Back, with the quiet face of yore,
So hungry for acknowledgment

Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.
Feed, should not he, to heart's content?
To only have conceived,

I'd say,

66

Planned your great works, apart from progress,
Surpasses little works achieved!"

I'd lie so, I should be believed.

I'd make such havoc of the claims

Of the day's distinguished names

To feast him with, as feasts an ogress

Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!
Or as one feasts a creature rarely

Captured here, unreconciled

To capture; and completely gives
Its pettish humours license, barely
Requiring that it lives.

Ichabod, Ichabod,

VI.

The glory is departed!
Travels Waring East away?
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a god,

Hordes grown European-hearted,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

Or who in Moscow, toward the Tsar,
With the demurest of footfalls

Over the Kremlin's pavement bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other Generals
That simultaneously take snuff,
For each to have pretext enough
And kerchiefwise unfold his sash

Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no gash?
Waring in Moscow, to those rough

Cold northern natures borne perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear

From the circle of mute kings

Unable to repress the tear,

Each as his sceptre down he flings,

To Dian's fane at Taurica,

Where now a captive priestess, she alway

Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!

In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely 't is in Spain

That we and Waring meet again

Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane

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Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid

All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall

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From some black coffin-lid.

Or, best of all,

I love to think

The leaving us was just a feint;

Back here to London did he slink,
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint :
Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o'er and o'er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore.
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,-
"Give me my so-long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!"
Then down he creeps and out he steals,
Only when the night conceals

Or hops are picking: or at prime

-

His face; in Kent 't is cherry-time,

Of March he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,

Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft

The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure

Out of a myriad noises soft,

Into a tone that can endure

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Amid the noise of a July noon

When all God's creatures crave their boon,

All at once, and all in tune,

And get it, happy as Waring then,

Having first within his ken

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Into his hand, he told you, so
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
Oh Waring, what 's to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius- am I right? — shall tuck
His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Someone shall somehow run a muck
With this old world, for want of strife
Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
Distinguished names! but 't is, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!

Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II.

I.

66
"WHEN I last saw Waring . . ."
(How all turned to him who spoke!
You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel or seafaring ?)

II.

"We were sailing by Triest
Where a day or two we harboured:

A sunset was in the West,

When, looking over the vessel's side,

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200

210

One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And as a sea-duck flies and swims
At once, so came the light craft up,
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
A pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne'er so big,
They'll never let you up the bay!
We natives should know best.'

I turned, and 'Just those fellows' way,'
Our captain said, 'the 'long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

III.

"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
And one, half-hidden by his side
Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
With great grass hat and kerchief black,
Who looked up with his kingly throat,
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow

Her sparkling path beneath our bow,
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rosy and golden half
O' the sky, to overtake the sun
And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar

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230

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HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD.

I.

H, to be in England now that April's there,

OH

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood 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 white-throat 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, tho' 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!

10

THA

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND.

HAT second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds thro' the country-side,
Breathed hot an instant on my trace, ·
I made, six days, a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct

Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,

Bright creeping thro' the moss they love:

How long it seems since Charles was lost!
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed
The country in my very sight;
And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out in red dismay
With signal-fires. Well, there I lay
Close covered o'er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress,
Thinking on Metternich our friend,
And Charles's miserable end,