And now breaks forth another cry
Of overwhelming ecstasy!

The cup is filled, and the wine goes round,
And it foameth to the brim;

And young and old, and grave and gay,

All shout a health to him

Who brings these tidings glad and trueThen, "WELLINGTON and WATERLOO!"

"And those who fought, and those who And those who bravely died; [fell, And those who bore our banners high, And battled side by side!

And those whose hearts and swords were true

With WELLINGTON at WATERLOO!"

ALARIC A. WATTS. 1789-1864.

MY OWN FIRESIDE.

LET others seek for empty joys

At ball or concert, rout or play; Whilst far from Fashion's idle noise,

Her gilded domes and trappings gay, I while the winter eve away,

'Twixt book and lute the hours divide, And marvel how I e'er could stray

From thee-my own fireside!

My own fireside! Those simple words
Can bid the sweetest dreams arise;
Awaken feeling's tenderest chords,

And fill with tears of joy mine eyes.
What is there my wild heart can prize
That doth not in thy sphere abide,-
Haunt of my home-bred sympathies,
My own-my own fireside?

A gentle form is near me now;

A small white hand is clasped in mine: I gaze upon her placid brow,

And ask, What joys can equal thine? A babe, whose beauty 's half divine,

In sleep his mother's eyes doth hide: Where may love seek a fitter shrine, Than thou-my own fireside?

What care I for the sullen war

Of winds without, that ravage earth? It doth but bid me prize the more

The shelter of thy hallowed hearth;

For him I languished in a foreign clime, Greyhaired with sorrows in my manhood's prime;

Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,

And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees; Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,

Each morning started from the dream to weep,

Till God who saw me tried too sorely, gave The resting-place I asked-an early grave. O thou whom chance leads to this nameless stone,

From that proud country which was once my own,

By those white cliffs I never more must see, By that dear language which I spoke like thee,

Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust, -a broken heart lies here.

·:0:

LEIGH HUNT.

1784-1859.

ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.

It lies before me there, and my own breath Stirs its thin threads, as though beside The living head I stood in honoured pride, Talking of lovely things that conquer death. Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneath Ran his fine fingers, when he leant, blankeyed,

And saw in fancy Adam and his bride, With their rich locks; or his own Delphic wreath.

There seems a love in hair, though it be dead. It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread Of our frail plant-a blossom from the tree Surviving the proud trunk-as though it said,

Patience and gentleness is Power for me: Behold affectionate eternity.

-

LILIES.

WE are Lilies fair,

The flower of virgin light; Nature held us forth, and said, "Lo! my thoughts of white!"

Ever since then, angels

Hold us in their hands;

133

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,

The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, [the west:

The young flowers are blowing t'wards But the young, young children, O my brothers,

They are weeping bitterly!They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

[sorrow

Do you question the young children in their
Why their tears are falling so?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago.

The old tree is leafless in the forest,

The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers!

Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,

In our happy Fatherland?

[faces,

They look up with their pale and sunken
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's hoary anguish draws and

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, [cries! With your ear down, little Alice never Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,

[eyes! For the smile has time for growing in her And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in

The shroud, by the kirk-chime! "It is good when it happens," say the children,

"That we die before our time."

Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking
Death in life, as best to have;
They are binding up their hearts away from
breaking,

With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city[doSing out, children, as the little thrushes Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty

Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!

But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows

Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coalshadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine!

"For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap;

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping-
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids droop-
ing,
[as snow.
The reddest flower would look as pale
For all day we drag our burden tiring

Through the coal-dark underground, Or all day we drive the wheels of iron

In the factories round and round.

"For all day the wheels are droning, turning,

Their wind comes in our faces,Till our hearts turn, our head with pulses burning,

And the walls turn in their places,Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,[the wall,Turns the long light that drops adown Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,[all.

All are turning, all the day, and we with

And all day the iron wheels are droning; And sometimes we could pray,

'Oh, ye wheels' (breaking out in a bad moaning),

'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"'

Ay, be silent.

[breathing

Let them hear each other For a moment, mouth to mouth,Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals; Let them prove their living souls against the notion [wheels! That they live in you, or under you, Still, all day the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,

Spin on blindly in the dark.

[brothers,

Now tell the poor young children, O my To look up to Him and pray;

So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day. They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us, [stirred? While the rushing of the iron wheels is When we sob aloud, the human creatures

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

Strangers speaking at the door: [Him, Is it likely God, with angels singing round Hears our weeping any more?

"Two words, indeed, of prayer, we remember,

And at midnight's hour of harm, 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly for a charm.* [Father,' We know no other words, except 'Our And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, [sweet to gather, God may pluck them with the silence And hold both within His right hand which is strong. [surely 'Our Father,' if he heard us, He would (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

'Come and rest with me, my child.'

* A fact rendered pathetically historical by Mr. Horne's report of his commission.

'But, no!" say the children, weeping faster, "He is speechless as a stone!

And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on. Go to!" say the children,-"up in heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. [believing

Do not mock us; grief has made us un-
We look up for God, but tears have made
us blind."
[proving,

Do you hear the children weeping and dis-
O my brothers, what ye preach?
For God's possible is taught by His world's
loving-

And the children doubt of each.

And well may the children weep before you! They are weary ere they run; [glory They have never seen the sunshine, nor the Which is brighter than the sun : They know the grief of man, without his wisdom; [calm,They sink in man's despair, without his Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,[palm,Are martyrs, by the pang without the Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly The blessings of its memory cannot keep,[ly: Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenLet them weep! let them weep!

"THERE's nothing great

Nor small," has said a poet of our day, And truly I reiterate. Nothing's small! No lily-muffled hum of summer bee

But finds some coupling with the spinning

stars:

No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere; No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim. Ay, glancing on my own thin-veined wrist, In such a little tremor of the blood [soul The whole strong clamour of a vehement Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed

with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware More and more from the first similitude.

A YEAR'S SPINNING.

He listened at the porch that day,
To hear the wheel go on and on,
And when it stopped-ran back away-
While through the door he brought the
But now my spinning is all done.

He sat beside me, with an oath

[sun,

That love ne'er ended, once begun;

I smiled-believing for us both
What was the truth for only one,
And now my spinning is all done.

My mother cursed me that I heard
A young man's wooing as I spun.
Thanks, cruel mother, for that word,
For I have since a harder known;
And now my spinning is all done.

I thought-O God!-my firstborn's cry
Both voices to my ear would drown.
I listened in mine agony-

It was the silence made me groan,
And now my spinning is all done.

Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave,
Who cursed me on her death-bed lone,
And my dead baby's-(God it save!)

Who not to bless me would not moan,
And now my spinning is all done.

A stone upon my heart and head,

But no name written on the stone.

Sweet neighbours! whisper low instead, This sinner was a loving one

"

And now her spinning is all done."

And let the door ajar remain,

In case he should pass by anon; And leave the wheel out very plain, That HE when passing in the sun May see the spinning is all done!

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 1819-1861.

STANZAS.

SAY not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain: The enemy faints not nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
In, may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful niche to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright.

-:0:

ALEXANDER SMITH.

1830-1867.

GREEN OLD AGE.

My head is grey, my blood is young,
Red, leaping in my veins;
The spring doth stir my spirit yet
To seek the cloistered violet,

The primrose in the lanes.
In heart I am a very boy,
Haunting the woods, the waterfalls,
The ivies on grey castle walls;
Weeping in silent joy

When the broad sun goes down the west;
Or trembling o'er a sparrow's nest.
The world might laugh were I to tell

What most my old age cheers,Mem'ries of stars and crescent moons, Of nutting strolls through autumn noons, Rainbows 'mong April's tears.

But chief, to live that hour again, When first I stood on sea-beach old, First heard the voice, first saw unrolled The glory of the main.

Many rich draughts hath memory, The soul's cupbearer, brought to me.