Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;

Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!

Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest.

If men esteemed thee feeble, gave thee power,

If inen procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.

And this rude Cumner ground,

Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields.

Here cams't thou in thy jocund youthful time.

Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!

And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.

What though the music of thy rustic flute

Kept not for long its happy, country tone;

Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note

Of men contention-tost, of men who

groan,

To chase fatigue and fear: Why faintest thou!" "I wander'd till I died. Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.

Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill.

Our Scholar travels yet the loved hill-side. 1866.

YOUTH AND CALM

'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth.
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said ?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eyes so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it hath the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath-
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell :
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is
well.

T is all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.
(1852). 1867.

AUSTERITY OF POETRY

THAT Son of Italy who tried to blow, Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,

In his light youth amid a festal throng Sate with his bride to see a public show. Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow

Youth like a star; and what to youth belong

Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong.

A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo.

'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay!

Shuddering, they drew her garments off-and found

A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin.

Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay,

Radiant, adorn'd outside; a hidden ground

Of thought and of austerity within.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Egæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for

pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night. 1867.

GROWING OLD

WHAT is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
-Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength

Not our bloom only, but our strengthdecay?

Is it to feel each limb

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

Yes, this, and more: but not

Ah, 't is not what in youth we dream'd 't would be!

"T is not to have our life Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunsetglow,

A golden day's decline.

"T is not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes.

And heart profoundly stirr'd;

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,

The years that are no more.

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young;

It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.

Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change,

But no emotion-none.

And pale dog-roses in the hedge.
And from the mint-plant in the ser
In puffs of balm the night-air blows
The perfume which the day forego
And on the pure horizon far,
See, pulsing with the first-born star.
The liquid sky above the hill!
The evening comes, the fields are still.

Loitering and leaping,
With saunter, with bounds-
Flickering and circling
In files and in rounds-
Gaily their pine-staff green
Tossing in air.

Loose o'er their shoulders white
Showering their hair—
See the wild Mænads
Break from the wood,
Youth and Iacchus
Maddening their blood.
See! through the quiet land
Rioting they pass-
Fling the fresh heaps about,
Trample the grass.

Tear from the rifled hedge
Garlands, their prize;

Fill with their sports the field,
Fill with their cries.

Shepherd, what ails thee, then? Shepherd, why mute? Forth with thy joyous song! Forth with thy flute! Tempts not the revel blithe? Lure not their cries?

Glow not their shoulders smooth?
Melt not their eves?

Is not, on cheeks like those,
Lovely the flush?

-Ah, so the quiet was!
So was the hush!

II

The epoch ends, the world is still. The age has talk'd and work'd its filThe famous orators have shone, The famous poets sung and gone. The famous men of war have fought. The famous speculators thought, The famous players, sculptors, wrought The famous painters fill'd their wall. The famous critics judged it all. The combatants are parted now~ Uphung the spear, unbent the bow. The puissant crown'd, the weak laid And in the after-silence sweet. Now strifes are hush'd, our ears Gol

meet,