He grew old in an age he condemn'd.
He look'd on the rushing decay

Of the times which had shelter'd his youth,

Felt the dissolving throes

Of a social order he loved;
Outlived his brethren, his peers;
And, like the Theban seer,
Died in his enemies' day.

Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa,
Copais lay bright in the moon,
Helicon glass'd in the lake
Its firs, and afar rose the peaks
Of Parnassus, snowily clear;
Thebes was behind him in flames,
And the clang of arms in his ear,
When his awe-struck captors led
The Theban seer to the spring.
Tiresias drank and died.
Nor did reviving Thebes
See such a prophet again.

Well may we mourn, when the head
Of a sacred poet lies low

In an age which can rear them no more!
The complaining millions of men
Darken in labor and pain;

But he was a priest to us all

Of the wonder and bloom of the world, Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.

He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day
Of his race is past on the earth ;
And darkness returns to our eyes.
For, oh is it you, is it you,
Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,
And mountains, that fill us with joy,
Or the poet who sings you so well?
Is it you, O beauty, O grace,

O charm, O romance, that we feel,
Or the voice which reveals what you are?
Are ye, like daylight and sun,
Shared and rejoiced in by all?
Or are ye immersed in the mass
Of matter, and hard to extract,
Or sunk at the core of the world
Too deep for the most to discern?
Like stars in the deep of the sky,
Which arise on the glass of the sage,
But are lost when their watcher is gone.

"They are here "--I heard, as men heard In Mysian Ida the voice

Of the Mighty Mother, or Crete,

The murmur of Nature reply

Loveliness, magic, and grace,

They are here! they are set in the world, They abide; and the finest of souls

Ye know not yourselves; and your bards-

The clearest, the best, who have read
Most in themselves-have beheld
Less than they left unreveal'd.
Ye express not yourselves;—can you
make

With marble, with color, with word,
What charm'd you in others re-live?
Can thy pencil, O artist! restore
The figure, the bloom of thy love,
As she was in her morning of spring?
Canst thou paint the ineffable smile
Of her eyes as they rested on thine?
Can the image of life have the glow,
The motion of life itself?

966

And to my mind the thought Is on a sudden. brought

Of a past night, and a far different scene. Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep

As clearly as at noon;

The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between ;

Houses, with long white sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,

The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away,

The night was far more fair

But the same restless pacings to and fro, And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,

And the same bright, calm moon.

And the calm moonlight seems to say:
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow

That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,

Never by passion quite possess'd

And never quite benumb'd by the world's sway?

And I, I know not if to pray

Still to be what I am, or yield and be
Like all the other men I see.

For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,

With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly

Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,

Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall.

And as, year after year.

Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,

Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;

And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by
which they are pressed,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still un-

blest.

And the rest, a few,

Escape their prison and depart

On the wide ocean of life anew.

There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart

THE BURIED LIFE

LIGHT flows our war of mocking words,

and yet,

Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll,
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest.
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost
soul.

Alas! is even love too weak

To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame
reproved;

I knew they lived and moved

Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves-and yet

The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!-doth a like spell benumb

Our hearts, our voices?-must we too be dumb?

power;

But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves

Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course
through our breast,

But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well-but 'tis not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;

Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,

From the soul's subterranean depth up

borne

As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and con-

vey

A melancholy into all our day.

Only-but this is rare-

When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,

Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear

Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-A bolt is shot back somewhere in our

breast,

And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.

WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye.
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-
trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries
come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,

And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

THE FUTURE

1852.

A WANDERER is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship

On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the
stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.

Whether he wakes

Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed

Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light

Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain :
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea--
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream

Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast.
Or shall reach when his eyes have been
closed.

Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
[breast,
The tribes who then roam'd on her
Her vigorous, primitive sons?