As if their deeds were things of yesterday.
I felt the wee maid in her scarlet hood
Real as the babes that wander'd in the wood,
And could as well believe a wolf could talk
As that a man beside the babes could stalk,
With gloomy thoughts of murder in his brain;
And then I thought how long the lovely twain
Threaded the paths that wound among the trees,
And how at last they sunk upon their knees,
And said their little prayers, as prettily
As e'er they said them at their mother's knee,
And went to sleep. I deem'd them still asleep
Clasp'd in each other's arms, beside a heap
Of fragrant leaves ;-
;-so little then knew I
Of bare-bone Famine's ghastly misery.
Yet I could weep and cry, and sob amain,
Because they never were to wake again;
But if 'twas said, "They 'll wake at the last day!"
Then all the vision melted quite away;
As from the steel the passing stain of breath,
So quickly parts the fancy from the faith.
And I thought the dear babes in the wood no more true
Than Red Riding Hood,-aye, or the grim loup-garou,
That the poor little maid for her granny mistook;
I knew they were both only tales in a book.
Oн, thou sweet daughter and last lingering flower
Of a great nation's loyal hope and love,
Last of a line of kings whose royal dower
Is virgin loveliness sublimed to power,
The yearning blossom of the expectant dove
On the strong eagle's spacious wings upborne ;
Or shall I call thee prophecy of spring,
In thine own virgin pureness blossoming,
Like the white May-bloom on the naked thorn ;
Nay, rather art thou like a flower
Crowning some high crazy tower,
So sweetly smiling on the rifted wall,
That, for thy sake, we would not see it fall.
Oh, royal maid, excuse the idle brain
That, knowing thee but in thy loved ideal,
Plays with thine image, and would very fain
Love and revere thee too as something real;
The human accents of thine innocent thought
Would rather think thee flower, or happy bird,
Than the dull lesson that thou hast been taught;
Rather would deem thee bird, that glad and free
Warbles its wood-notes wild on greenwood tree,
Than tutor❜d captive of a gilded cage,
Unweeting echo of a prating age.
Alas! a prisoner born, and bred a slave,
But late awaken'd from a happy trance,
Reft of the best of what thy fortune gave,
Thy childish, aimless, wantless ignorance:-
Ah, what a hopeless task it is for thee
To govern free men that were never free.
Easy it were, I doubt not, to obey,
If to obey were duty's consummation;
But throned servility, compell'd to sway
A shackled sceptre by the year and day-
ON THE DEATH OF HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE.
GREAT joy was mine to hear a second hope,
Another little maid, was born to thee,
your elder darling needs must look
With some surprise, as on a legacy
From some old miser uncle never seen.
And when I learned that, on the self-same day
That gave that pure ideal of new life,
A softly-breathing infant, to the air,
The vow confirmed had made among thy kindred
A serious matron of a maiden gay,
I did design a furious gush of song,
A merry multiplicity of rhymes,
Where little sense were needed, save the sense,
That one delight is in a score of souls.
But death had struck me; God had called away
One whom the world, and I among the world,
Had augured to an honest course of glory;
Whose earliest youth was crowned with laureate wreath On the proud banks of Isis and of Cam;
Eton's prime scholar, and the youth adroit
To turn the nicest phrases of the Greeks,
The very quintessence of Roman speech,
To modern meanings and to modish arts,
Which neither Greek nor Roman ever knew.
Vain knowledge this, unprofitable skill,
So may you think, and truly would you say,
But that the mind thus curiously trained
In the pure beauty of Hellenic art,
And grandeur elegant of gorgeous Rome,
Becomes to beauty feelingly awake,
Nice to perceive, glad to believe and love
Whate'er of beautiful abides in forms,
Hues, sounds, emotions of the moral heart,
Feeling a universal harmony
Of all good things seen, or surpassing sense,
And for the love of all that lovely is,
And for a dauntless spirit unsubdued
By a too general lack of sympathy
Fighting for truth. My sister loved him well! She was a maid-alas! a widow now
Not easily beguiled by loving words,
Nor quick to love; but, when she loved, the fate Of her affection was a stern religion,
Admitting nought less holy than itself.
|