We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when 445 we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. 450 We no longer approximate in our behaviour to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilised society. 455 Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way; and there were tender fibres 460 in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie's fondling; so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved: 465 he actually began to kiss her in return, and say 'Don't cry, then, Magsie eat a bit o' cake.' here, Maggie's sobs began to subside, 470 and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows and noses 475 together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies. 'Come along, Magsie, and have tea,' said Tom at last, when there 480 was no more cake except what was down-stairs. So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Maggie was trotting with her own fishing-rod in one hand and a handle of the basket 485 in the other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Tom was good to her. She had told Tom, 490 however, that she should like him to put the worms on the hook for her, although she accepted his word when he assured her that worms couldn't feel (it was Tom's private 495 opinion that it didn't much matter if they did). He knew all about worms, and fish, and those things; and what birds were mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and which 500 way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowledge was very wonderful much more difficult than remembering what was in the books; 505 and she was rather in awe of Tom's superiority, for he was the only person who called her knowledge 'stuff,' and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of 510 opinion that Maggie was a silly little thing; all girls were silly they couldn't throw a stone so as to hit anything, couldn't do anything with a pocket-knife, and were frightened 515 at frogs. Still he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong. 520 They were on their way to the Round Pool Round Pool that wonderful pool, which the floods had made a long while ago: no one knew how deep it was; and it was mysterious, too, 625 that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old 530 favourite spot always heightened Tom's good-humour, and he spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious basket and d 535 prepared their tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Maggie thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones to Tom's. 540 But she had forgotten all about the fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Tom said, in a loud whisper, 'Look, look, Maggie!' and came running to prevent her 545 from snatching her line away. Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench 550 bouncing on the grass. Tom was excited. 'O Magsie! you little duck! Empty the basket.' Maggie was not conscious of un555 usual merit, but it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she 660 listened to the light dipping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whisperings also. Maggie thought it 565 would make a very nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till Tom told her, but she liked fishing very much. 570 It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them: they would only get bigger 575 and not go to school, and it would always be like the holiday; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming the great chest580 nut-tree under which they played at houses their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, 585 which she forgot and dropped afterwards above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come 590 up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were 595 at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot of the globe; and Maggie, when she read about Christiana passing 'the river over which there is no bridge,' always saw the Floss between 600 the green pastures by the Great Ash. Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always 606 make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again 610 every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows the same redbreasts 615 that we used to call 'God's birds', because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved be- 620 cause it is known? the The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellowbrown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star- 625 flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broadpetalled blossoms, could ever thrill 630 such deep and delicate fibres within the subtle inextricable associations me as the home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered birdnotes, this sky with its fitful bright635 ness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, 640 the language that is laden with all TH the fleeting hours of our childhood THOMAS HOOD. "HOMAS HOOD (1799-1845) was born in London, as the son of a Scotch bookseller. He became apprenticed to a merchant and then to an engraver; but he preferred the career of a journalist and poet. All through his life he had to struggle against ill-health and money difficulties; and, after the failure of his publisher (1834), he was even obliged to retire for some years to the Continent (Coblentz and Ostend). Five years after his return he died of consumption, only forty-six years old. Hood edited, started, or contributed to, several periodicals, and wrote a great deal of serious and humorous poetry. To his contemporaries he was chiefly the poet of the grotesque and the humorous, though he usually blended his mirth with pathos, as in the satirical tale of Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg, the longest and best of his serio-comic poems. But with the present generation his fame rests almost entirely on his lyrics of a serious cast, such as The Dream of Eugene Aram (1829), The Death-Bed, the song of I Remember, I Remember, and The Haunted House (1844). By far the most popular of his poems are the pathetic Song of the Shirt (1843) and The Bridge of Sighs (1844), which claim special notice as the first distinct poetical utterances of the newroused democratic interest in social problems. 650 villa Farringford', near Freshwater, Isle of Wight, and resided there for the rest of his life. Only the summer months he used to pass at his other country-house called Aldworth, near Haslemere, Surrey, I which he built in 1868. His immense popularity found official recognition, Queen Victoria making him Poet Laureate in 1850 and conferring a baronetcy upon him in 1884. He died quietly at Aldworth in his eighty-fourth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Tennyson showed his poetic talent remarkably early: the Poems by Two Brothers (1826) appeared when he was seventeen, and before he left the university, he brought out the Poems, chiefly Lyrical (1830), which, though applauded by his friends, were only coolly received by the public. The Poems of 1842, however, found general recognition, and established his place among the great poets of England. His earlier poems, written under the influence of Keats, are more remarkable for a rich pictorial beauty in words than for depth of thought, which only gradually came to diffuse his poetry. He was a consummate artist, both in phraseology and in versification, and as a master of blank verse he is only inferior to Milton. Though essentially a lyrical poet, he succeeded also in epic poetry, and, to some extent, also in the drama. The great versatility of his genius is also conspicuous in the wide range and variety of his subject-matter. Like his master Keats, he combined an interest in classical mythology with a love for mediæval legend. The Lotos-Eaters (1832), Enone (1832), Ulysses (1842), Tithonus (1860) are his highest achievements in investing Greek fables with modern thought and feeling. His romantic sympathies are best brought out in his numerous poems on the Welsh Arthurian legends, as he found them told in Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (ab. 1470). Such poems are The Lady of Shalott (1832), Morte d'Arthur (1842), Sir Galahad (1842), Sir Launcelot Part I. and Queen Guinevere (1842), and, above all, the wonderful series of twelve stories on the Fall of King Arthur and his Table Round, collected under the title of Idylls of the King (1859-85), to which, by an after-thought, he unfortunately imputed an allegorical meaning. As with the past, Tennyson had also warm sympathies with the life and problems of modern times. Of contemporary village life he drew idyllic pictures in such exquisitely simple pastorals as Dora (1842), The Gardener's Daughter (1842), and the extremely popular Enoch Arden (1864). Several short pieces in Lincolnshire dialect, as Northern Farmer, Old Style (1864), Northern Farmer, New Style (1869), The Northern Cobbler (1880), give vivid dramatic character-sketches of Lincolnshire village types. Melancholy scenes of social life are powerfully treated in Locksley Hall (1886), Aylmer's Field (1864), and Rizpah (1880). The problem of the emancipation of women is the basis of a serio-comic love-tale, The Princess (1847). And a social undercurrent we have also in Maud (1855), which is a psychological study of the various moods of a passionate character, founded upon a romantic love-story. A keen patriotism inspired the Laureate with noble national lyrics at the death of Wellington (Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington 1852), as well as during the Crimean war (The Charge of the Light Brigade 1854), and on other occasions. Moral and religious questions are raised in The Two Voices (1842), Crossing the Bar (1889), and in the exquisite collection of elegies on the death of his friend Hallam († 1833), which were mainly written between 1833 and 1845 and were published under the title of In Memoriam in 1850. In his later years, from 1874-1892, he wrote seven plays; but, though several of them were brought out on the stage, only one, the historical tragedy on Becket (1884), the Chancellor of Henry II., will probably rank among the poet's greater work. THE LADY OF SHALOTT. [From Poems (1832)] On either side the river lie sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; |