Of all the blessings which my life has known,
I value most, and most praise God for three:
Want, Loneliness and Pain, those comrades true,

Who, masqueraded in the garb of foes
For many a year, and filled my heart with dread.
Yet fickle joys, like false, pretentious friends,
Have proved less worthy than this trio. First,

Want taught me labor, led me up the steep
And toilsome paths to hills of pure delight,
Trod only by the feet that know fatigue,
And yet press on until the heights appear.

Then loneliness and hunger of the heart
Sent me upreaching to the realms of space,
Till all the silences grew eloquent,
And all their loving forces hailed me friend.

Last, pain taught prayer! placed in my hand the staff
Of close communion with the over-...

Of all the odd plans of this monstrously queer age,
The oddest is that of reforming the peerage;--
Just as if we, great dons, with a title and star,
Did not get on exceedingly well as we are,
And perform all the functions of noodles by birth
As completely as any born noodles on earth.

How acres descend, is in law-books displayed,
But we as wiseacres descend, ready made;
And by right of our rank in Debrett's nomenclature,
Are all of us born legislators by nature;--
Like ducklings to water instinctively taking,
So we with like quackery take to lawmaking;
And God forbid any reform should come o'er us,
To make us more wise than our sires were before us.

The Egyptians of old the same policy knew--
If your sire was a cook, you must be a cook too...

BROTHER BILL.


To have a good birthday for a grown-up person is very difficult indeed;
We don't give it up, for Mother says the harder things are, the harder you must try till you succeed.
Still, our birthdays are different; we want so many things, and choosing your own pudding, and even half-holidays are treats;
But what can you do for people who always order the dinner, and never have lessons, and don't even like sweets?
I know Mother does not. Baby put a big red comfit in her mouth, and I saw her take it out again on the sly;
I don't believe she even enjoys going a-gypseying, for she gets neuralgia if she stands about where it isn't dry.
And how can you boil the kettle if you're not near the brook? But it's the last time she shall go there,
I told her so; I said, "What's the goo...

    When we were children, long ago,
    And crept to bed at close of day,
    With backward glance and footstep slow,
    Though all aweary with our play,
    Do you remember how the room -
    The little room with window deep -
    Would fill with shadows and with gloom,
    And fright us so we could not sleep?

    For O! the things we see at night -
    The dragons grim, the goblins tall,
    And, worst of all, the ghosts in white
    That range themselves along the wall!

    We could but cover up our head,
    And listen to our heart's wild beat -
    Such dreadful things about our bed,
    And no protection save a sheet!
    Then slept, and woke quite unafraid.
    The sun was shining, and we found
    Our shadows and our ghosts all ...

I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray;
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw,
Nathless I threw them as my final cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!

Hard are the two first stairs unto a crown:
Which got, the third bids him a king come down.

'Mid silken cushions, richly wrought, a young Greek girl reclined,
And fairer form the harem's walls had ne'er before enshrined;
'Mid all the young and lovely ones who round her clustered there,
With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, she shone supremely fair.

'Tis true that orbs as dark as hers in melting softness shone,
And lips whose coral hue might vie in brightness with her own;
And forms as light as ever might in Moslem's heaven be found,
So full of beauty's witching grace, were lightly hovering round.

Yet, oh, how paled their brilliant charms before that beauteous one
Who, 'mid their gay mirth, silent sat, from all apart - alone,
Outshining all, not by the spells of lovely face or form,
But by the soul that shone through all, her peerless, priceless charm.

    Pausing to see
    light thru chinks
    the corner door
    battered barn floor
    musty webs and pebbled face
    expect shadows from
    flecked dust, yet
    damsel flies
    with doily edge
    blanket the air
    a throaty radiance
    in angel hair
    and stepping stones to
    nearest crevice
    and laddering place.

There is a bellowing in me, as of might
Unfleshed and visionless, mangling the air
With horrible convulse, as if it bare
The cruel weight of worlds, but could not fight
With the thick-dropping clods, and could but bite
A vapour-cloud! Oh, I will climb the stair
Of the great universe, and lay me there
Even at the threshold of his gate, despite
The tempest, and the weakness, and the rush
Of this quick crowding on me!--Oh, I dream!
Now I am sailing swiftly, as we seem
To do in sleep! and I can hear the gush
Of a melodious wave that carries me
On, on for ever to eternity!

"Lord of the castle! oh, where goest thou?
Why is the triumph of pride on thy brow?"
"Pilgrim, my bridal awaits me to-day,
Over the mountains away and away."

"Flora in beauty and solitude roves,
List'ning for thee in the shade of the groves."
"Pilgrim, I hasten her truth to repay,
Over the mountains away and away."

"Guided by honor, how brilliant the road
Leading from cottage to castle abode!"
"Pilgrim, its dictates I learned to obey,
Over the mountains away and away."

But what "lady patron" as queen holds the sway;
Or sweeping, whose hoops in the street are most sweeping;
The burthen is not of this truth-telling lay,
That should in its reading the world set to weeping,
While telling the suff'rings from head to the feet,
Of poor human beings with nothing to eat.

Why should man's high aspiring mind
Burn in him with so proud a breath,
When all his haughty views can find
In this world yields to death?
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,
The rich, the poor, the great, and small,
Are each but worm's anatomies
To strew his quiet hall.

Power may make many earthly gods,
Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails,
But death's unwelcome, honest odds
Kick o'er the unequal scales.
The flattered great may clamours raise
Of power, and their own weakness hide,
But death shall find unlooked-for ways
To end the farce of pride,

An arrow hurtled eer so high,
From een a giant's sinewy strength,
In Time's untraced eternity
Goes but a pigmy length;
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its ...

Let your feet not falter, your course not alter
    By golden apples, till victory's won!
The sword's sharp clangour, the dart's shrill anger,
    Swerve not the hero thundering on.

A bold beginning is half the winning,
    An Alexander makes worlds his fee.
No long debating!    The Queens are waiting
    In his pavilion on beaded knee.

Thus swift pursuing his wars and wooing,
    He mounts old Darius' bed and throne.
O glorious ruin!    O blithe undoing!
    O drunk death-triumph in Babylon!

Tempo era omai da trovar pace o tregua.

HE CONSOLES HIMSELF WITH THE BELIEF THAT SHE NOW AT LAST SYMPATHISES WITH HIM.


    'Twas time at last from so long war to find
Some peace or truce, and, haply, both were nigh,
But Death their welcome feet has turn'd behind,
Who levels all distinctions, low as high;
And as a cloud dissolves before the wind,
So she, who led me with her lustrous eye,
Whom ever I pursue with faithful mind,
Her fair life briefly ending, sought the sky.
Had she but stay'd, as I grew changed and old
Her tone had changed, and no distrust had been
To parley with me on my cherish'd ill:
With what frank sighs and fond I then had told
My lifelong toils, which now from heaven, I ween,
She sees, and with me sympathises still.
...

How long, deluded Albion, wilt thou lie
In the lethargic sleep, the sad repose
By which thy close thy constant enemy
Has softly lull'd thee to thy woes?
Or wake, degenerate isle, or cease to own
What thy old kings in Gallic camps have done,
The spoils they brought thee back, the crowns they won,
William (so Fate requires) again is arm'd,
Thy father to the field is gone,
Again Maria weeps her absent lord,
For thy repose content to rule alone.
Are thy enervate sons not yet alarm'd?
When William fights dare they look tamely on,
So slow to get their ancient fame restored,
As not to melt at Beauty's tears nor follow Valour's sword?

See the repenting isle awakes,
Her vicious chains the generous goddess breaks;
The fogs around her temples are dispell'd;

Here, where the great hills fall away
To bays of silver sea,
I hold within my hand to-day
A wild thing, strange to me.

Behind me is the deep green dell
Where lives familiar light;
The leaves and flowers I know so well
Are gleaming in my sight.

And yonder is the mountain glen,
Where sings in trees unstirred
By breath of breeze or axe of men
The shining satin-bird.

The old weird cry of plover comes
Across the marshy ways,
And here the hermit hornet hums,
And here the wild bee strays.

No novel life or light I see,
On hill, in dale beneath:
All things around are known to me
Except this bit of heath.

This touching growth hath made me dream
It sends my soul afar
To where the Scottish mountains gleam
Ag...

The first rain reminds me
Of the rising summer dust.
The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear.
A year is a trained beast with no memories.
Soon you will again wear your harnesses,
Beautiful and embroidered, to hold
Sheer stockings: you
Mare and harnesser in one body.

The white panic of soft flesh
In the panic of a sudden vision
Of ancient saints.

AN OLD SWEETHEART.



As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

'Tis a fragrant retrospection - for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfumes from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine -
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweeheart of mine.

Though I hear, beneath my study, lik...