O, swallow, swallow, flying, flying, south, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.
O, tell her, swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the south, And dark and true and tender is the north.
'O, swallow, swallow, if I could follow and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And chirp and twitter twenty million loves. ⚫
'O, were I thou that she might take me in And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle 'till I died.
'Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, Delaying as the tender ash delays,
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?
O, tell her, swallow, that thy brood is flown; Say to her, I do but wanton in the south, But in the north long since my nest is made.
O, tell her, brief is life, but love is long, And brief the sun of summer in the north, And brief the moon of beauty in the south.
O, swallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.'
Among us, all out of breath, as pursued, A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear
Stared in her eyes, and chalk'd her face, and wing'd Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell, Delivering seal'd dispatches which the Head Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood Tore open; silent we with blind surmise Regarding, while she read, till over brow And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rich Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens;
For anger most it seem'd, while now her breast, Beaten with some great passion at her heart, Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard In the dead hush the papers that she held Rustle at once the lost lamb at her feet Sent out a bitter bleating for her dam; she crush'd The scrolls together, made a sudden turn As if to speak, but, utterance failing her, She whirl'd them on to me, as who should say 'Read,' and I read-two letters-one her sire's.
O not to pry and peer on your reserve, But led by golden wishes and a hope The child of regal compact, did I break Your precinct not a scorner of your sex But venerator, and willing it should be All that it might be; hear me, for I bear, Though man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs, From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life
Less mine than yours: my nurse would tell me of you; I babbled for you, as babies for the moon,
Vague brightness; when a boy you stoop'd to me From all high places, lived in all fair lights,
Came in long breezes rapt from the inmost south
And blown to the inmost north; at eve and dawn
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods;
The leader wild-swan in among the stars
Would clang it and lapt in wreaths of glow-worm light
The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida.
Because I would have reach'd you, though you had been
Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned
Persephone in Hades, now at length, Those winters of abeyance all worn out, A man I came to see you: but, indeed, Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, O noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait On you, their centre; let me say but this, That many a famous man and woman, town And landskip, have I heard of, after seen
The dwarfs of presage; though when known, there grew Another kind of beauty in detail
Made them worth knowing; but in you I found
Mine old ideal involved and dazzled down
And master'd while that after-beauty makes Such head from act to act, from hour to hour Within me, that except you slay me here, According to your bitter statute-book VOL. XC.
I cannot cease to follow you as they say The seal does music; who desire you more Than growing boys their manhood; dying lips, With many thousand matters left to do,
The breath of life; O more than poor men wealth; Than sick men health-yours, yours, not mine-but half Without you, with you, whole; and of those halves You worthiest; and howe'er you block and bar Your heart with system out from mine, I hold That it becomes no man to nurse despair, But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms To follow up the worthiest till he die : Yet that I came not all unauthorized Behold your father's letter!
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd Unopen'd on the marble; a tide of fierce Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips, As waits a river level with the dam
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam: And so she would have spoken, but there rose A hubbub in the court of half the maids Gather'd together; from the illumined hall Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes, And gold and golden heads; they to and fro Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light, Some crying there was an army in the land, And some that men were in the very walls, And some they cared not; till a clamour grew As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
And worse-confounded: high above them stood The placid marble Muses, looking peace.
FROM THE SAME.
"Yea, but, Sire," I cried,
66 'Wild natures need wild curbs. The soldier? No: What dares not Ida do that she should prize The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose The yesternight, and storming in extremes Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down Gage-like to man, and had not shunn'd the death, No, not the soldier's; yet I hold her, king, True woman: but you clash them all in one, That have as many differences as we.
The violet varies from the lily as far
As oak from elm; one loves the soldier, one The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, And some unworthily; their sinless faith A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty, Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they need More breadth of culture: is not Ida right? They worth it? truer to the law within? Severer in the logic of a life?
Twice as magnetic to sweet influences
Of Earth and Heaven? and she of whom you speak, My mother, looks as whole as some serene Creation minted in the golden moods
Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch, But pure as lines of green that streak the white Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I say, Not like strong bursts of sample among men, But all one piece; and, take them all in all, Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind, As truthful, much that Ida claims as right Had ne'er been mooted, but as easily theirs As dues of Nature. To our point; not war; Lest I lose all."
DEEP in the night I woke; she, near me, held A volume of the Poets of her land;
There to herself, all in low tones, she read.
"Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font; The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, And slips into the bosom of the lake; So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom and be lost in me.
[N.B. The figures within Crotchets refer to the History.]
ACCIDENTS At the Euston Square station, London and North-Western Railway, 8; to Earl Powis, fatal, 8; at Frimly, South-Western Railway, 12; collision at sea, the Aram and Susquehanna, 16; explosion of fire-damp at West Bromwich, six persons killed, 22; seve- ral mining accidents with great loss of life, 43; at Shrivenham station, Great Western Railway, seven persons killed, 64; dreadful boiler explosion at Dud- ley, 75; a dinner party poisoned, 76; collision on the North-Western Railway, 79; dreadful gas-explosion in Albany- street, 100; three persons drowned, 106; collisions on the North-Western Railway, 107; boiler explosion on the Earl of Liverpool, two persons killed, 107; dreadful storm on the east coast of Scotland, 100 lives lost, 108; fatal collision on the Preston and Lancaster Railway, 101; bursting of a reservoir at Over Darwen, several lives lost, 110; explosion of fire-damp at Hindley Green, 115; collisions at sea, 115; several fatal accidents, 115; on the Bristol and Birmingham Railway, 120; at Spithead several persons drowned, 132; frightful colliery explosion near Whitehaven, thirty lives lost, 137; on the York and Newcastle Railway, seve- ral lives lost, 138; fall of a viaduct, near Sheffield, 138; fall of a sugar warehouse at Glasgow, twenty men buried, 140; on the Richmond Rail- way, 151; dreadful catastrophe on the steam-boat, Londonderry, seventy-two persons smothered, 161; at Hull seven- teen persons drowned, 164; five chil- dren burnt in a cart, 168
ACTS, LIST OF, 11 & 12 VICT. Public General Acts, 309; Local and personal Act., declared public, 314; Private Acts, printed, 321; Private Acts, not printed, 323
Algeria, submission of Abd-el-Kader, [196] 18
Antiquities-A valuable torque found in Needwood Forest, 77; sale of interest- ing antiquities, 90 AUSTRIA-Account of the population composing the Austrian empire, [402];
relative position of Hungary and Croa- tia, the Hungarian Chamber meets at Presburg and address the Emperor; Metternich recommends its immediate dissolution; meeting of the Diet of Lower Austria, the Chamber invaded by the mob, [403]; resignation and flight of Metternich, [404]; proclamation by the Emperor, loyalty of the Ger- mans, [404]; ambition of the Hunga- rians; Baron von Jellachich appointed Ban of Croatia; the Kollowrath Mi- nistry, [405]; programme of a new constitution, [406]; new Electoral law, [407]; the mob virtually rule, and the Emperor quits Vienna for Innspruck; hostilities between the Sclavonic and German races in Bohemia, dreadful atrocities on both sides, [408]; Pan- Sclavonic Congress convoked at Prague, [409]; insurrection at Prague which is subdued by Prince Windischgrätz; the Princess shot,[410]; Jellachich convokes a Sclavonic Diet at Agram; Jellachich declared a rebel; the Croats are re- pressed, Jellachich pardoned, [410]; failure of attempt to reconcile the Hun- garians and Croats, [411]; Hungarian Diet opened by Archduke Stephen, [411]; address of Kossuth to the Diet, [412]; Constituent Assembly of Austria opened, [413]; return of the Emperor to Vienna, his enthusiastic reception, [413]; contest in Hungary between the Magyars and Croats; deputation of the Hungarian Diet to the Emperor, their discontent, [414]; march of Jellachich across Hungary, [415]; the National Assembly refuses to receive the Hun- garian deputation, [415]; the Hunga- rians break with the Emperor and name Kossuth dictator; murder of Count Lamberg at Pesth; the Emperor re- conciled to Jellachich, who is named Commander-in-Chief, the Hungarian Diet dissolved, disaffection of the troops, [416]; insurrection at Vienna, sangui- nary contest, and massacre of Count La- tour, Minister of War, [417] 130; Vienna remains in possession of the insurgents, the Emperor withdraws to Olmütz,
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