It may be, for her own dear sake, but this,
She seems a part of those fresh days to me;
For, in the dust and drouth of London life,
She moves among my visions of the lake,
While the prime swallow dips his wing, or then
While the gold-lily blows, and overhead

The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag.

то

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS.

"Cursed be he that moves my bones."

Shakspeare's Epitaph.

You might have won the Poet's name,
If such be worth the winning now,
And gained a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim ;

But

you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Through troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice;

And

you have missed the irreverent doom Of those that wear the Poet's crown; Hereafter neither knave nor clown

Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die,

Nor leave his music as of old,

But round him, ere he scarce be cold,
Begins the scandal and the cry:

"Proclaim the faults he would not show;
Break lock and seal; betray the trust;
Keep nothing sacred; 't is but just
The many-headed beast should know."

Ah, shameless! for he did but sing

A song that pleased us from its worth;
No public life was his on earth,
No blazoned statesman he, nor king.

He gave the people of his best;

His worst he kept, his best he gave.

My Shakspeare's curse on clown and knave

Who will not let his ashes rest!

Who make it seem more sweet to be

The little life of bank and brier,
The bird that pipes his lone desire
And dies unheard within his tree,

Than he that warbles long and loud
And drops at Glory's temple-gates,
For whom the carrion vulture waits
To tear his heart before the crowd!

TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE

ILLYRIAN Woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneïan pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there :

And trust me while I turned the page,
And tracked you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found

My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever poured

And glistened, — here and there alone

The broad-limbed Gods at randon thrown

A glimmering shoulder under gloom Of cavern pillars; on the swell The silver lily heaved and fell; And many a slope was rich in bloom,

From him that on the mountain lea By dancing rivulets fed his flocks, To him who sat upon the rocks, And fluted to the morning sea.