He gave the people of his best:

His worst he kept, his best he gave.

My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave

Who will not let his ashes rest!

Who make it seem more sweet to be
The little life of bank and brier,

The bird that pipes his lone desire
And dies unheard within his tree,

Than he that warbles long and loud
And drops at Glory's temple-gates,
For whom the carrion vulture waits
To tear his heart before the crowd!

TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN

GREECE.

ILLYRIAN Woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneïan pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me while I turn'd the page, And track'd you still on classic ground, I grew in gladness till I found

My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever pour'd

And glisten'd-here and there alone

The broad-limb'd Gods at random thrown By fountain-urns ;-and Naiads oar'd

A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;

And many a slope was rich in bloom

From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks
To him who sat upon the rocks,

And fluted to the morning sea.

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings with his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.