure 183 
 
 1 thirst to taste at length, if fate permits, 
 
 And when my labours for the nonce have ceas'd, 
 
 The converse of wise hearts and mellow wits, 
 
 Of whom it would be something to be least. 
 
 Succour me, Philos, in this final quest — 
 
 I could unbosom volumes, if I durst — 
 
 But you know how with us bad are the best, 
 
 And that it were small honour to be first. 
 
 O, if thine ear my secretary were, 
 
 I might spell thereinto the names of men, 
 
 Who for your books and mine as greatly care, 
 
 As does the goose to handle her own pen. 
 
 Ph. Well, let me live to see my learned friend 
 Safe-anchor'd in the haven of his desires, 
 And watch him a far-stretching leisure spend 
 Among the noble studies he admires. 
 To highest usury thou putt'st thy name, 
 And makest it a tenancy for lives ; 
 And it shall thy authority proclaim, 
 When nought of me or such as me survives. 
 Ours is the present, and the past grows so 
 Through the enlarging ministry of books. 
 But only he, whose thoughts like rivers flow, 
 Into the darkness of unspent years looks. 
 What are our Money'd Greatnesses to thee ? 
 Think of them as of bubbles on the tide. 
 They cannot buy the eyes, with which you see, 
 Nor wit enough a student's quill to guide.
 
 184 TWO MODERN KCLOGUES 
 
 Thy voice will ring, and men will guard thy bones, 
 When much that waits its prime is ripe and rotten, 
 When 1 have wax'd mure dim than sculptur'd 
 
 stones, 
 And Huth and all his goodness are forgotten. 
 The day has come, when every well born fool 
 Is not by patent of the chosen seed : 
 The day grows nearer, when your books will rule, 
 And even country squires will learn to read. 
 
 Per. Alas ! oblivion is our common shroud, 
 And wraps the noblest gifts, the costliest tomb ; 
 Our place is taken by one in the crowd, 
 And Balbus stands to-morrow in our room. 
 
 Th. Is there no resurrection of a name ? 
 
 Per. Ah yes, years, decades, centuries hence, 
 One here and there obtains a recompense, 
 And is recalled to earth ; this, sir, is Fame — 
 Such honour as some offer is less due 
 To me than to the studies which I love : 
 A life's devotion yields but little new 
 The mystery of being to remove. 
 We worship tangible embodiments, 
 And symbols which make wooers of our eyes, 
 But half our thought by other minds is lent, 
 And half our riches in communion lies. 
 One takes from this man's speech, or that man's 
 
 book : 
 From many a word deliver'd without aim : 

 
 perigot's departure 185 
 
 From many a jest and many a fleeting look, 
 The slow foundations of a living name. 
 
 Th. Ah ! then be tenderer to my poor kin, 
 Who in the present have their whole estate ! 
 Though they o'er thee their little triumphs win, 
 Forgive them for my sake, and thine hour wait. 
 
 Per. Thyra, I know how strange I must have 
 seem'd, 
 How wayward and how cruel, nay, how mad ; 
 But I have suffer'd what some have but dream'd : 
 My heart is heavy, and my life is sad. 
 With what regret I view my forepass'd years ! — 
 One long dull tale of misdirected powers : 
 Had I not been held back by foolish fears, 
 How far a different lot might have been ours ! 
 But I was poor, and had not strength to rise ; 
 The force was wanting, which wealth lends to men ; 
 And I was fain high hopes to sacrifice, 
 And work ignoble schemes out with my pen. 
 I was ambitious, sensitive, and proud 3 
 Nor have I breath'd into a mortal ear 
 The thoughts, which thy lord's head have bleach'd 
 
 and bow'd, 
 And which have cost me many a stolen tear. 
 
 Th. Beloved Perigot, despise not me, 
 Although among our people there be some, 
 Whose humour it remains not yet to see 
 Thy merit. I am grateful for my home,
 
 lS6 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 And love our household gods. Think, to begin, 
 Of Clytus : sec, how his young mind expands! 
 For thy good name he will new laurels win : 
 Men may be rich and happy without lands. 
 Our home, our blended beings, and our boy 
 Are, perhaps, a mean estate; yet why repine? 
 ( in at treasure-holders should not thee annoy ; 
 They are their heirs' trustees ; but thine is thine. 
 
 Ph. A tale frets nicer ears, too oft retold ; 
 Hut it is sweet, where competence and health 
 Marry, and men the middle way can hold, 
 Like you, 'twixt wealthless wit and witless wealth. 
 
 Per. This black and hungry humour that I own 
 Is but a sorry lodger with a man ; 
 It were a merrier thing to live alone ! — 
 I'll be your scholar, Philos, if I can. 
 I've pass'd the mean, my friend ; and not for me 
 Is that broad public path, which I long held 
 Fondly in my mind's eye : this reverie 
 Fortune's extreme unkindness has dispell'd — 
 Well, Thyra, hie thee home : we'll come anon. 
 The sun hastes from us to his other realms ; 
 Philos and I must meet young Thenot yon, 
 And we'll work back round by the Seven Elms. 
 
 Philos, the splendid day-dream of my youth, 
 When I saw men and things with other eyes, 
 I find to have been but a dream in truth, 
 And now it lives with the Nonentities.
 
 perigot's departure 187 
 
 Fresh-come from study of the antique life, 
 
 I fram'd then in my mind what Love should be, 
 
 And mus'd what virtues join'd to make the wife, 
 
 Whom I should wish to be a wife to me. 
 
 Alack the day, which saw me no more young ! 
 
 With adolescence ceas'd your poor friend's prime : 
 
 Since then away by little I have flung 
 
 Much that was pure, and all that was sublime. 
 
 The place, where I my distant boyhood led, 
 
 I care not much, if I ne'er see again, 
 
 And scenes of younger days revisited 
 
 Beget a tenderness, which turns to pain. 
 
 Who carries with him far the child's frank mind, 
 
 On which, as on a tablet, all may write ? 
 
 Ill brooks your schoolboy to be thought-confin'd, 
 
 And all soon learn to walk by their own light. 
 
 I was a child once, Philos, prythee think : 
 
 Much such another as this Clytus here. 
 
 But I can see 'twixt then and now no link ; 
 
 The world seems harder, and the air less clear. 
 
 I felt once as if I could bear the bell 
 
 For fleetness from the supple antelope ; 
 
 My heart knew nought its young desires to quell : 
 
 Behind came Pleasure, and before went Hope. 
 
 My pulse was like the passionate sea-tide, 
 
 Impetuously smiting the steep shore, 
 
 And in my blood there was a flame, allied 
 
 To that Prometheus from Olympos bore —
 
 I S S TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 Of all the elements the holiest fire ; 
 
 And of its lucid parcels is compounded 
 
 That unseen force, which makes a man aspire 
 
 Beyond the scope by which his horse is bounded. 
 
 The essences, of which souls are compact, 
 
 Is formless as the anger of the wind ; 
 
 I ween they may from sphere to sphere refract 
 
 The light of an imperishable mind — 
 
 Now through a grosser medium I survey 
 
 The world and its concerns, and see no more 
 
 In this man's love of art and his of sway 
 
 The noble instincts which I saw before. 
 
 Harmonious sounds the chord of Self affords, 
 
 And more and more the players on it grow ; 
 
 But rest, untun'd, untouch'd, ye other chords : 
 
 There's none shall wake you into music now. 
 
 What does it augur, pray you, in a man ? 
 
 Does it shew that the brain is waxing slack ? 
 
 When Nature over Mind so lord it can, 
 
 And we to scenes of other days turn back ? 
 
 It seems as if the time was drawing near, 
 
 When books will have their mystic charm no more, 
 
 And when I shall begin to halve the year 
 
 Between my garden and the rich sea-shore. 
 
 Yet it is in my mind, when once mine eye 
 
 Has leave to graze on fields and foliage, 
 
 To take the early work, which lies me by, 
 
 And polish the uncastigated page —
 
 perigot's departure 189 
 
 Polish at my good leisure, Philos, mark ! 
 For in the country there will be affairs : 
 I must give daily audience to the lark, 
 And watch the yellow deep'ning on my pears. 
 I shall explore the woods, the journal read. 
 To study there the heavenly freemen's notes, 
 And hear the blackbird's whistle o'er my head — 
 Music more sweet to me than human throats. 
 
 Ph. Fie, Perigot, these humours do you wrong. 
 I've heard sea-journeys prais'd, where such as you 
 For ever, like the cuckoo, sing one song : 
 Go, seek new life in scenes and faces new. 
 Or if you choose not to go forth alone, 
 Let us take ship for some selected spot ; 
 Travel may lend your mind a lither tone, 
 And absence cause these sores to be forgot. 
 
 Per. Ingenious physician, does a man, 
 Hard-labouring beneath some inward grief, 
 Ask for a lotion, thinking that he can 
 That way give his vex'd heart and brain relief? 
 'Tis not this scene, that scene — that air, this air — 
 Which can heal my distemper, dear old friend ; 
 It haunts my walks, my work, sits in my chair ; 
 And will be my companion to the end. 
 But I have other fellow-voyagers : 
 The flowers of my homestead ; here and there 
 A friend, who solitude to state prefers ; 
 And thoughts, whose dwelling is 'twixt earth and air —
 
 190 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 If lovers should turn seers, were it well? 
 The jealous god makes his disciples blind. 
 My thought was but of one : how should I tell, 
 That to that one all goodness was confin'd ? 
 The rest had certain culture and some wit — 
 You know how country wit and culture go ? — 
 Rut they may smile, who in the sunshine sit, 
 Nor care to look which way the wind doth blow. 
 Thyra, the only glory of her house, 
 Stripp'd it of its chief strength, when she was wed ; 
 Nor could such an example others rouse 
 Above dull rustic forms to lift the head. 
 So you may see upon some thorn a rose, 
 In bloom and perfume wronging all the rest, 
 As if dear lady Nature were of those 
 Who love to add wealth to the wealthiest. 
 
 Ph. If Thyra's folk think good to hold thee cheap, 
 My Perigot, is thine the loss, or theirs ? 
 The world will still its old opinion keep, 
 And thy fair name desires not such weak heirs. 
 But since the woods so few charms can possess, 
 Why hast thou on thee this fresh trial laid, 
 Unless for thee we learn new arts, unless 
 From thee town-wits are taught to love the shade? 
 
 Per. The scholar's only baggage is his book : 
 With that he's least, when he is most, alone ; 
 And who but he hears voices in the brook, 
 And sees a vein of beauty in each stone ?
 
 perigot's departure 191 
 
 None knows so well how to awake the woods, 
 And to the birds to make responsive strains : 
 To find a music in dumb solitudes, 
 And build new fancies in the mazy lanes. 
 My scheme of life was scarce an one to see 
 Accomplish'd fully in this Paradise 
 Of Landlords, where for a man not to be 
 Thought poor, is in a sort to be thought wise. 
 If Clytus learn aright himself to know, 
 Nor lets his mind too much on pinions soar, 
 It may be that through him our name may grow, 
 And with it that which his dear mother bore — 
 Bore, ere she yet had wife of mine become : 
 When both our lives ran on a single thread ; 
 And she was happy in her early home — 
 
 And now I've liv'd to wish myself unwed 
 
 Ph. How, Perigot ? Unwed ! 
 
 Per. And yet again 
 
 There come to me at times serener moods, 
 When I think better of my fellow-men, 
 
 And to the world can turn from fields and woods 
 
 Ph. Foster such resolutions 
 
 Per. And again — 
 
 But hark ! I hear our dogs : we draw to home ; 
 The westering sun makes gold of all our lane. 
 I have much more to tell thee, Philos. Come !
 
 IQ2 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 II.— PHRIGOT'S RETURN 
 
 Philos. Thenot. 
 
 Th. Philos, thou art so blithe and debonnair, 
 And with so deep a joy thy face is lit, 
 I fain would know what is the cause of it, 
 What breeds in thee a merriment so rare? 
 Art thou just found to be the next in blood 
 To some late lord of acres ? Or does Fate 
 Threaten to rob a niece of her estate ? 
 Whate'er it be, thou'rt worthy of all good. 
 
 Ph. I know thy love ; but thou wast never meant 
 To earn thy ease by guess-craft, I see well ; — 
 I have far greater tidings thee to tell : 
 Far different is the source of my content. 
 Thenot, this day is holy and select ; 
 For yestereven came up from the sea 
 A message, O, the gladdest that could be ! 
 To-morrow truant Perigot expect. 
 
 Th. What, Perigot return'd ? And hast thou 
 seen 
 The features of our friend, and heard his voice? 
 No marvel, then, that thou dost so rejoice ! 
 I love thee at his side for having been. 
 
 Ph. Nay, nay, not so ; he is not here as yet ; 
 And when he cometh, nor to me, nor you
 
 perigot's return 193 
 
 Are the first-fruits of his affection due : 
 Thyra and Clytus we must not forget. 
 
 Th. I envy the first meeting of the hands : 
 The privilege of welcoming our chief, 
 But not the heart-salve and supreme relief, 
 Which Thyra's drooping bravery demands. 
 
 Ph. Across the sea, dear soul, these many weeks 
 Her eye has waited on this wandering star : 
 If he was near surmising, or was far ; 
 And now at last he his true orbit seeks. 
 Good lady ! she, e'er since her wedding hour, 
 Cast much of her home-nurturing behind, 
 And set herself to school with her whole pow'r 
 To learn the bearings of that chartless mind. 
 His will was masterful ; but well he knew 
 Her wise and noble faith in his high aim ; 
 All saw to whom his heart-grief had been due, 
 And bless'd the wife, who priz'd her husband "s 
 fame. 
 
 Th. Perchance, e'en while we speak, his house has 
 grown 
 Refulgent with the light the master gives, 
 And Perigot no more in dreamland lives, 
 But from him his long discontent hath thrown. 
 
 Ph. It was the wish'd conversion. He had done 
 Too much too well ; no ardour is slow-pac'd ; 
 And his fine understanding was unbrac'd, 
 And, like a lute o'er-studied, lost its tone. 
 
 N
 
 194 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 Ne'er was a lothcr pilgrim. But at length 
 We saw his scruples conquer'd : and be went, 
 And, like a bow too prodigally bent, 
 There was mere wreckage of the olden strength. 
 
 Th. His place seem'd natural to him. To be 
 First by allowance — O, it is to reign ! 
 Time brings us no successor, until he 
 The void which he has left shall fill again. 
 
 Ph. Thenot, he comes! See through the case- 
 ment, see, 
 Where he now turns the angle of the wood ! 
 All heads pass him uncover'd. Ah ! how good 
 To pay such early thoughts to thee and me ! 
 More welcome than weak words, dear chief, can say ! 
 
 Per. Comrades, the hope of our reunion shar'd 
 My voyage, but prolong'd, ah me ! the way : 
 The sea denied me those for whom I car'd. 
 Hut now once more my feet press English ground. 
 And joyfully I put my wallet by ; 
 
 Philos, O dear Thenot, I have found 
 
 It hard from friends and work so far to lie ! 
 
 But, like some vesture too long over-worn, 
 
 The visions and the moods, which kept me thrall, 
 
 1 have unhous'd ; and as a young June morn 
 My brain now seems light and ethereal. 
 
 Ph. Your thoughts were islanders no more. They 
 turn'd, 
 Where vast unbroken tracts the sun engross,
 
 perigot's return 195 
 
 And in the stillest night are not discern'd 
 The distant sea's reverberating throes. 
 
 Per. Thou talk'st full learnedly ; but, hark ! my 
 mind 
 Was form'd and train'd in Britain ; various scenes, 
 Like various books, I view and leave behind : 
 My understanding on my birthland leans. 
 
 Ph. You visited Italian, German, Swiss : 
 The many-languag'd Slav, the crafty Greek 
 
 Per. My eye hath grown accustom'd not to 
 miss, 
 Where'er I go, those objects which I seek. 
 But to regenerate oneself, and grow 
 Once more in harmony with all around, 
 And by exact comparison to know, 
 How bless'd the livers are on British ground— 
 These are the ends of travel. Not to graze 
 With artless unschool'd vision on the sights, 
 Which every dull wayfarer loves to praise, 
 As though his prentice eye had scann'd the lights, 
 Which only science opens. O'er the sea 
 I carried the chief treasures of my heart : 
 The memories which have sojourn'd with me 
 From youth, and make of me a very part. 
 I saw the fairest cities of the earth : 
 Some with a pulse, some beautiful in sleep ; 
 Spots resonant with business and with mirth, 
 Where potent princes us'd their state to keep.
 
 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 And now a motley throng is in the stm I 
 And chapmen buy and sell, and trade is rife ; 
 But the great heart of pow'r no longer beats 
 Amid a brimming and tempestuous life. 
 
 Ph. Fair Venice, learned Padua, holy Rome : 
 The land of Tell, the Frenchman's broad domain 
 The glory of the Moorish sway in Spain : 
 The Netherlander^ low and watery home : 
 I'pon all these fell an observant eye, 
 
 And stor'd conclusions looking t'ward this isle 
 
 Per. Ah ! this discourse is in a better style- 
 Hut, Philos, pilgrims are but passers-by ; 
 Their study is too fugitive and slight 
 To let such few as hang on their return 
 A stranger country inwardly discern : 
 They carry back the gleanings of first sight. 
 The bookworm stands in London, and surveys 
 In his mind's vision the long march of time, 
 And ponders over tales of ancient days, 
 Shap'd in some poet's half-remember'd rhyme. 
 The courtier-like perspective lends an hue 
 To distant scenes and legends of the past, 
 And helps o'er thought a lurid tinge to cast, 
 Which dazzles many more than me and you. 
 I cross'd the ocean in a reverie 
 Of lofty minds, whose odour fill'd my brain ; 
 And a lost sense of joy reviv'd in me : 
 The zest of school-time came to me again.
 
 perigot's return 197 
 
 A vein of childish wonder took me prize, 
 
 As we drew near the lands, which I had known 
 
 From common record and report alone ; 
 
 And should I now behold them with my eyes ? 
 
 I gaz'd from shipboard on the wharves and quays 
 
 Of Antwerp — O, forgive me, if I wept ! 
 
 The rude hand of reform had newly swept 
 
 From view the heirlooms of long centuries. 
 
 The steep, strait, tortuous alleys, which wound down 
 
 To meet the river half my life ago, 
 
 Had melted into vapour, and the town 
 
 As twenty other towns began to grow. 
 
 The antique costume and the time-worn face : 
 
 The mellowness and dignity of age, 
 
 Which have surviv'd the storms of party-rage, 
 
 Vanish beneath the axe without a trace. 
 
 The men of Ghent are busy, rich, and strong • 
 
 And life vibrates in street and water-way ; 
 
 But all the Artevelde soul has ebb'd out long, 
 
 And clerks do sums, where Gerard's Castle lay. 
 
 I stood before the tomb of Burgundy 
 
 In Bruges, mute, brooding and unbonneted, 
 
 Where Charles and his imperial daughter lie 
 
 Since her divorce from Maximilian's bed. 
 
 The walls of Dijon speak a tongue unknown 
 
 To many an one, whose eye upon them falls ; 
 
 They tell the story of a ducal throne 
 
 And pageantry and pomp in crowded halls.
 
 TWO MODERN BCLOG1 
 
 1 pictur'd Brussels rul'd in turn by all : 
 
 The Fleming, Spaniard and Austrian, 
 
 And greater and more stately under thrall 
 
 Than parcel regal and republican. 
 
 The grass and wood reclaim old scenes of feud, 
 
 Of turbulent contention and dark deeds : 
 
 It ask'd a guide to shew athwart the meads 
 
 The spot where Maele's dread fortress once had stood. 
 
 Ph. 1 las Flemish glory wither'd at the touch 
 Of modern thought? The chronicles abound 
 With acts great and heroic ; and how much 
 To captivate, and like too, I have found ! 
 
 Per. The population, which has serv'd its call, 
 Softens its manners, and refines its dress, 
 And sees the part, which it once acted, fall, 
 Where others to the van their forces press. 
 So Greece and Rome, and Italy, declin'd ; 
 So languishes to-day the Celtic race, 
 And yields the vantage to the Saxon mind : — 
 And who will rise to take the Saxon's place ? 
 
 ///. May not the East resume its ancient sway, 
 And shake off this despotic trance of ages? — 
 
 P. That is the question, Philos, which to-day 
 The minds of foremost thinkers most engages. 
 The Orient was our nursery and school, 
 Where we learn'd our first accidence, and grew 
 Proficient in those arts, which gave us rule, 
 And westward the world's trade and learning drew.
 
 perigot's return 199 
 
 Those Easterns by comparison were great, 
 
 While we remain'd so barbarous and poor. 
 
 But climate, soil, and food have chang'd our state, 
 
 And Egypt, Bagdad, India, rise no more. 
 
 The Slav, the Jap, the Mongol, may compete 
 
 With us for power in the time to come 
 
 Ph. But our race has acquired so broad a seat, 
 And made in either hemisphere a home — — 
 
 P. At this historic severance from the main 
 Alone I look. Two thousand years our sires 
 Have kept the land — O, will their power wane ? 
 For if this lordship ceases, all expires. 
 
 Th. These are too lofty problems for my youth ; 
 Let Philos and yourself take them anon ; 
 I look to be a seeker after truth, 
 When some more summers' suns on me have shone 
 
 Per. A pretty figure, boy. Thought, like a flow'r 
 Too quickly forc'd, attains a sickly prime : 
 Wanting the virtuous alchemy of time, 
 Which lends us, and steals back from us, our pow'r — 
 I view'd the site of Paris overlaid 
 With geometric lines of cold, hard stone 
 And shallow masonry. Alas ! I said, 
 The city of my bookish dreams is gone ! 
 Gone are its ramparts, gates, and grim Bastille : 
 Its gabled tenements, its classic lanes ; 
 And all that to my fancy would appeal ; — 
 What, save the river and the name, remains ?
 
 200 TWO MODLRN ECLOGUES 
 
 Ph. Cluny, the Louvre, Notre Dame, arc there, 
 And other links with the Capetian race ! 
 
 Per. Sad monuments of men and things that were : 
 The Latin blood expends its force apace. 
 The mausoleum of the Bourbon line, 
 SOUVIGNY, had its priors, men of might — 
 The last had left too soon to bid me dine : 
 The worms, I trow, had wish'd them all good-night. 
 Think, how the impress of the Roman mind 
 Is stamp'd on N is mis, and wheresoe'er that folk 
 Tarried its firm assimilating yoke, 
 The world in one harmonious whole to bind. 
 But every system ripens and decays, 
 And sheds its fruit-seeds broadcast, where it fell ; 
 And in the newer types of later days 
 Something of us will peradventure dwell 
 I lay at towns, which in their foregone prime- 
 Were seats of empire, arts and gaiety ; 
 And now they only seem'd to me to be 
 Repositories of the drift of time. 
 I studied the Italian in his home, 
 And all the dwellers in the broad Levant ; 
 Three types arrest the eye, where'er you roam : 
 Showman, restaurateur, and mendicant. 
 Verona holds the Scaligers no more ; 
 Their tombs are nigh her only living things ; 
 But fancy to the Roman Theatre clings, 
 And ancient brick and marble work a store.
 
 perigot's RETURN 201 
 
 Descend in Milan, and seek out a trace 
 
 Of generations of Visconti there ! 
 
 It is a noble city ; but the air 
 
 Sustains a newer and a weaker race. 
 
 In dark and impure records Naples shone ; 
 
 But the majestic lust of rule was there. 
 
 Now sloth and sin the sovereignty share : 
 
 The grandeur and the dignity have gone. 
 
 And look how many others in that land, 
 
 Which prosper'd in the iron grip of might, 
 
 Languish beneath the liberator's hand, 
 
 Like flowers under unaccustom'd light ! 
 
 O Philos, we have not so fallen yet ; 
 
 But we are growing old and hard of heart, 
 
 With more to feed and less for each to get : 
 
 Too little love : too many at the mart ! 
 
 Ah ! let us both commend to those we know 
 
 A wiser fellowship, a broader scope : 
 
 And a strong fight for freedom from the foe, 
 
 Who saps our strength, and palters with our hope. 
 
 The Churchman dies, as eels do, joint by joint, 
 
 And makes way for the Layman's nobler rule ; 
 
 But Legion is the number of the Fool ; 
 
 And it asks time to conquer half a point. 
 
 War, plague, and famine can be lightly borne, 
 
 When we have manumission from the lie, 
 
 With which a fetich priesthood sees us die, 
 
 And which forecasts a new and brighter morn.
 
 ;02 TWO modi: UN ECLOGUES 
 
 The spirit of false proph< cy is then : 
 
 The gross i range! ol a So ond Birth, 
 
 Which places a feign'd hell beneath the earth, 
 
 And a feign'd h( av( n places in the air. 
 
 It has grown from a calling to a en 
 
 Some seek the power, and some crave the bread : 
 
 The world is full, and each one must be fi 
 
 And we are burthen'd by the I.evites' seed. 
 
 Ph. Is not the aim and end of life content? 
 These tenets soothe our latest consciousness. 
 Is it not wise for us to acquiesce, 
 
 And let the world pursue its fatuous bent ? 
 
 Per. O, speak not of a faith built on deceit, 
 On counterfeit authority and crime ! 
 
 A falsehood cannot be assoil'd by time ; 
 
 Years do not change the nature of a cheat. 
 
 We must throw down our idols, and commence 
 
 Another law, a New Philosophy ; 
 
 Soothsayers will grow rarer by-and-by 
 
 Under the reign of ethic influence. 
 
 We are too avaricious and too vain. 
 
 Because we are, may not we cease to be ? 
 
 Nature alone enjoys eternity : 
 
 Her offspring perishes ; but types remain. 
 
 The fairest of us are no whit more fair 
 
 Than other things, which turn to mould and rust 
 
 The dust of Jesus was as other dust : 
 
 Our common mother is our last repair.
 
 perigot's return 20 
 
 Ph. O, this is retrogression. Do not brood 
 Too much upon the speculative side. 
 No rivers to their falls more swiftly glide 
 Than our years do 
 
 Per. That varies with the mood 
 And with the tone and bias of our minds. 
 The borderland of myth and fact have been 
 My lifelong home, and science often finds 
 It hard to fix the boundary between. 
 As I mapp'd in my fancy day by day 
 The scenes and forms, which rose before my view, 
 I felt the growth of insight in a way, 
 And substances from names and shadows grew. 
 It was a moving contrast, as I went : 
 The brain was spellbound by the ceaseless change, 
 And over infinite space thought seem'd to range, 
 Where more than she could borrow Nature lent. 
 Yet everywhere the traces met my eye 
 Of shifted centres and of pow'r dethron'd : 
 New types and names new seats of empire own'd ; 
 And many a boyish link was history — 
 The costume and the colour were so new, 
 That they stirr'd up within a kind of awe : 
 A differing cult, a differing garb I saw, 
 As I from frontier on to frontier drew. 
 Thenot, we reach mid-life, ere we can look 
 Before and after. We have crown'd the hill, 
 And see how much is left to traverse still, 
 And what remains of the long-studied book ■
 
 204 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 Th. The Rook of Li: ? 
 
 Per. Just so. Experience throws 
 
 It-, lights and shadows, as suns rise and set ; 
 And I reserve some moot opinions yet — 
 Rut I must make my story touch its close — 
 There are three cities on Italian soil, 
 Which overtow'r the rest, as certain cones 
 Of Alps outsoar the eagles' starriest thrones, 
 And have in their tall satellites their foil : 
 Rome, Venice, Florence : Venice of them all 
 The most engaging and inviolate; 
 lor Roman on that ground ne'er laid his weight : 
 The sea her spouse, her highway, and her wall. 
 A colony along the low sea-shore, 
 Where us'd the fisher once his net to dry : 
 Giving laws, arts, and fame to Italy, 
 As only Rome had given them before. 
 This was the home of soldiers, painters, wits : 
 Of commerce, greatness, and the sciences : 
 Now Venice bows to alien decrees, 
 And silence in her council-chambers sits. 
 The Roman mason plies his craft to-day, 
 And raises structures, which suffice the age ; 
 Rut he must draw, must he, his weekly wage, 
 And seeks in politics a part to play : 
 While those who labour'd once their lives' whole length 
 For masters of a differing type and creed, 
 Received their food and lodgment for all meed, 
 And. sire and son, gave priceless time and strength.
 
 perigot's return 205 
 
 This made the Roman architecture live, 
 
 When much of newer growth has shrunk to nought, 
 
 As images in our sublime youth caught, 
 
 Experiences of riper years survive. 
 
 Fair Florence is a show-room of the Arts, 
 
 A dwelling-place of opulence and ease. 
 
 But what a poor inheritance are these, 
 
 When all that bred and nourished them departs ! 
 
 Philos, the too much home-staying man 
 Begins to love too well his native land, 
 
 And does not see the blots, which others can, 
 Who pass the sea, and in perspective stand. 
 
 1 took the hoards of a too thoughtful youth 
 To vouch my faiths and notions against facts : 
 No student but some fond conceits retracts, 
 Yet by how little I had miss'd the truth ! 
 
 I mix'd in scenes, which are a daily use 
 To millions in shape like you and me, 
 Who differently think, and feel, and see, 
 As their conditions and demands induce. 
 A people's culture hedges round its creeds ; 
 But higher forms with lower go to school, 
 And there is no determinable rule 
 For judging whence brain-mastery proceeds. 
 I mark'd the grand division, where I went, 
 Between the love of gain and love of ease : 
 Here the tempestuous passion for increase, 
 And there the fatal dowry of content.
 
 2 06 Two MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 I looked with rapture on the strangers' lands, 
 On scenes with which our Britain cannot vie ; 
 But visions rose before my vagrant eye, 
 Which every son of freedom understands. 
 My heart with soft emotion learn'd to swell, 
 And I dream'd tenderly of you — and you. 
 
 Th. You left us, then, to win a truer view ? 
 
 Per. I knew it not. I know it now full well. 
 Our nomad instinct lingers yet, and breeds 
 That drift to change, e'en though the change be ill : 
 But all the calls of modern life to fill, 
 One steadfast centre of repose it needs. 
 My thoughts are wistful hoverers between 
 My gladness at this meeting and the pain, 
 Which steals like some suffusion o'er my brain, 
 That one should have gone down to earth unseen. 
 
 Ph. You knew Pal?emon, ere he topp'd his prime ? 
 
 Per. Ah, we were sworn companions twice ten years : 
 My eyelids labour with the unspent tears, 
 As I look back on the exhausted time. 
 He was of the old noble brood. I lay 
 Within his gates, as in a second home, 
 Nor knew I how to him too oft to come. 
 Death gave me much ; but death took much away. 
 I live less with the age, in which I am, 
 Than with the future ages which I see, 
 Which will have commonage of thought with me, 
 And all our dull fanaticism damn.
 
 perigot's return 207 
 
 But let me keep my foot upon some spot 
 
 Of this fair world, so long as in my veins 
 
 The blood its tidal property retains : 
 
 I feel no haste to seek an unknown lot. 
 
 The clerical mythologists appear 
 
 To hang up in the air a port of rest, 
 
 Where Death is not the last unwished-for guest ; 
 
 But falsehood is weak flattery to the ear. 
 
 Old friend, it is to thee that I commit 
 
 The sacrificial office, when I go : 
 
 The priestly task, for which no priest so fit 
 
 As him whom I best love and I best know. 
 
 The uncouth rites, which wait on death, forbear ; 
 
 I shudder, when I view the gaunt carv'd stone, 
 
 Inscrib'd with some trite mortuary ware, 
 
 And promising more than I e'er shall own. 
 
 I feel the tread of centuries of feet 
 
 Upon the earth which overlies my dust ; 
 
 I see the everlasting toilers meet, 
 
 And yield my bones to lichen and to rust ! 
 
 Invoke the sacred genius of fire, 
 
 I charge thee on thy oath so dearly sworn, 
 
 And let no journeyman attend for hire, 
 
 When my pale smoke away from you is borne. 
 
 What of me does not mingle with the wind, 
 
 The flame shall rarefy and shall refine ; 
 
 And I foresee my bloodless ashes in'd, 
 
 And tenanting some jar of celandine.
 
 208 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 /'//. Pursue no longer this depressing vein ; 
 Thy wishes are our laws ; the times change fast ; 
 And what some held just now scarce wholly sane, 
 Will soon have into common usage pass'd. 
 You have retum'd to fortune and to peace ; 
 The day of freedom, which you long so crav'd, 
 Has dawn'd. The tidings follow'd you to Greece, 
 That not in vain you had your sorrows brav'd. 
 
 Then. The trial, which false kindred, than false foes 
 A thousand-fold more cruel and more base, 
 Laid on you, Sir, is crown'd with a repose, 
 Which ought to exile sadness from your face. 
 
 Per. O, pardon this unthankfulness ! My bent 
 Is perhaps more pensive, Thenot, than is well ; 
 But since so much of my short time is spent, 
 My mind begins on other things to dwell. 
 We are not voters for our advent here, 
 Nor can refuse the summons to depart. 
 But I turn from my neighbour's pall-rob'd bier 
 To some new uses of the potter's art — 
 Ah well, a plumper purse, a freer hand, 
 Where one has laid a little broader line, 
 Is a three-corner'd boon, you understand, 
 bringing three fairy gifts to me and mine. 
 We shall have pow'r to hold at distance some, 
 With whom I counseil'd dalliance, while need press'd ; 
 And we shall see a few more often come, 
 Whose names by you can be securely guess'd.
 
 perigot's return 209 
 
 While I, the vassal of the world no more, 
 Shall study the award of future men, 
 And prune with unpaternal hand the store, 
 Which buds and blooms from every idle pen — 
 But here comes Thyra 
 
 Then. And young Clytus, too ! 
 
 Cly. The congress is complete ; old times return : 
 
 Th. The master is among us with his cue, 
 New trains of thought assisting us to learn. 
 
 Per. Much that life teaches is so less than 
 vain, 
 That it were hard if, using well his eyes, 
 A student, such as I, once and again 
 Could not present the world with some surmise — 
 Ah ! dearest one, through good and ill report 
 Thou hast upheld thy husband ; if he err'd, 
 Thou err'dst with him 
 
 TJi. So every true wife ought. 
 
 Per. Our recompense is full, though too deferr'd. 
 Think how we toil'd together through the days, 
 When hope was mute, and sympathy seem'd dead, 
 And fortune frown'd alike on all our ways. 
 
 Cly. My noble father ! blessings on his head ! 
 
 Thyr. We lean'd upon thy strength, my husband 
 
 sweet, 
 
 Nor question'd thy designs or thy intent, 
 
 Knowing thee on our common mission bent. 
 
 Per. Uncounted thanks ! Your faith was not unmeet. 
 
 o
 
 2 10 TWO MODERN ECLOGUES 
 
 ( )ur life, our thought, our purse, have been as one : 
 
 The name of heiress ne'er deform'd thy speech, 
 
 My labour learn'd our measur'd needs to reach ; 
 
 And all thy store grows for this boy our son. 
 
 Vet, Thyra, of thy sex are not a few, 
 
 Who much their corporal estate misu 
 
 And this or that man's scheme of life undo 
 
 Thyr. It were some gain so shrewd a wife to lose. 
 
 /'.;-. Well, let it pass. Pakemon broke our chains, 
 And laid on us a great and weighty trust ; 
 ( )ur good works, not our bones, are our remains ; 
 Yet we shall consecrate his honour'd dust. 
 Now all too late my fetters drop from me : 
 Now have the labourers their portion found ; 
 And I can lay my foot upon the ground, 
 And say : God of my Fat/iers, we are free !
 
 EPISTLES 
 
 TO FAUNUS 
 
 {The writer narrates his recollections of his old friend, 
 the father of Faunas. He had arrived at the house 
 too late to see him before his death. He promises a 
 second visit, when he will be welcomed by Faunus.] 
 
 Faunus, where tors their summits bathe in mist, 
 And to the brook's edge dips the verdure down ; 
 To that weird land, on three sides ocean-kiss'd, 
 And envied heir to Arthur's long renown : 
 I came to lie upon the ground, and dream : 
 Building up dim poetic worlds, which were 
 Like circles within circles in a stream, 
 Or as the lines which intersect a sphere. 
 A weary-hearted Londoner, I fled 
 From books, brown herbage, and the stamp of feet. 
 To spots where I could, like some hermit, tread, 
 And fellow-voices, ere they rose, grew sweet.
 
 21 2 EPI8T l.i s 
 
 Where around me and beneath I saw forgotten 
 
 beauties spread, 
 And to unwonted melody my pulse soon learn'd 
 
 to beat. 
 
 How crisp and buoyant was the air that morn 
 I made across the gold and purple moor, 
 And so by wavy tracts of tall, ripe corn, 
 To where afar I saw belov*d Glendwr ! — 
 Glendwr by early sunshine gaily lit, 
 And in its wooded glory towering 
 Above the valley, where we us'd to sit, 
 To talk in peace, and hear the throstle sing. 
 Yet still between me and the house there lay 
 A certain distance and your nestling town ; 
 But then we were to meet soon ; and the way 
 Was mostly through the lanes and o'er the down. 
 
 My heart was full of all we both should have to say ; 
 
 And I was gladder than I car'd to you to own. 
 
 I recollect — it seems but yesterday — 
 I reach'd the village, and fil'd through the throng, 
 Which both sides of the straggling fore street lay, 
 And, till my hand grasp'd yours, I thought it long. 
 'Twas market morn. I hung about the hall, 
 And watch'd the folk heart-deep in loud discourse, 
 How veal was scarce, and wheat crops shew'd a fall, 
 And Simon's bull had gor'd young Robin's horse.
 
 TO FAUNUS 213 
 
 And there was one who had, a whisper went, 
 
 Attended market there all fourscore years. 
 
 Dim was his eye, and on a staff he leant ; 
 
 But he lov'd still to mingle with his pheers. 
 And as he look'd back on the checker'd time forespent 
 I saw a hand steal up to screen the trickling tears. 
 
 While I expected you, had Time been made 
 To wait on my desires, it should have flown, 
 Bringing you on its wings. How long I stay'd, 
 I know not ; but the day, I think, had grown 
 Older by certain hours, when poor Mark Yates 
 (Who died last summer) lightly touch'd my dress, 
 As I stood dreamily against the gates, 
 And said the carriage was in readiness. 
 I started, question'd for you all ; but he 
 Turn'd strangely from me, and his lips were white. 
 A huge loss had befallen you and me. 
 And as he told the rest, he wept outright. 
 
 There's something which still haunts my eyes, like 
 vapour from the sea ; 
 
 Nor have I yet outliv'd your look, when we met on 
 that night. 
 
 For ever I shall in my memory keep 
 The tidings of that messenger of woe, 
 And his face, as I gaz'd on it asleep, 
 And lack'd the heart to stay there, or to go.
 
 .114 BPISTL1 
 
 And from a distant city, where he liv'd 
 In greener years, came elders, who had known 
 Him much as you are. It was their be wiv'd . 
 But he went from it, as he came — alone ! 
 She was his fellow-labourer and First Friend, 
 And you were but a half-unfolded bloom, 
 Too young his teaching well to comprehend : 
 Too young to fill much of the lost one's room. 
 
 But a new value to the set of life it seem'd to 
 lend, 
 
 When an affinity of mind in you began to loom. 
 
 We laid him in the ground beyond the foss 
 Without unseemly pomp, as he us bad, 
 Within the old church hay ; and for his loss 
 Not we alone our minds in sorrow clad. 
 The village windows mourn'd, and humble men 
 Gave up their toil to keep the day apart ; 
 And on the slant church tower once again 
 The lower'd flag saluted a cold heart. 
 He brought a costly sacrifice to Death 
 In that ennobled nature, which scarce seem'd, 
 As if it ought to hang upon a breath, 
 Or be from common fortune unredeemed. 
 
 But he asks not an elegy or monumental wreath ; 
 
 For 'twas a different sort of fame of which your father 
 dream'd.
 
 TO FAUNUS 215 
 
 All that of him was earthly, we repaid 
 To earth ; but what we lov'd best still survives. 
 The life, which we saw lately from us fade, 
 Has now diffus'd itself through all our lives. 
 George Swainson is enrich'd with a small part : 
 A part makes up the power of Dick Orme ; 
 I see him in this man's new taste for art, 
 And in that other's strange zeal for reform. 
 It is because his counsels I enshrin'd, 
 That I have that which me to you endears : 
 I owe to him all that is most refin'd, 
 All that too good for me in me appears. 
 And part of him has been renew'd in your aspiring mind, 
 And part has been reserv'd by time to grace your 
 mellower years. 
 
 He left us rich memorials of his mind, 
 
 And what in him was highest and most pure, 
 
 At present for some visions too refin'd, 
 
 Till this world is unthron'd, will still endure. 
 
 He seem'd his unchang'd self, when last we met, 
 
 And as of old roam'd on the lulling shore ; 
 
 He talk'd with cheerfulness and ease, and yet 
 
 He was less voluble, and listen'd more. 
 
 Once, I can recollect, he left my side, 
 
 To go and by the water-line to stand, 
 
 And the fast-narrowing beach with glee he ey'd 
 
 As the swift flood lapp'd up the champion sand.
 
 2l6 EPI8TLE8 
 
 He said, "See, see, is not the fretted border of the 
 
 tide 
 Like some fair roll of lace unfolded in a lady's 
 
 hand ? " 
 
 The days I was a listless wanderer 
 With you about the place and neighbour parts ! 
 It was the gracious childhood of the year, 
 And spring smil'd everywhere but in our hearts. 
 Though he had gone, yet much remain'd behind, 
 Like sweets we see, but cannot hope to reach i 
 We heard his accents somewhere in the wind, 
 And still his footstep tenanted the beach. 
 For us the early music of the woods 
 Was sad, because it spake to us of him 
 In his unbroken strength and blither moods, 
 When health appear'd to overflow the brim, 
 And stories of a variable current in our bloods 
 Seem'd foreign to him and to us, and (like old legends) 
 dim. 
 
 Yet since he us'd so well his strength for good, 
 It were vain and inglorious to repine : 
 He left us, as 'twas fittest perhaps he should, 
 Without a warning and with scarce a sign. 
 The severance seem'd cruel ; but the close 
 Was only like our parting with those Lights,
 
 TO FAUNUS 217 
 
 Which strangely visit us, and which we lose 
 As strangely, in the breathless summer nights. 
 He touch'd the summit of his soul's content, 
 Since his last conscious look could rest on you. 
 But certain thoughts another way were bent, 
 When he perceiv'd how fast the dimness grew. 
 
 And I had it from your own lips, how your good folk 
 were sent 
 
 To spur me on, if I was sighted in the distant view. 
 
 Brave hearts are fountains of brave words. O me ! 
 I've heard him speak whole eclogues in wing'd prose 
 Upon the reasons which took him and thee 
 From London to the West, and why he chose 
 A life which seem'd so wide in all its scope 
 From his town-nurtur'd youth. " My friend," said 
 
 he; 
 " I love the country well enough to cope 
 With every drawback, and adore the sea. 
 We come as well prepar'd to like as learn, 
 And, good or bad, new insights must be gains. 
 For freer breath we both began to yearn, 
 And Faunus now his dearest wish obtains. 
 
 For learning there were tell-tale symptoms of too 
 strong a turn, 
 
 And better have the horsehair than the cobwebs in 
 his brains ! " 
 
 /
 
 2lS EPISTLES 
 
 Let us look on his well-remcmber'd face, 
 As though the framer of our weak, estate 
 Had not dissolv'd him into unseen space, 
 And left him somewhere in the mist to wait 
 A fortune far remov'd beyond our ken ; 
 Where all is dim, and new, and strange, 
 And he hears not the hum and tread of men, 
 Xor knows that he has suffer'd any change. 
 Or is he in some other peopled sphere, 
 Which hath its own indwellers like to this, 
 Unconscious what he has been, and he is — 
 Unconscious that he was a tarrier here? 
 He is exempt perchance alike from hope and fear, 
 And wars no longer with his first-born impulses. 
 
 Some day I shall revisit old Glendwr, 
 And shake its second master by the hand, 
 And once more the sweet scenery devour, 
 And once more side by side with Faunus stand. 
 I still shall hear the peewit's plaintive call 
 Along that little cove, which meets the sea ; 
 And we can watch the water rise and fall ; 
 But two will press the ground in place of three ! 
 I shall miss his familiar form and speech, 
 Which robb'd of so much weariness the walk, 
 And feel the want of one like him to teach 
 Me the deep art of knowing how to talk.
 
 TO FAUNUS 219 
 
 But as before the sandflies will be pattering on the 
 beach, 
 
 And we shall pluck the sea-thorn by its unresist- 
 ing stalk. 
 
 We've sat upon the heights, and seen the sun 
 Set in mid-ocean, pillow'd on a bank ; 
 And it seem'd then as if we might have run, 
 And touch'd the eddying circles, where it sank. 
 We've lain out on a headland, side by side, 
 Where ages of sea-pinks unsung had blown, 
 And watch'd with rapture the exulting tide, 
 As it sped up to repossess its own. 
 And oft he would invite me, on an eve, 
 Before the moon had found her robe of blue, 
 My studies for a while behind to leave, 
 And saunter on the shore with him and you : 
 To see the ocean its broad emerald bosom heave, 
 And the enamouring freedom taste of the un- 
 measur'd view. 
 
 None more rejoic'd at the incoming flood ; 
 For he saw there a symbol of a time, 
 When it was high tide always in his blood, 
 And he dreamt of a never-fading prime.
 
 220 EPISTLES 
 
 But I have known him wear a look of pain, 
 When we were walking seaward at the ebb — 
 A look, which might seem but three-quarters sane 
 To minds wrought of less delicate a web. 
 His drift was clear, nor was the moral new : 
 He saw the water rise, and saw it fall ; 
 And fall and rise again, at seasons due : 
 There was a constant power of recall. 
 
 The sea grew and decreas'd, for ever it decreas'd and 
 grew ; 
 
 But our short tide of life ebb'd once, and then ebb'd 
 once for all. 
 
 We were two town-bred wits, your sire and I, 
 And had but loosely studied country forms ; 
 Nor always, Faunus, were we high and dry, 
 For we knew what it was to brave life's storms. 
 But he so much accomplish'd for you both, 
 That you may pass through life without a thought, 
 So that you shun, like death, ignoble sloth, 
 And ne'er forget how he his battle fought. 
 He was a man of much and varied pow'r, 
 Unsuited in some ways to bear the weight, 
 Which fate impos'd on him : yet in the hour 
 Of trial he reveal'd a nerve as great, 
 As many men who had of strength receiv'd a larger dow'r, 
 But lack'd the wish a home like his around them to 
 create.
 
 TO FAUNUS 221 
 
 He was profuse by instinct ; but his hand 
 Was stay'd by that one governing desire, 
 Which some had found it hard to understand, 
 That you might never set your brains to hire. 
 He said : " I had to live, and hence the 
 
 bond ! 
 But I shall leave what will raise him above 
 Such mislik'd merchandise ; ay, and beyond 
 
 Your wishers and the world's too thrifty love " 
 
 Well, he was what he was, and needeth not 
 The panegyric of a common pen ; 
 And your enchanting Blissland holds a spot, 
 Which must go mirror'd in the minds of men. 
 
 And Glendwr and all around it long shar'd the 
 widow's lot, 
 
 And long the dogs watch'd for a voice they cannot 
 hear again. 
 
 There are those not a few, whose wingless souls 
 Are one flesh with the earth beneath their feet 
 Who to themselves propose no higher goals, 
 Than such as yield them present clothes and 
 
 meat. 
 The vulgar poor pursues his low'ring toil, 
 And thinks but how to make his weekly rent ; 
 And if he burns o'ermuch the midnight oil, 
 'Tis not his mind that gets more nutriment.
 
 222 EPISTLES 
 
 The vulgar rich piles up his splendid heap 
 From mills, or stocks, or silk, or calico, 
 And trusts that, when death hath laid him to sleep, 
 In his heir's hands it still will grow and grow. 
 Yet if he might but once into the future peep, 
 He would see it melt, as does in the humid West the 
 snow. 
 
 Had he alike from both not differ'd far, 
 The name, which he made a perpetual fief, 
 Would not now go before you like a star, 
 Nor would the world have ask'd to share your grief. 
 But he work'd long unvalued and obscure, 
 Enlarging slowly in his own domain 
 The boundaries of knowledge ; and the lure 
 Held out to him of less laborious gain 
 He heeded not. And he would say to me : 
 " My life's work is abroad in all men's sight. 
 If shadows we pursue down here, and we 
 Conceive them substances, is't wrong or right ? 
 But are not pleasures what to us seem so to be, 
 And, look, how often one man scorns another man's 
 delight ! " 
 
 'Tis something now that he consum'd his youth, 
 And paid out years he never might retrieve, 
 In the pursuit of honour and of truth, 
 And in his thirst for you a name to leave.
 
 TO FAUNUS 223 
 
 He was reserv'd to us, and often cold ; 
 Ah, yes, his moods were sometimes hard to bear. 
 But did we not mark how, as he grew old, 
 He seem'd to breathe in a serener air. 
 Affairs were brighter, and the world no more 
 Chaf d his proud spirit. He could move at ease, 
 And keep at comfortable distance those, 
 With whom he either fail'd, or did not please 
 To sympathise : he hated naked prose. 
 His life was fortunate ; but yet by many degrees 
 The happiest years, I think, were just toward the 
 close. 
 
 He threw out large conceptions ; but his mind 
 Seem'd apt to grow impatient of a scheme, 
 Ere it came ripe. He dearly lov'd to dream, 
 And, as we thought, was to himself least kind. 
 I never shall reflect without moist eyes 
 On his fine nature and his width of view, 
 Nor think unmov'd, how narrow and unwise 
 That lukewarmth was, which to a coldness grew. 
 We know who were the losers by that course ; 
 But what is pass'd can never be undone, 
 And his heart rests amid the pleasant gorse, 
 Where by his side you have so often run. 
 
 His undervalues have now their long day of remorse ; 
 
 And I have liv'd to see his due conferr'd on a 
 young son.
 
 224 EPISTLES 
 
 Now I recall that once, as he and I 
 
 March'd lustily across a marish tra< t, 
 
 To save our credits at our homes hard by 
 
 (Tor we all din'd an hour past noon exact), 
 
 He murmur'd, in the still notes of the wind, 
 
 Something about your mother and her set — 
 
 The old grief which had colour'd so his mind — 
 
 1 [e said : " My marriage owes my hopes much yet." 
 
 He said : " She was all I divin'd ; but they, 
 
 As though one had cost Nature her whole skill, 
 
 Were of a harder and a coarser clay. 
 
 Ah me ! my marriage owes my hopes much still." 
 
 He look'd as if, had I but urg'd, he had far more to 
 say; 
 
 But this was all his lips deliver'd — all they ever will. 
 
 In the debating art he shew'd least skill : 
 Not but that he could grasp with ease the sense, 
 And had full insight into things ; yet still 
 Never had man a weaker hand at fence. 
 Ideas in his brain too thickly throng'd, 
 Like masquers pack'd together in some hall, 
 And by his very riches he was wrong'd, 
 I'or he scarce dar'd his own his own to call. 
 And, as time flow'd. it grew a warm regret 
 That he had never disciplin'd his mind, 
 Like many an one whom he and I had met, 
 And humbler parts more wisely had combin'd.
 
 TO FAUNUS 225 
 
 And hence before you his advice he ever lov'd 
 
 to set, 
 That you should try betimes in life your true-born 
 
 bent to find. 
 
 Mere forms of faith and dogmas of the schools, 
 Which he call'd unkind spendthrifts of men's time. 
 He calmly left to priestcraft and its tools, 
 Judging such use of brain-power a crime. 
 But he commended warmly to us all 
 A mission, which had lodging by his heart : 
 The gospel of Life's Honour, and the call 
 Of strong ones everywhere to do their part 
 In raising thought above the humble flight, 
 Which bounds its mean endeavours in our day. 
 " I wait to see," he cried, " more love, more light ; 
 And England rich in a more noble way ; 
 And union in aid of public good and common right, 
 With courage on all tyrants' necks the foot to lay. 
 
 " Deliver this great nation from the curse 
 
 Of buckram politicians and lack-wits, 
 
 Who us in credit and in wealth amerce, 
 
 For on ourselves the chief dishonour sits. 
 
 'The cares of empire— give them me — they're sweet,' 
 
 Quoth one of late ; and straightway it was so : 
 
 As if the birds in parliament should meet, 
 
 And in the Eagle's room elect the Crow. 
 
 p*
 
 2 26 EPI8T I : 
 
 A Queen of England is but England Crown'd, 
 And our disgraces are our own, not hers. 
 i etus her throne with better men surround, 
 And tilt against the Landlords' Barriers. 
 
 Not long erewhile from sea to sea the country will 
 resound 
 
 With a deep cry for new reforms and truer minister 
 
 It puzzled him to understand, why we 
 Neglect the untold treasury we own 
 In the past ages of the world, and see 
 What now is, and what is to be, alone. 
 He speculated fondly on the cause 
 Of that sublime intensity of thought 
 In our young aspirations, and the pause, 
 Which follows afterward, when we are brought 
 More face to face with life. Too little ease 
 He granted to himself, and kept his course, 
 Nor did years seem his ardour to appease, 
 In quest of that originating Force, 
 
 Which breathes upon the face of all the lands and all 
 the seas, 
 
 And refuses to disclose to us its nature and its source. 
 
 About the past he saw a sacredness, 
 Which certain only in religion see : 
 It was, as he the notion would express, 
 Unreachable, finite, and passion-free. 
 

 
 TO FAUNUS 227 
 
 A man of boy-like sensibility, 
 He often sacrificed some votive tears 
 To his spent youth, his parents' memory, 
 And the companions of departed years. 
 His fine endowments and unerring wit : 
 All that he ever was, or had, or knew, 
 None ever found him willing to admit, 
 Were to himself more than a little due. 
 
 And much he mus'd, when he was call'd this star- 
 roof 'd world to quit, 
 
 If he would, what his father was to him, become to you. 
 
 A talk of boyhood always lit his eye, 
 
 The pleasures of that time were slight, beside 
 
 Those of maturer life, yet, measur'd by 
 
 The growth of pow'r, the difference seem'd less wide. 
 
 But he would not have wish'd to serve again 
 
 His 'prenticeship to knowledge, or to let 
 
 His youth more than a memory remain, 
 
 With its inburnt impressions of regret. 
 
 'Twas not like some men's qualifying days : 
 
 A dalliance with fortune and with time ; 
 
 Not many love to tarry, till the bays 
 
 Come, powder'd with the winter's argent rime. 
 
 O school, on which his fame already sheds some of its 
 rays, 
 
 Yield him his true rank on thy walls, and be for 
 once sublime !
 
 228 EPISTLES 
 
 Yet those who follow'd a less studious life 
 
 He scarcely censur'd, as the world now goes ; 
 
 Where each year witnesses a thicker strife, 
 
 And it is, what one has, not what one knows. 
 
 The race was now for wealth more than for wit, 
 
 And learning was like other merchandise. 
 
 " In early time each man his own lamp lit ; 
 
 But now who lists," said he, "his knowledge 
 
 buys. 
 Letters have lost their dignity, and arts 
 Their honour, since Philosophy forsook 
 Its ancient lines, and on all common marts 
 The coinage of men's brains was sold. Go, look. 
 And he is thought, good Lord ! a man of more than 
 
 middle parts, 
 Who smatters in a tongue or so, and can discourse by 
 
 book." 
 
 Much that offended men who knew him not, 
 As those few knew him, that had all his heart, 
 Came of a discontentment with his lot 
 And with the ill-appreciated part 
 He took in letters ; and a nervous pride, 
 To which I never heard him give a name, 
 Even such parts as those had force to hide, 
 And made more steep for him the climb to fame. 
 Our homes his knowledge and his fancy lit ; 
 But many deem'd his aims too undefin'd :
 
 TO FAUNUS 229 
 
 To us he left some things detached from it ; 
 
 But Death inherited his boundless mind. 
 For his pen never ran, as oft befalls, before his wit, 
 And he was wiser even than the books he left behind. 
 
 He gave the world more than it could have ask'd, 
 
 And threw into a life too short for us 
 
 Work, which far stronger frames would have o'er- 
 
 task'd, 
 Thinking to merit some indulgence thus. 
 But there were men, who look'd to him to gain 
 At one great stride what they knew it must cost 
 Successive generations to attain • 
 And so the thanks of such small wits he lost. 
 His intellectual temper partly brought 
 This censure on him. His books in their kind 
 Were excellent, yet incompactly wrought : 
 He did not carry out, as he design'd. 
 
 To him the greatest pleasure lay within the uncoin'd 
 thought, 
 
 And seldom to its fullest height would he draw up 
 his mind. 
 
 Who shall now hold us all a winter's night 
 With new points given to familiar things, 
 And turn to our instruction and delight 
 Sorrows, from which time had drawn out the stings ?
 
 230 EPISTLES 
 
 His unprcjudging mind was the resort 
 
 Of thoughts, which circled nature in their range: 
 
 He studied books, art, men ; the laws, the Court, 
 
 Science, and all the principles of change. 
 
 What trophies were unwoven from that brain, 
 
 While it remain'd an agent for our good ! 
 
 Much that is yours the world keeps still. Your gain 
 
 Must grow, as he grows to be understood. 
 
 And then who less than Faunus will have cause to 
 entertain 
 
 A jealousy of those who mix with him in bro'.herhood ? 
 
 Lean on those chosen friendships you inherit, 
 
 Nor of one texture look to see all minds. 
 
 Most profit comes of difference in merit, 
 
 And often 'tis this difference which binds. 
 
 Consider but the pebbles on our beach ! 
 
 No two are twins, yet all fair ne'ertheless ; 
 
 And things, which do not to your liking reach, 
 
 Are to another a dear happiness. 
 
 Were all men witty, wit would meet with scorn ; 
 
 Or scholars all — then learning would be cheap ! 
 
 But few are forth into the sunlight borne, 
 
 Whose mem'ry it concerns the world to keep. 
 It asks some force to raise a ripple on the stream of 
 
 thought, 
 And many count it time misspent, and better love 
 to sleep. 

 
 TO FAUNUS 231 
 
 Men mostly come and go, unmark'd, unwept ; 
 
 The world has paid them toll and taken none ; 
 
 And is as wealthy when their wake is kept, 
 
 As when lov'd Gilbert his short race has run. 
 
 Picture a world the home of none but such ! 
 
 Beings with human forms and brutish hearts ! 
 
 Still it may be a fault to ask too much, 
 
 And look on all sides for egregious parts. 
 
 For genius must be rare, or must be nought : 
 
 A giant among giants is but one. 
 
 By majesty of sinew or of thought 
 
 The great ones of all centuries have shone. 
 And an heroic purpose few, if any, ever wrought 
 With singler aim than him, who has from us just 
 newly gone. 
 
 From his own pleasures he spar'd much and more 
 To aid the steady tilth of your young mind, 
 And bravely from some cherish'd plans forbore, 
 That your sweet nurture might be unconfin'd. 
 His heart round yours revolv'd ; and he forsook 
 His own aesthetic tastes, to cultivate 
 The common arts of life, and that way shook 
 His strength ; for Love was present to dictate. 
 But then there ever is for such an one 
 A soul of beauty in things most obscure ; 
 And when the tide to turn had well begun, 
 And he felt that his fortune grew secure,
 
 2^2 I 1'ISTLES 
 
 As an Art-lover a new fame half-doubtingly he- 
 won ; 
 
 And in great cities, where I go, who knoweth not 
 Glendwr? 
 
 We have a partnership in the regret, 
 
 That by one thing at least, which such as I 
 
 Prize in our human way, he used to set 
 
 Small store or none ; and our posterity 
 
 May ask, why he was not more closely urg'd 
 
 To leave his endear'd lineaments behind, 
 
 Kre he from our substantial world emergd 
 
 Into that other, where we are all Mind. 
 
 But he thought that we valued him too high, 
 
 And made too much of books and bookish lore : 
 
 "There's things besides," he said : "the earth, the 
 
 sky; 
 The study of the sea and of the shore. 
 And what is it that I have done which can presume 
 
 to vie 
 With workers who all science seek to open and 
 
 explore?" 
 
 I well remember how, a winter's night, 
 
 He talk'd of books and bookmen by the fire, 
 
 And even the kaleidoscopic light 
 
 Serv'd certain new-wean'd notions to inspire.
 
 TO FAUNUS 233 
 
 A couchant pard, a sphynx, a mountain-chain : 
 
 A castle on a hill, a bristled hog : 
 
 These, and how many more, his Active brain 
 
 As with a die stamp'd on the simmering log. 
 
 The transfers from this or that author's mind 
 
 Were coin'd by him into meet form and phrase ; 
 
 " But the full secret of one's art to find, 
 
 One has," quoth he, " to labour all one's days, 
 
 Of thought and nature for our use the forces to 
 unbind ; 
 
 And that is all my gift," he said, "and all my 
 praise. 
 
 " If ' better is the evil that we know 
 Than that we know not,' why may not the good, 
 Which we possess and see, be rated so, 
 Where we now judge by mere loose likelihood ? 
 Our faiths but pages to our wishes are, 
 Such substances as people troubled sleep ; 
 Still most men love themselves enough to care 
 A little, if they can, from death to keep. 
 I must lay down this vesture : but my mind 
 Shall pass beyond our sentient faculty, 
 Somewhere outside the waters and the wind, 
 To a scene of inviolate harmony. 
 
 And what," said he, "if I retravel Britainward to 
 find 
 
 My name a placeman on the roll of that isle's memory '."
 
 234 I PISTLl 
 
 I'aunus, I more impeach my wit than yours, 
 When I own that, in your more boyish years, 
 I was acquainted with some anxious hours, 
 And harbour'd something of a father's fears 
 (For our love had grown up as rich as blood), 
 Thinking how far your intellect and heart, 
 Then dimly germinant, hereafter would 
 Fill up the void, when he might hence depart. 
 Now your name, too, grows freehold. Vet men learn 
 First from myself that whether you would bend 
 Your steps his way, we did not all discern : 
 So hard it is a lovelorn youth to spend. 
 
 Keep your house as it came to you ; but think that 
 fictile urn 
 
 And painted jar owed more to him than they to him 
 could lend. 
 
 II 
 
 TO HENRY HUTH 
 
 Relent, my friend. How can the world afford 
 
 To let such as you are his virtues hoard ? 
 
 O, ere it is too late, awake, and haste 
 
 To make more known your culture and your taste ! 
 
 Is it good so to trust the age to come 
 
 With framing for you your elogium ?
 
 TO HENRY HUTH 235 
 
 Lavish of all that fortune to you lends, 
 
 To help the poor, and to oblige your friends, 
 
 O, deign, if but a little, to impart 
 
 The unmapp'd treasures of your head and heart. 
 
 Shake off that too great shyness, which doth make 
 
 You niggard only, where your fame's at stake ! 
 
 Ill could I bear to hear men name in doubt 
 
 All your great parts — the greatest, perhaps, left out ; 
 
 Or see some uninitiated pen 
 
 Speak of you, as it might of other men. 
 
 While you around you many see who strive 
 
 With moderate gifts to make themselves survive, 
 
 Why should it please you to let us be blind 
 
 To more than half the riches of your mind ? 
 
 It seems like burying treasure in the deep, 
 
 Or dedicating our whole life to sleep, 
 
 If you must die, and leave so few aware, 
 
 How good not only, but how great you are. 
 
 Your intellect and knowledge are, I know, 
 
 Your own ; but to posterity we owe 
 
 Something — you your example, that the way 
 
 Of living well may last beyond our day. 
 
 Of all those who direct the helm of State, 
 
 And by their friends are now accounted great, 
 
 How many we've both seen from nothing rise, 
 
 And by success us and themselves surprise ? 
 
 Such men may thank your too strong love of rest ; 
 
 But are we always thus with second-best
 
 236 EPISTLES 
 
 To be content ? O, come from your repose : 
 
 And all your loftier aptitudes disclose ! 
 
 What is the rank you have to that which ought 
 
 To be yours, if the world were rightly taught, 
 
 Should you consent to draw the veil aside, 
 
 With which you have thought fit yourself to hide ? 
 
 Then we should see, what we ought to have seen, 
 
 Before your years had overstepp'd the mean — 
 
 In the full Senate see you take your seat, 
 
 And at the Council board your equals meet. 
 
 Come, leave the country and your books awhile — 
 
 Those may your leisure intervals beguile — 
 
 Communicate to us some of that store 
 
 Which, as you took from it, would seem the more ; 
 
 Sometimes among the Muses you may sit, 
 
 But give the nation, what was meant for it ! 
 
 I see you gravely smile, and shake your head, 
 
 And say again, what you so oft have said — 
 
 That politics are not for you. Such things 
 
 You leave to those, who pay their court to kings, 
 
 And in the Forum let their tongues run loose — 
 
 To Goschen, Cardwell, and your own friend Bruce. 
 
 This half in earnest, half in jest ; for none 
 
 Has more respect than you for fame well-won, 
 
 For services perform'd, our glory guarded : 
 
 Or loves more dearly to see worth rewarded. 
 
 But all that to our public life belongs, 
 
 All those arts, which draw the applause of throngs,
 
 TO HENRY HUTH 237 
 
 Offend your taste ; for you have train'd your mind 
 To aims more pure and studies more refin'd. 
 Not you the honours of the State would please 
 E'en half so well as freedom and your ease ; 
 Not you the proffer of a garter'd knee 
 Could draw from your illustrious privacy. 
 Your chief ambition is to live in peace, 
 And miseries of others to decrease. 
 You scatter thousands to assuage distress, 
 Unbless'd from pulpit, and unthank'd by press ; 
 Not any is so humble or so poor, 
 But with the highest may approach your door ; 
 You shun the public gaze, nor would you stoop 
 With hunters after place yourself to group. 
 Yet who that knows you cannot witness bear, 
 How true a type of your own time you are ! 
 Fearless, impartial, polite, just, kind : 
 Quick to see good, to faults a little blind ; 
 And that fine tact in you is perfectest, 
 Which can instruct, and seem but to suggest. 
 No friendships are so slowly form'd as yours ; 
 But none, when form'd, more steadily endures. 
 Spare are your commendations, and for few ; 
 But he's prais'd doubly who is prais'd by you !
 
 2$$> EPISTLES 
 
 III 
 
 TO A YOUNG LADY 
 
 I've thought so often on the walk we had, 
 
 When you said, half in jest, you held me mad 
 
 To print my verses — those which I had made 
 
 At such times as my work aside was laid. 
 
 "Why print them?" quoth you. O, those words 
 
 were hard, 
 And crush'd the spirit of a rising bard. 
 If it amus'd a man to write such things, 
 As thus — that Toetry, like birds, had wings ; 
 That girls were goddesses — you had not heard 
 Of any such, you vow'd upon your word — 
 And that nine spinsters on a hillock sit, 
 And with Apollo form the Court of Wit — 
 So far you saw no harm — but then to print ! — 
 This puzzled you. Next came a civil hint 
 At something haply wrong. May-be, I had 
 Of late walk'd much by moonlight, which was bad. 
 To think, when for your sake so much was writ — 
 Ah, there was the great cruelty of it ! — 
 And now, when my coy Muse had imp'd her wing, 
 Abroad to men her little songs to sing, 
 Which she had learn'd to please a private ear, 
 And be rewarded with a smile or tear, 
 

 
 TO A YOUNG LADY 239 
 
 That you should be the first my lines to spurn, 
 Saying, "Why print them?" whisp'ring, "Why not 
 
 burn ? " 
 We rang'd the lanes together arm in arm : 
 We pass'd some whitewashed cottage, then a farm, 
 Which your good father, too well loving bricks, 
 Had rear'd of yore ; and next a group of ricks. 
 Now a scar'd covey rose out of the wheat ; 
 And then a rabbit started at our feet. 
 You pluck'd a dog-rose from the hedge, and said : 
 "What would you give to have been country- 
 bred ? 
 We girls who live here by the mountain-side, 
 What don't we do ? — we hunt, we drive, we ride : 
 We course the otter brass-shod in a rout ; 
 Fish with our brothers' rods, or tickle trout. 
 We have our champion scenery and our hills : 
 Our farms, our flocks, our wind and water mills : 
 Our verdure, foliage, brooks, and, O, our air ! 
 What with all these can you in towns compare ? " 
 "On yonder stile," said I, "let us make two; 
 And we will see what I can say to you. 
 The town and country I should like to see 
 Brought something nearer than they are ; for we 
 Think your pursuits mechanical, while you 
 Despise our quiet culture. So we two 
 Go on, each ever undervaluing each. 
 We of the town profess a higher reach
 
 240 
 
 EPIST I 
 
 In sciences, and larger sympathies 
 
 Willi human progress, and what in us lies" 
 
 You broke in then : " Don't make such mouths and 
 
 eyes ! 
 You talk so fast, you'll presently forget 
 It is no easy-chair on which you sit." 
 I smil'd, and you continued : " Well, we try 
 Our hand a little at philosophy ; 
 Stealing from farm and field what time we may 
 To put our rustic minds in the right way. 
 It seems to me we perfect wonders do — 
 Why, have we not our libraries, like you, 
 And institutes, where men from far and near 
 Come to us in the dead time of the year, 
 Who country audiences know how to hold, 
 By telling news not more than six moons old ? 
 And 'tis our fault, and not their lack of pains, 
 If they don't brush some cobwebs from our brains. 1 
 <; Ah, yes, you help yourselves — the common way— 
 And leave the poor to manage as they may ! 
 Your Radical improvers cast the die, 
 
 And let the toiling million in " Quoth 1 : 
 
 " Better not give them power, than omit 
 The knowledge wanted in well using it." 
 So we went on word-fencing, till the light 
 Turn'd something greyer, as we near'd the night 
 " The day grows old," you said ; " come, help me 
 down "—
 
 TO A YOUNG LADY 24 1 
 
 And we retraced our way toward the town. 
 
 You pleaded for the country all along, 
 
 And thought I did the rural sort a wrong, 
 
 To paint them so one-sided — " And," quoth you, 
 
 " You town-folk have your peccadilloes, too ! " 
 
 Then we compared, your arm again in mine, 
 
 Of town and country life the varying line. 
 
 You hit me hard, as ladies can and will, 
 
 And sang the praises of the country still. 
 
 We quizz'd each other's hobbies : I laugh'd well 
 
 At that big squire you know, that scarce can spell. 
 
 A great landowner he, a grandee quite — 
 
 Only somehow he never learn'd to write ! 
 
 Next you to me : — " And you — and you can't tell 
 
 A tomtit from a golden oriole ! " 
 
 " An oriole ? " — " Yes " — and you (saucy puss !) 
 
 Pointed where one was perch'd not far from us 
 
 On a split rail. You then with girlish glee 
 
 Pursued unpitying your victory. 
 
 A village prodigy you said you knew 
 
 Who had some author you forgot read through. 
 
 Some Latin fellow — Virgil could it be ? — 
 
 You were not sure. Then of a holy clerk 
 
 You had to tell, who had in hand a work 
 
 Shewing that cock-fights were to Moses known, 
 
 And tracing them so from the Patriarchs down ; 
 
 Another, truer to his calling, stood 
 
 Sponsor to forty volumes on the Flood. 
 
 Q
 
 242 I IMS T I ES 
 
 Then there were Readings at the Rooms at times ; 
 
 And had not our friend Corbet written rhymes? 
 
 The country had its learning, like the city, 
 
 And at a pinch e'en Rurals could be witty. 
 
 This talk took from the distance, and anon 
 
 Your good lord's chateau through the foliage shone ; 
 
 A tract of corn (sun-gilded) lay between, 
 
 And lent a mellow richness to the scene. 
 
 We made a treaty, ere we reach'd the gate, 
 
 That you the town should swear to tolerate, 
 
 Till you had dipp'd a little into what 
 
 It had just of those things which you had not, 
 
 While I contracted, of my part, to come 
 
 More often Wales-ward, where in your new home 
 
 (The master willing) I should range, while you 
 
 The honours of a country-house could do — 
 
 Your country-house, by which the storied Dee 
 
 Flows silently and swiftly to the sea. 
 
 I fell into the snare (poor hodman-blind !) 
 
 Pack'd up my things — came down to you : to find 
 
 The town had joined the country, for your sake 
 
 Of their best gifts a Paradise to make — 
 
 Culture with freedom, plenty without waste : 
 
 The books I lov'd, the sports which were your taste.
 
 TO CLYTUS 243 
 
 IV 
 
 TO CLYTUS 
 
 When I depart from England, boy, one day, 
 Not like the birds, but never to return, 
 I bid you not for me too much to mourn. 
 My life its shadows has both known and felt ; 
 But I have seen them into vapour melt, 
 And over grief I hold a conqueror's sway. 
 
 If you and I part somewhere in the spring, 
 I shall have liv'd to see another year, 
 And Earth some of her new embroidery wear. 
 The primrose will have peep'd above the snow, 
 And birds will make me music, as I go. 
 But cause no sauncing-bell for me to ring. 
 
 Or if about the ripe age of the leaves 
 It is that my frail brain shall cease to throb, 
 Weep not, as if Death had done wrong to rob 
 Clytus of me : my work will perhaps be done ; 
 And he in this poor world his crown has won, 
 Who something of himself from Fate retrieves.
 
 244 EPI8TLE8 
 
 Lay mc not, Clytus, in the base ted earth, 
 
 Which men dig tor their houses, that I may, 
 As I grow to be parcel of the clay, 
 Go with my fellow-bricks to piece a wall, 
 Or form the angle of some great thane's hall, 
 Helping to echo back the unheard mirth. 
 
 Lay me not where above my unarm'd head 
 Regardless wayfarers may plant their heel : 
 I might or I might not the pressure feel : 
 ( For darker is the grave than mapless lands) 
 Tend me in my last hours with thine own hands, 
 And put me softly down into my bed. 
 
 Leave me not in a rude and distant land, 
 Where all the life of me would be unknown, 
 But bring me back to sleep among my own. 
 Not where the gale swings spices to and fro : 
 Not in dark regions of unmolten snow : 
 Is it that I should wish my tomb to stand. 
 
 But let my bones repose beneath the turf 
 
 In some still upland spot, where we have walk'd, 
 
 May-be, together formerly, and talk'd
 
 TO CLYTUS 245 
 
 Of past and present, and what was to be : 
 Just near enough to the resounding sea, 
 To catch the murmur of the distant surf. 
 
 Think not of me, as I seem'd, when I died, 
 A slender salvage of what I had been : 
 But try to recollect the frequent scene 
 (If memory of me so long endures), 
 When in mad-merry glee my years with yours 
 At marbles, ball, or blindman hotly vied. 
 
 Did I not for your sake grow young again, 
 And often let my serious labours wait 
 To make one in your sports, early and late ? 
 I, who bore the reproach of being told 
 That I to all alike was something cold, 
 To be a child with you did not disdain. 
 
 My learning was not costly ; but I strove, 
 
 By using a new kind of alchemy, 
 
 Not to dishonour those, who now low lie. 
 
 But I have not done more (believe) for you, 
 
 Than my sweet parents would have wish'd to do, 
 
 Had but their fortune answer'd to their love.
 
 246 BPISTLBS 
 
 My life, like some wide-opcn'd book, has lain 
 Before you, since you were a tender thing, 
 Innocent of the name of suffering. 
 Judge me by what you of your own self know, 
 Not by reports, which to your ear may flow 
 From lips, which wrought me (living) untold pain. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 
 Edinburgh and London
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 Foolscap Zvo, 1 06 pages 
 
 MONTAGU AND CO. 
 
 An Original Comedy 
 in four acts
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 376 501 3 
 
 Uftiv "'' JA 
 
 LIBRARY
 
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 uMBr 
 
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