But dreader sight, could such be seen,

His inward mind did lie,

Whose long-subjected humanness

Gave out its lion cry,

And fiercely rent its tenement

In a mortal agony.

I tell you, friends, had you heard his wail,
'T would haunt you in court and mart,
And in merry feast until you set

Your cup down to depart—
That weeping wild of a reckless child
From a proud man's broken heart.

O broken heart, O broken vow,
That wore so proud a feature!
God, grasping as a thunderbolt

The man's rejected nature,

Smote him therewith i' the presence high
Of his so worshipped earth and sky
That looked on all indifferently –

A wailing human creature.

A human creature found too weak
To bear his human pain-

(May Heaven's dear grace have spoken peace

To his dying heart and brain !) For when they came at dawn of day To lift the lady's corpse away,

Her bier was holding twain.

They dug beneath the kirkyard grass,

For both one dwelling deep;

To which, when years had mossed the stone, Sir Roland brought his little son

To watch the funeral heap.

And when the happy boy would rather

Turn upward his blithe eyes to see

The wood-doves nodding from the tree,

"Nay, boy, look downward,” said his father,
"Upon this human dust asleep :
And hold it in thy constant ken
That God's own unity compresses
(One into one) the human many,
And that his everlastingness is

The bond which is not loosed by any :
That thou and I this law must keep,
If not in love, in sorrow then,—
Though smiling not like other men,
Still, like them we must weep."

A VISION OF POETS.

O Sacred Essence, lighting me this hour,
How may I lightly stile thy great power?

Echo.

Power.

Power! but of whence? under the greenwood spraye
Or liv'st in Heaven? saye.

Echo.

In Heavens aye.
In Heavens aye! tell, may I it obtayne
By alms, by fasting, prayer,—by paine?
Echo.

Show me the paine, it shall be undergone :
I to mine end will still go on.

By paine.

Echo.

Go on.

Britannia's Pastorals.

A POET could not sleep aright,

For his soul kept up too much light

Under his eyelids for the night.

And thus he rose disquieted

With sweet rhymes ringing through his head,
And in the forest wanderëd

Where, sloping up the darkest glades,
The moon had drawn long colonnades
Upon whose floor the verdure fades

To a faint silver, pavement fair

The antique wood-nymphs scarce would dare
To foot-print o'er, had such been there,—

Would rather sit by breathlessly,
With fear in their large eyes, to see
The consecrated sight. But HE

The poet who, with spirit-kiss
Familiar, had long claimed for his
Whatever earthly beauty is,

Who also in his spirit bore
A beauty passing the earth's store,
Walked calmly onward evermore.

His aimless thoughts in metre went,
Like a babe's hand without intent
Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument :

Nor jarred it with his humour as,
With a faint stirring of the grass,
An apparition fair did pass.

He might have feared, another time,
But all things fair and strange did chime
With his thoughts then, as rhyme to rhyme.

An angel had not startled him,
Alighted from heaven's burning rim
To breathe from glory in the Dim;

Much less a lady riding slow
Upon a palfrey white as snow,
And smooth as a snow-cloud could go.

Full upon his she turned her face,
"What ho, sir poet! dost thou pace
Our woods at night in ghostly chace

"Of some fair Dryad of old tales
Who chants between the nightingales
And over sleep by song prevails?"

She smiled; but he could see arise
Her soul from far adown her eyes,
Prepared as if for sacrifice.

She looked a queen who seemeth gay
From royal grace alone.
"Now, nay,"
He answered, "slumber passed away,

"Compelled by instincts in my head.
That I should see to-night, instead
Of a fair nymph, some fairer Dread.”

She looked up quickly to the sky
And spake: "The moon's regality
Will hear no praise; she is as I.

"She is in heaven, and I on earth;
This is my kingdom: I come forth
To crown all poets to their worth."

He brake in with a voice that mourned; "To their worth, lady? They are scorned By men they sing for, till inurned.

"To their worth? Beauty in the mind Leaves the hearth cold, and love-refined Ambitions make the world unkind.

"The boor who ploughs the daisy down, The chief whose mortgage of renown, Fixed upon graves, has bought a crown—

"Both these are happier, more approved Than poets-why should I be moved In saying, both are more beloved?"

"The south can judge not of the north,"
She resumed calmly; "I come forth
To crown all poets to their worth.

Yea, verily, to anoint them all
With blessed oils which surely shall
Smell sweeter as the ages fall."

"As sweet," the poet said, and rung
A low sad laugh, 66 as flowers are, sprung
Out of their graves when they die young ·

"As sweet as window-eglantine,

Some bough of which, as they decline,
The hired nurse gathers at their sign:

“As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud
Which the gay Roman maidens sewed
For English Keats, singing aloud."

The lady answered, "Yea, as sweet!

The things thou namest being complete
In fragrance, as I measure it.

"Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell

Of him who having lived, dies well;

And wholly sweet the asphodel

"Stirred softly by that foot of his,

When he treads brave on all that is,

Into the world of souls, from this.

"Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door Of tearless Death, and even before :

Sweet, consecrated evermore.

66

What, dost thou judge it a strange thing That poets, crowned for vanquishing,

Should bear some dust from out the ring?