Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here,

O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?"

'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off, Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best,

Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree, Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste:

While myself lit a fire, and made a song And sung it, "What I hate, be consecrate, To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate For Thee; what see for envy in poor

me?"

Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend,

Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,

That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch

And conquer Setebos, or likelier He Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die,

[What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!

Crickets stop hissing; not a bird-or, yes,

There scuds His raven that has told Him all!

It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind

Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,

And fast invading fires begin! White blaze

A tree's head snaps--and there, there, there, there, there,

His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!

Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos! 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip, [month Will let those quails fly, will not eat this One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!]

1864.

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?" Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again

Where the physic bottles stand
On the table's edge,-is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather

Blue above lane and wall; And

that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"

Is the house o'ertopping all.

You lounged, like a boy of the South, Cap and blouse-nay, a bit of beard too:

Or you got it, rubbing your mouth
With fingers the clay adhered to.

And I-soon managed to find
Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind

And be safe in my corset-lacing.

No harm! It was not my fault

If you never turned your eye's tail up As I shook upon E in alt.,

Or ran the chromatic scale up : For spring bade the sparrows pair,

And the boys and girls gave guesses,

And stalls in our street looked rare
With bulrush and watercresses.

Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power

Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

I did look, sharp as a lynx,

(And yet the memory rankles,) When models arrived, some minx Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

But I think I gave you as good!
"That foreign fellow,-who can know
How she pays, in a playful mood,
For his tuning her that piano?

Could you say so, and never say,

Suppose we join hands and fortunes, And I fetch her from over the way, Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?"

No, no: you would not be rash,

Nor I rasher and something over:
You've to settle yet Gibson's hash,
And Grisi yet lives in clover.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I'm queen myself at bals-puré,
I've married a rich old lord,

And you 're dubbed knight and an
R. A.

Each life unfulfilled, you see;

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy :
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,―been
happy.

And nobody calls you a dunce,
And people suppose me clever:
This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it forever.

A FACE

1864.

If one could have that little head of hers Painted upon a background of pale gold, Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers! No shade encroaching on the matchless mould

Of those two lips, which should be opening soft

In the pure profile: not as when she laughs,

For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's

Burden of honey-colored buds to kiss And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.

Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround,

How it should waver on the pale gold ground

Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!

I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb :

But these are only massed there, I should think,

Waiting to see some wonder momently Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky

(That's the pale ground you'd see this sweet face by),

All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye

Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink. 1864.

III

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board;

Why what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they : Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the

Formidable' here with her twelve and eighty guns

Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,

Trust to enter where 't is ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,

And with flow at full beside?
Now, 't is slackest ebb of tide.

Reach the mooring? Rather say,
While rock stands or water runs,
Not a ship will leave the bay!"