Till pity won.
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing, but that all
Should keep within, door shut and window barred.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud! anon she shook her head,
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway: there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazoned with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her check flame: her palfrey's footfall shot
Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less through all bore up, till, last she saw
The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall.
Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peeped—but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers,
One after one: but even then she gained
Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crowned
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name.
FROM "IN MEMORIAM."
DOST thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began,
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes, on Fortune's crowning slope,
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He played at counsellors and kings, With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea,
And reaps the labour of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands ;—
Does my old friend remember me?
A CHILD'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF A STAR.
SHE had been told that God made all the stars
That twinkled up in heaven, and now she stood
Watching the coming of the twilight on,
As if it were a new and perfect world,
And this were its first eve. How beautiful
Must be the work of Nature to a child,
In its first fresh impression! Laura stood
By the low window, with the silken lash
Of her soft eye upraised, and her sweet mouth
Half parted with the new and strange delight
Of beauty that she could not comprehend,
And had not seen before. The purple folds
Of the low sunset clouds, and the blue sky
That looked so still and delicate above,
Filled her young heart with gladness, and the eve
Stole on with its deep shadows, and she still
Stood looking at the west with that half smile,
As if a pleasant thought were at her heart.
Presently, in the edge of the last tint
Of sunset, where the blue was melted in
To the faint golden mellowness, a Star
Stood suddenly. A laugh of wild delight
Burst from her lips, and, putting up her hands,
Her simple thought broke forth expressively-
"Father, dear Father, God has made a Star!"
THE spring is here-the delicate-footed May,
With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers;
And with it comes a thirst to be away,
Wasting in wood-paths its voluptuous hours
A feeling that is like a sense of wings,
Restless to soar above these perishing things.
We pass out from the city's feverish hum,
To find refreshment in the silent woods; And nature, that is beautiful and dumb,
Like a cool sleep upon the pulses broods. Yet, even there, a restless thought will steal, To teach the indolent heart it still must feel.
Strange, that the audible stillness of the noon,
The waters tripping with their silver feet,
The turning to the light of leaves in June,
And the light whisper as their edges meetStrange that they fill not, with their tranquil tone, The spirit, walking in their midst alone.
BRIGHT be the skies that cover thee,
Child of the sunny brow-
Bright as the dream flung over thee
By all that meets thee now.
Thy heart is beating joyously,
Thy voice is like a bird's,
And sweetly breaks the melody
Of thy imperfect words.
I know no fount that gushes out
As gladly as thy tiny shout.
I would that thou mightst ever be
As beautiful as now-
That time might ever leave as free
Thy yet unwritten brow.
I would life were "all poetry,"
To gentle measures set,
That nought but chastened melody,
Might stain thine eye of jet-
Nor one discordant note he spoken
Till God the cunning harp hath broken.
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