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"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curled;
Unto me my maudlin gall,

And my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man :
Yet we will not die forlorn.”

The voice grew faint: there came a further change;
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;

By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patched with moss.
Then some one spake: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time.”
Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame."
And one: "He had not wholly quenched his

power;

A little grain of conscience made him sour.”
At last I heard a voice upon the slope

Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
To which an answer pealed from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand:
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made himself an awful rose of dawn.

THE SKIPPING-ROPE.

SURE never yet was Antelope

Could skip so lightly by.

Stand off, or else my skipping-rope

Will hit you in the eye.

How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!
How fairy-like you fly!

Go, get you gone, you muse and mope—
I hate that silly sigh.

Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Or tell me how to die.

There, take it, take my skipping-rope
And hang yourself thereby.

MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH, AND LEAVE.

MOVE eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow;
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borne,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, oh 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 in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, oh Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

THE POET'S SONG.

THE rain had fallen, the Poet arose,

He passed by the town, and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat, And he sat him down in a lonely place,

And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,
The snake slipt under a spray,

The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak
And stared, with his foot on the prey,

And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many

songs,

But never a one so gay,

For he sings of what the world will be

When the years have died away."

THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY.

PROLOGUE.

SIR WALTER VIVIAN all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half

The neighboring borough with their Institute,
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son,-the son
A Walter, too,-with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.

And me that morning Walter showed the house, Greck, set with busts: from vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their

names,

Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers' arms and armor hung.

And " this," he said, “was Hugh's at Agincourt; And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon: A good knight he! we keep a chronicle With all about him," which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died; And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate, Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.

"O miracle of women," said the book, "O noble heart who, being strait-besieged By this wild king to force her to his wish,

Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death,
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost-
Her stature more than mortal in the burst-
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire-

Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,

She trampled some beneath her horses' heels,
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall,
And some were pushed with lances from the rock,
And part were drowned within the whirling brook:
O miracle of noble womanhood!"

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle; And, I all rapt in this," Come out," he said, "To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth And sister Lilia with the rest." We went

(I kept the book and had my finger in it)

Down through the park: strange was the sight to me;
For all the sloping pasture murmured, sown
With happy faces and with holiday.

There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:
The patient leaders of their Institute

Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone,

And drew, from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the moment, playing now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp: and somewhat lower down
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the
lake

A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam:

A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon

Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past:

And there through twenty posts of telegraph

VOL. I.

17

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