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
These grovelling shapes, degraded and debased

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,
O'er whom thy face yet kindly shall remain,

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 ;-
Better,-yea better far all these than bow

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
To rend the oaken woodwork as before,

And tear the troughs in impotence of pain,—
Not knowing, they, that even at the door

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,—
Across the years with nymph-like head,

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,
There comes a gladness on the grass;

You bring blithe airs where'er you tread,-
Blithe airs that blow from down and sea;

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,
With woodland pipe, Autonoë!

In vain,-in vain! The years divide :

Where Thamis rolls a murky tide,

I sit and fill my painful reams,

And see you only in my dreams ;—

A vision, like Alcestis, brought

From under-lands of Memory,

A dream of Form in days of Thought,