Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I liv'd this life,
And this life too, popes, cardinals and
priests,

Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, dis-
creet,

— Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my
soul,

Or ye would heighten my impoverish'd frieze,

Piece out its starv'd design, and fill my

vase

With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus
down,

To comfort me on my entablature
Wherein I am to lie till I must ask,
"Do I live, am I dead ?" There, leave me,
there!

For ye have stabb'd me with ingratitude To death: ye wish it-God, ye wish it! Stone

Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat

As if the corpse they keep were oozing
through-
And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well, go!
I bless ye. Fewer tapers

there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
-Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each

PARTING AT MORNING

ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun look'd over the mountain's rim: And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me.

EVELYN HOPE

BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead!

Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She pluck'd that piece of geraniumflower,

Beginning to die too, in the glass;

Little has yet been changed, I think: The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died!

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name ; It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares,

And now was quiet, now astir, Till God's hand beckon'd unawares, And the sweet white brow is all of her.

Delay'd it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:

Much is to learn, much to forget

Ere the time be come for taking you.

But the time will come, at last it will, When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)

In the lower earth, in the years long still,
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium's
red
And what you would do with me, in fine,
In the new life come in the old one's
stead.

I have liv'd (I shall say) so much since then,

Given up myself so many times, Gain'd me the gains of various men,

Ransack'd the ages, spoil'd the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I miss'd or itself miss'd me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue? let us see!

I lov'd you, Evelyn, all the while!

My heart seem'd full as it could hold; There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,

And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.

So hush, I will give you this leaf to keep :

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!

There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand.

"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME"1

My first thought was, he lied in every word,

That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that purs'd and scor'd

Its edge, at one more victim gain'd thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?

What, save to waylay with his lies, en

snare

All travellers who might find him posted there,

And ask the road? I guess'd what skulllike laugh

Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph

For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end
might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,

What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope

Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring,

I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its

- to

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades prick'd the

mud

Which underneath look'd kneaded up with blood.

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

Stood stupefied, however he came there : Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,

With that red, gaunt and collop'd neck

a-strain,

And shut eyes underneath the rusty

mane;

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such

woe

I never saw a brute I hated so;

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turn'd them on my heart.

As a man calls for wine before he fights, I ask'd one draught of earlier, happier sights,

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards - the soldier's art:

One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face

Beneath its garniture of curly gold,

Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he us'd. Alas, one night's disgrace!

Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

Which, while I forded, — good saints, how I fear'd

To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek

For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! - It may have been a water-rat I spear'd, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

Glad was I when I reach'd the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage!

Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage

Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank

Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison'd tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage

The fight must so have seem'd in that fell cirque.

What penn'd them there, with all the plain to choose ?

No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,

Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim

Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end, Nought in the distance but the evening, nought

To point my footstep further! At the thought,

A great black bird, Apollyon's bosomfriend,

Sail'd past, nor beat his wide wing dragonpenn'd

That brush'd my cap-perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, Spite of the dusk, the plain had given

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

RESPECTABILITY

DEAR, had the world in its caprice Deign'd to proclaim "I know you both, Have recogniz'd your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace! " How many precious months and years

Of youth had pass'd, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last,

The world, and what it fears?

How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,
Society's true ornament, -

Ere we dar'd wander, nights like this,
Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
And feel the Boulevart break again
To warmth and light and bliss?

I know the world proscribes not love;
Allows my fingers to caress

Your lips' contour and downiness,
Provided it supply a glove.

The world's good word! - the Institute! Guizot receives Montalembert !

Eh? Down the court three lampions flare: Put forward your best foot!

MEMORABILIA

Aн, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new!

But you were living before that,

And also you are living after; And the memory I started at

My starting moves your laughter!

I cross'd a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about :