Leave us at least, if not the things we were, At least consentient to the thing we be; Not hapless doomed to loathe the forms we bear, And senseful roll in senseless savagery; For surely cursed above all cursed are we, And surely this the bitterest of ill; To feel the old aspirings fair and free Become blind motions of a powerless will Through swine-like frames dispersed to swine-like issues still. But make us men again, for that thou mays't!— Yea, make us men, Enchantress, and restore To fair embodiments of men once more ; Yea, by all men that ever woman bore ;— Yea, een by him hereafter born in pain, Shall draw sustainment from thy bosom's core, And find its like therein,-make thou us men again! Make thou us men again,—if men but groping That dark Hereafter which th' Olympians keep; Make thou us men again,—if men but hoping Behind death's doors security of sleep ; For yet to laugh is somewhat, and to weep ; To feel delight of living, and to plough The salt-blown acres of the shoreless deep ;- Foul faces to foul earth, and yearn-as we do now! So they in speech unsyllabled. But She, The fair-tressed Goddess, born to be their bane, Uplifting straight her wand of ivory, Compelled them groaning to the styes again; Where they in hopeless bitterness were fain And tear the troughs in impotence of pain,— Divine Odysseus stood,-as Hermes told of yore. TO A GREEK GIRL. (AFTER A WEEK OF LANDOR'S " HELLENICS.") WITH breath of thyme and bees that hum, Across the years you seem to come,— And wind-blown brows unfilleted; A girlish shape that slips the bud In lines of unspoiled symmetry; A girlish shape that stirs the blood With pulse of Spring, Autonoë! Where'er you pass,-where'er you go, I hear the pebbly rillet flow; Where'er you go,—where'er you pass, You bring blithe airs where'er you tread,- You wake in me a Pan not dead,— Not wholly dead !-Autonoë! How sweet with you on some green sod To wreathe the rustic garden-god; How sweet beneath the chesnut's shade With you to weave a basket-braid; To watch across the stricken chords Your rosy-twinkling fingers flee; Or woo you in soft woodland words, |