And make leap up with joy the beauteous head

Of Prosperine, among whose crowned hair

Are flowers, first open'd on Sicilian air, And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.

O easy access to the hearer's grace

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!

For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, She knew the Dorian water's gush divine, She knew each lily white which Enna yields,

Each rose with blushing face; She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.

But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!

Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd!

And we should tease her with our plaint in vain.

Well! wind-dispers'd and vain the words will be,

Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour

In the old haunt, and find our treetopp'd hill!

Who, if not I, for questing here hath

not I?

But many a dingle on the loved hill-side,

With thorns once studded, old, whiteblossom'd trees,

Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried,

High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises,

Hath since our day put by The coronals of that forgotten time. Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,

And only in the hidden brookside gleam Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door,

Above the locks, above the boating throng,

Unmoor'd our skiff, when, through the
Wyntham flats,

I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night,
Yet, happy omen, hail!

Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale (For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep

The morningless and unawakening sleep

Under the flowery oleanders pale),

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there! Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,

These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,

That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him.

To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,

Wandering with the great Mother's train divine

(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,

I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see!)

Within a folding of the Apennine,

Thou hearest the immortal strains of old. Putting his sickle to the perilous grain

In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,

For thee the Lityerses song again Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;

Sings his Sicilian fold,

His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes;

And how a call celestial round him rang And heavenward from the fountainbrink he sprang,

And all the marvel of the golden skies.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here

Sole in these fields; yet will I not despair;

Despair I will not, while I yet descry 'Neath the soft canopy of English air

That lonely Tree against the western sky

Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,
Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee!
Fields where soft sheep from cages pull
the hay,

Woods with anemones in flower till
May,

Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,
Shy to illumine; and I seek it too.
This does not come with houses or with

gold,

With place, with honour, and a flattering

crew;

'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold.

But the smooth-slipping weeks Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;

Out of the heed of mortals he is gone, He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;

Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wert bound,

Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour;

Men gave thee nothing, but this happy quest,

If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,

If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.

And this rude Cumner ground,

Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet

fields,

CROUCH'D on the pavement close by Belgrave Square

A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet
were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,

Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied

Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied. The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;

She will not ask of aliens, but of friends, Of sharers in a common human fate.

She turns from that cold succour, which attends

The unknown little from the unknowing

great,

And points us to a better time than ours.

ANTI-DESPERATION [1867.]

LONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of

man,

How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare! Christ, some one says, was human as we are;

No judge eyes us from heaven, our sin to scan;

We live no more, when we have done our span.

'Well, then, for Christ,' thou answerest, 'who can care?

From sin, which heaven records not, why forbear?

Live we like brutes our life without a plan!'

So answerest thou; but why not rather say: 'Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high!

Sits there no judge in heaven, our sin to see?

Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-

mell,

Is it to feel our strength-
Not our bloom only, but our strength
decay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,

Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be!

'Tis not to have our life

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr'd;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever

THE LAST WORD
[1867.]

CREEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast;
Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!

Geese are swans and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still!

They out-talk'd thee, hissed thee, tore thee.
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and pass'd,
Hotly charged - and broke at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall.

A WISH [1867.]

I ASK not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favour'd sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep
Tearless, when of my death he hears;
Let those who will, if any, weep!
There are worse plagues on earth than

tears.

I ask but that my death may find
The freedom to my life denied;
Ask but the folly of mankind,
Then, then at last, to quit my side.

Spare me the whispering, crowded room,
The friends who come, and gape, and go;
The ceremonious air of gloom -
All, that makes death a hideous show!

Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.

Nor fetch, to take the accustom'd toll
Of the poor sinner bound for death,
His brother doctor of the soul,
To canvass with official breath

The future and its viewless things -
That undiscover'd mystery

Which one who feels death's winnowing wings

Must needs read clearer, sure, than he!

Bring none of these! but let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more before my dying eyes

Bathed in the sacred dews of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread-
The world which was ere I was born.
The world which lasts when I am dead.

Which never was the friend of one,
Nor promised love it could not give,
But lit for all its generous sun,
And lived itself, and made us live.

There let me gaze, till I become
In soul with what I gaze on wed!
To feel the universe my home;
To have before my mind - instead