And I soon managed to find
Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind

And be safe in my corset-lacing.

No harm! It was not my fault

If you never turned your eye's tail up, As I shook upon E in alt,

Or ran the chromatic scale up:

For spring bade the sparrows pair,

And the boys and girls gave guesses,
And stalls in our street looked rare
With bulrush and watercresses.
Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power

Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

I did look, sharp as a lynx,

(And yet the memory rankles) When models arrived, some minx Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

But I think I gave you as good! 'That foreign fellow, who can know How she pays, in a playful mood,

For his tuning her that piano?'

Could you say so, and never say

'Suppose we join hands and fortunes, And I fetch her from over the way, Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes ?'

No, no you would not be rash,

Nor I rasher and something over:
You've to settle yet Gibson's hash,
And Grisi yet lives in clover.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I'm queen myself at bals-paré,
I've married a rich old lord,

And you're dubbed knight and an R.A.

Each life's unfulfilled, you see;

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep. laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy.

And nobody calls you a dunce,

And people suppose me clever: This could but have happened once, And we missed it, lost it for ever.

A LIKENESS [1864.]

SOME people hang portraits up
In a room where they dine or sup:
And the wife clinks tea-things under,
And her cousin, he stirs his cup,
Asks, 'Who was the lady, I wonder?'
'Tis a daub John bought at a sale,'

Quoth the wife, looks black as thunder: 'What a shade beneath her nose! Snuff-taking, I suppose,

Adds the cousin, while John's corns ail.

Or else, there's no wife in the case,
But the portrait 's queen of the place,
Alone mid the other spoils

Of youth, masks, gloves and foils,
And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine,
And the long whip, the tandem-lasher,
And the cast from a fist ('not, alas! mine,
But my master's, the Tipton Slasher'),
And the cards where pistol-balls mark

ace,

And a satin shoe used for cigar-case,
And the chamois-horns ('shot in the
Chablais')

And prints Rarey drumming on Cruiser,
And Sayers, our champion, the bruiser,
And the little edition of Rabelais:
Where a friend, with both hands in his
pockets.

May saunter up close to examine it,
And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb.
in it.

'But the eyes are half out of their sockets; That hair 's not so bad, where the gloss

is,

But they've made the girl's nose a proboscis :

Jane Lamb, that we danced with at Vichy!
What, is not she Jane? Then, who is she?'

All that I own is a print,
An etching, a mezzotint;
'Tis a study, a fancy, a fiction,
Yet a fact (take my conviction)
Because it has more than a hint
Of a certain face, I never
Saw elsewhere touch or trace of
In women I've seen the face of:
Just an etching, and, so far, clever.
I keep my prints, an imbroglio,
Fifty in one portfolio.
When somebody tries my claret,
We turn round chairs to the fire,
Chirp over days in a garret,
Chuckle o'er increase of salary,
Taste the good fruits of our leisure,
Talk about pencil and lyre,
And the National Portrait Gallery:
Then I exhibit my treasure.

After we've turned over twenty,

And the debt of wonder my crony owes
Is paid to my Marc Antonios,
He stops me -'Festina lentè!
What's that sweet thing there, the etching?'
How my waistcoat-strings want stretching,
How my cheeks grow red as tomatoes,
How my heart leaps! But hearts, after
leaps, ache.

No. FOR I'll save it! Seven years since, I passed through Paris, stopped a day To see the baptism of your Prince;

Saw, made my bow, and went my way: Walking the heat and headache off,

I took the Seine-side, you surmise, Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff, Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies, So sauntered till-what met my eyes? Only the Doric little Morgue!

The dead-house where you show your drowned:

Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,

Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.

One pays one's debt in such a case;

I plucked up heart and entered,

stalked,

Keeping a tolerable face

Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked :

Let them! No Briton 's to be balked!

First came the silent gazers; next,

A screen of glass, we're thankful for; Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text, The three men who did most abhor Their life in Paris yesterday,

So killed themselves: and now, enthroned Each on his copper couch, they lay

Fronting me, waiting to be owned.

I thought, and think, their sin's atoned. Poor men, God made, and all for that! The reverence struck me; o'er each head Religiously was hung its hat,

Each coat dripped by the owner's bed, Sacred from touch: each had his berth, His bounds, his proper place of rest, Who last night tenanted on earth

Some arch, where twelve such slept

abreast,

Unless the plain asphalte seemed best.

And this why, he was red in vain,
Or black,
poor fellow that is blue!
What fancy was it, turned your brain?
Oh, women were the prize for you!
Money gets women, cards and dice

Get money, and ill luck gets just
The copper couch and one clear nice
Cool squirt of water o'er your bust,
The right thing to extinguish lust!
It's wiser being good than bad;

It's safer being meek than fierce: It 's fitter being sane than mad.

My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched: That what began best, can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.

O LYRIC LOVE

[FROM THE RING AND THE BOOK, END OF
BOOK I.]
[1868.]

O LYRIC Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire,
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart —
When the first summons from the dark-
ling earth

Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched

their blue,

And bared them of the glory to drop down,

To toil for man, to suffer or to die. This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?

Hail then, and harken from the realms of help!

Never may I commence my song, my due To God who best taught song by gift of thee,

Except with bent head and beseeching hand

That still, despite the distance and the dark, What was, again may be; some interchange Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought,

Some benediction anciently thy smile: - Never conclude, but raising hand and head

I lay and looked at the sun,

The noon-sun looked at me:
Between us two, no one
Live creature, that I could see.

Yes! There came floating by
Me, who lay floating too,
Such a strange butterfly!

Creature as dear as new:
Because the membraned wings
So wonderful, so wide,
So sun-suffused, were things
Like soul and naught beside.

A handbreadth overhead!

All of the sea my own, It owned the sky instead; Both of us were alone.

I never shall join its flight,

For, naught buoys flesh in air. If it touch the sea-good night! Death sure and swift waits there.

Can the insect feel the better

For watching the uncouth play Of limbs that slip the fetter, Pretend as they were not clay?

Undoubtedly I rejoice

That the air comports so well With a creature which had the choice Of the land once. Who can tell?

What if a certain soul

Which early slipped its sheath, And has for its home the whole Of heaven, thus look beneath, Thus watch one who, in the world, Both lives and likes life's way, Nor wishes the wings unfurled

That sleep in the worm, they say?

But sometimes when the weather
Is blue, and warm waves tempt
To free one's self of tether,
And try a life exempt

From worldly noise and dust,

In the sphere which overbrims With passion and thought, — why, just Unable to fly, one swims!

By passion and thought upborne,
One smiles to one's self- "They fare
Scarce better, they need not scorn
Our sea, who live in the air!"

Emancipate through passion
And thought, with sea for sky,
We substitute, in a fashion,

For heaven — poetry:

Which sea, to all intent,
Gives flesh such noon-disport
As a finer element

Affords the spirit-sort.

Whatever they are, we seem: Imagine the thing they know; All deeds they do, we dream; Can heaven be else but so?

And meantime, yonder streak
Meets the horizon's verge;
That is the land, to seek

If we tire or dread the surge:

Land the solid and safe

To welcome again (confess!) When, high and dry, we chafe . The body, and don the dress.

Does she look, pity, wonder

At one who mimics flight, Swims heaven above, sea under, Yet always earth in sight?

THE HOUSEHOLDER
[EPILOGUE TO FIFINE AT THE FAIR]
[1872.]

SAVAGE I was sitting in my house, late, lone:

Dreary, weary with the long day's work: Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone: Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like

a Turk;

When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry, Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!

"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I:

"I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.

"Never mind, hie away from this old house

Every crumbling brick embrowned with sin and shame!

Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse!

Let them every devil of the night-lay claim,

Make and mend, or rap and rend, for me! Good-by!

God be their guard from disturbance at their glee,

Till, crash, comes down the carcass in a heap!" quoth I:

"Nay, but there's a decency required!" quoth She.

"Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, days, nights!

All the neighbor-talk with man and maid - such men!

All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, window-sights:

All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof and then,

All the fancies

Who were they had

leave, dared try Darker arts that almost struck despair in me?

If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I:

"And was I so better off up there?" quoth She.

"Help and get it over! Reunited to his wife

(How draw up the paper lets the parishpeople know?)

Lies M. or N., departed from this life, Day the this or that, month and year the so and so.

What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, verse? Try!

Affliction sore long time he bore, or, what is it to be?

Till God did please to grant him ease. Do end!" quoth I:

"I end with Love is all, and Death is nought!" quoth She.

MARTIN RELPH

My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago, On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as snow, Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,

And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the reason - so!

If I last as long as Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:

But God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,

As coward, coward I call him him, yes, him! Away from me!

Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!

What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no tongue? People have urged, "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!

You were taken aback poor boy," they urge,
"no time to regain your wits:
Besides it had maybe cost your life." Ay,
there is the cap which fits!

So, cap me, the coward, thus! No fear!
A cuff on the brow does good:
The feel of it hinders a worm inside which
bores at the brain for food.

See now, there certainly seems excuse: for
a moment, I trust, dear friends,
The fault was but folly, no fault of mine,
or if mine, I have made amends!

For, every day that is first of May, on the hilltop, here stand I,

Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish the reason why,

When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No fool, friends, since the bite Of a worm inside is worse to bear; pray God I have balked him quite!

I'll tell you. Certainly much excuse! It came of the way they cooped Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling because tight-hooped By the red-coats round us villagers all: they meant we should see the sight And take the example,-see, not speak, for speech was the Captain's right.

"You clowns on the slope, beware!" cried he: "This woman about to die Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance as play the spy. Henceforth who meddle with matters of

state above them perhaps will learn That peasants should stick to their ploughtail, leave to the King the King's con

cern.

"Here's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between King George and his foes: What call has a man of your kind much

less, a woman to interpose? Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, not foes so much the worse! The many and loyal should keep themselves unmixed with the few perverse.

"Is the counsel hard to follow? I gave it you plainly a month ago,

And where was the good? The rebels have learned just all that they need to know.

Not a month since in we quietly marched : a week, and they had the news, From a list complete of our rank and file to a note of our caps and shoes.

"All about all we did and all we were doing and like to do!

Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who wrote it, too.

Some of you men look black enough, but the milk-white face demure Betokens the finger foul with ink: 'tis a woman who writes, be sure!

"Is it 'Dearie, how much I miss your

mouth!'-good natural stuff, she pens? Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of

course with talk about cocks and hens, How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our creeper which came to grief Through the frost, we feared, is twining

afresh round casement in famous leaf.'

"But all for a blind! She soon glides

frank into 'Horrid the place is grown With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we may call our own: And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and lodging will be to seek For the second Company sure to come 'tis whispered) on Monday week.'

"And so to the end of the chapter! There! The murder, you see, was out: Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought about! Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no sign: But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools malign!

"So, I gave her a chance, despatched posthaste a message to Vincent Parkes Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one of the King's own clerks, Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close by where the rebels camp: A sort of lawyer, just the man to betray our sort the scamp!

"If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff it looks, And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,

Come quick,' said I, 'and in person prove you are each of you clear of crime, Or martial law must take its course: this day next week 's the time!'

"Next week is now: does he come? Not

he! Clean gone, our clerk, in a trice! He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no need of a warning twice! His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the noose still, here she stands To pay for her fault. 'T is an ugly job: but soldiers obey commands. "And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance share The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let fools beware! Look black, if you please, but keep hands white and, above all else, keep wivesOr sweethearts or what they may be-from

ink! Not a word now, on your lives!" Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face the brute With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes to suit! He was muddled with wine, they say: more

like, he was out of his wits with fear; He had but a handful of men, that 's true, a riot might cost him dear. And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.

I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 't was his angel stretched a hand To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our church-aisle stand.

I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,

No face within which she missed without, no questions and no replies — "Why did you leave me to die?"-"Because" . . . Oh, fiends, too soon you grin

At merely a moment of hell, like that-such heaven as hell ended in!

Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.

Those heaped on the hill were blind as

dumb, for, of all eyes, only mine Looked over the heads of the foremost

rank. Some fell on their knees in prayer,

Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception there.

That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:

I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the others stoop!