The Three, nor enable their sister
To join them,-halfway

On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses-
No farther to-day,

Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave,
Watches breast-high and steady

From under the rock, her bold sister
Swum halfway already.

Fortù, shall we sail there together

And see from the sides

Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts Where the siren abides?

Shall we sail round and round them, close over The rocks, tho' unseen,

That ruffle the grey glassy water

To glorious green?

Then scramble from splinter to splinter,

Reach land and explore,

On the largest, the strange square black turret With never a door,

Just a loop to admit the quick lizards;

Then, stand there and hear

The birds' quiet singing, that tells us
What life is, so clear?

-The secret they sang to Ulysses
When, ages ago,

He heard and he knew this life's secret
I hear and I know.

Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano;
He strikes the great gloom

And flutters it o'er the mount's summit
In airy gold fume.

All is over. Look out, see the gipsy,

Our tinker and smith,

Has arrived, set up bellows and forge,

And down-squatted forthwith

To his hammering, under the wall there;

One eye keeps aloof

The urchins that itch to be putting
His jews'-harps to proof,

While the other, thro' locks of curled wire,
Is watching how sleek

Shines the hog, come to share in the windfall
-Chew, abbot's own cheek!

All is over. Wake up and come out now,
And down let us go,

And see the fine things got in order
At church for the show

Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening.
To-morrow's the Feast

Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means
Of Virgins the least,

As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse
Which (all nature, no art)

The Dominican brother, these three weeks,
Was getting by heart.

Not a pillar nor post but is dizened

With red and blue papers;

All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
A-blaze with long tapers;

But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
Rigged glorious to hold

All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers
And trumpeters bold,

Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,

Who, when the priest's hoarse,
Will strike us up something that's brisk
For the feast's second course.

And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Be carried in pomp

Thro' the plain, while in gallant procession
The priests mean to stomp.

All round the glad church lie old bottles
With gunpowder stopped,

Which will be, when the Image re-enters,

Religiously popped;

And at night from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,

On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
And more poppers bang.

At all events, come-to the garden
As far as the wall;

See me tap with a hoe on the plaster
Till out there shall fall

A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

-"Such trifles!"

you say?

Fortù, in my England at home,

Men meet gravely to-day

And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Be righteous and wise

-If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!

THE LOST LEADER

UST for a handful of silver he left us,

J Just for a hand to stick in his coat

a

Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was their's who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags-were they purple, his heart had been
proud!

We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,

Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves!

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

We shall march prospering,-not thro' his presence;
Songs may inspirit us, not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,-while he boasts his quiescence
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
Blot out his name, then,-record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath

untrod,

One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, Forced praise on our part-the glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him,-strike

gallantly,

Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait

us,

Pardoned in Heaven, the first by the throne!

THE LOST MISTRESS

ALL'S over, then does truth sound bitter

As one at first believes?

Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, to-day;

One day more bursts them open fully
-You know the red turns gray.

To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we,-well, friends the merest
Keep much that I'll resign:

For each glance of that eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart's endeavour,-
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stays in my soul for ever!-

-Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;

I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

OH, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows—
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent-spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!