AH! YET CONSIDER IT AGAIN!

"OLD things need not be therefore true,"
O brother men, nor yet the new ;
Ah! still awhile the old thought retain,
And yet consider it again!

The souls of now two thousand years
Have laid up here their toils and fears,
And all the earnings of their pain,—
Ah, yet consider it again!

We! what do we see? each a space
Of some few yards before his face;
Does that the whole wide plan explain?
Ah, yet consider it again!

Alas! the great world goes its way,
And takes its truth from each new day;
They do not quit, nor can retain,
Far less consider it again.

1851. 1862.

But toil and pain must wear out many a day,

And days bear weeks, and weeks bear months away,

Ere, if at all, the weary traveller hear, With accents whispered in his way worn

ear,

A voice he dares to listen to, say, Come To thy true home.

Come home, come home! and where a home hath he

[sea? Whose ship is driving o'er the driving Through clouds that mutter, and oër waves that roar,

[shore Say, shall we find, or shall we not, a That is, as is not ship or ocean foam. Indeed our home? 1852.

1862.

GREEN fields of England! wheresoe'er Across this watery waste we fare, Your image at our hearts we bear, Green fields of England, everywhere.

Sweet eyes in England, I must flee Past where the waves' last confines be. Ere your loved smile I cease to see, Sweet eyes in England, dear to me.

Dear home in England, safe and fast
If but in thee my lot lie cast.
The past shall seem a nothing past
To thee, dear home, if won at last ;
Dear home in England, won at last.
185.2. 1862.

COME back, come back! behold with straining mast

And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast;

With one new sun to see her voyage o'er. With morning light to touch her native shore.

Come back! come back.

Come back, come back! while westward laboring by,

With sailless yards, a bare black hulk we fly.

See how the gale we fight with sweeps her back,

To our lost home, on our forsaken track. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back! across the fly ing foam.

We hear faint far-off voices call us home:

Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; and whither and for what?

To finger idly some old Gordian knot, Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,

And with much toil attain to halfbelieve.

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; yea back, indeed, do go

Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;

Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,

And wishes idly struggle in the strings; Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, more eager than

When all that hindered, all that vexed our love,

As tall rank weeds will climb the blade above,

When all but it has yielded to decay, We'll meet again upon some future day. When we have proved, each on his course alone,

The wider world, and learned what's now unknown,

Have made life clear, and worked out each a way,

We'll meet again, to say.

-we shall have much

O STREAM descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,

The flow 'rets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,
The fields the laborers till,
And houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still.

O life descending into death,
Our waking eyes behold,
Parent and friend thy lapse attend,
Companions young and old.

Sting purposes our mind possess,
Our hearts affections fill,
Weron and earn, we seek and learn,
And thou descendest still.

The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

And through the vale the rains g sweeping by:

Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be? Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they

O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray

(Home. Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie).

I do not ask the tints that fill The gate of day 'twixt hill and hill; I ask not for the hues that fleet Above the distant peaks; my feet Are on a poplar-bordered road, Where with a saddle and a load A donkey, old and ashen-gray, Reluctant works his dusty way. Before him, still with might and main Pulling his rope, the rustic rein, A girl before both him and me, Frequent she turns and lets me see, Unconscious, lets me scan and trace The sunny darkness of her face And outlines full of southern grace.

Following I notice, yet and yet, Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set, And black, and blacker e'en than jet, The escaping hair that scantly showed, Since o'er it in the country mode, For winter warmth and summer shade, The lap of scarlet cloth is laid. And then, back-falling from the head, A crimson kerchief overspread Her jacket blue: thence passing down, A skirt of darkest yellow-brown, Coarse stuff, allowing to the view The smooth limb to the woollen shoe. But who here's some one following

too,-

A priest, and reading at his book!
Read on, O priest, and do not look;
Consider, she is but a child,-
Yet might your fancy be beguiled.
Read on, O priest, and pass and go!
But see, succeeding in a row,
Two, three, and four, a motley train,
Musicians wandering back to Spain;
With fiddle and with tambourine,
A man with women following seen.
What dresses, ribbon ends, and flowers!
And, sight to wonder at for hours,--
The man,-to Phillip has he sat ?-
With butterfly-like velvet hat;
One dame his big bassoon conveys,
On one his gentle arm he lays;
They stop, and look, and something say,
And to España" ask the way.

..

But while I speak, and point them