For this is love's nobility,

Not to scatter bread and gold,

Goods and raiment bought and sold,
But to hold fast his simple sense,
And speak the speech of innocence,
And with hand, and body, and blood,
To make his bosom-counsel good:
For he that feeds men, serveth few,
He serves all, who dares be true.

141

THE APOLOGY.

THINK me not unkind and rude, That I walk alone in grove and glen;

I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,

For the idle flowers I brought;

Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,

But 'tis figured in the flowers,

Was never secret history,

But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

Which I gather in a song.

MERLIN.

I.

Thy trivial harp will never please

Or fill my craving ear;

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,

Free, peremptory, clear.

No jingling serenader's art,

Nor tinkle of piano strings,

Can make the wild blood start

In its mystic springs.

The kingly bard

Must smite the chords rudely and hard,

As with hammer or with mace,

That they may render back

Artful thunder that conveys

Secrets of the solar track,

Sparks of the supersolar blaze.

Merlin's blows are strokes of fate,

Chiming with the forest-tone,

When boughs buffet boughs in the wood;

Chiming with the gasp and moan

Of the ice-imprisoned flood;

With the pulse of manly hearts,

With the voice of orators,

With the din of city arts,

With the cannonade of wars.

With the marches of the brave,

And prayers of might from martyrs' cave.

Great is the art,

Great be the manners of the bard!

He shall not his brain encumber

With the coil of rhythm and number,

But, leaving rule and pale forethought,

He shall aye climb

For his rhyme:

Pass in, pass in, the angels say,

In to the upper doors;

Nor count compartments of the floors,

But mount to Paradise

By the stairway of surprise.

Blameless master of the games,

King of sport that never shames; He shall daily joy dispense

Hid in song's sweet influence.

Things more cheerly live and go,

What time the subtle mind

Plays aloud the tune whereto

Their pulses beat,

And march their feet,

And their members are combined.

By Sybarites beguiled

He shall no task decline;

Merlin's mighty line,

Extremes of nature reconciled,

Bereaved a tyrant of his will,

And made the lion mild.

Songs can the tempest still,
Scattered on the stormy air,
Mould the year to fair increase,
And bring in poetic peace.

He shall not seek to weave,

In weak unhappy times,

Efficacious rhymes;

Wait his returning strength,

H