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Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom;

What dost thou in this living tomb ?

Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago

So much unlearnt, so much resign'd-
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;

Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone-

For both were faiths, and both are gone.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world deride--
I come to shed them at their side.

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me
round

Till I possess my soul again;

Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!

For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,

Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme-
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!

Ah, if it be pass'd, take away,
At least, the restlessness, the pain;
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone-
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!

But--if you cannot give us ease-
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent-the best are silent now.

Achilles ponders in his tent,

The kings of modern thought are dumb; Silent they are, though not content,

And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more.

Our fathers water'd with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail,
Their voices were in all men's ears
We pass'd within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves.
But we stand mute,and watch the waves.

For what avail'd it, all the noise
And outery of the former men?—
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then :
The sufferers died, they left their pain-
The pangs which tortured them remain.

What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart,

Through Europe to the Etolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?

What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian
bay?

Inheritors of thy distress

Have restless hearts one throb the less?

Or are we easier, to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page.
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy
head

From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the one brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or chalets near the Alpine snow?

Ye slumber in your silent grave !—
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave.
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell ;
But we we learned your lore too well!

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.

Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But, while we wait, allow our tears!

Allow them! We admire with awe
The exulting thunder of your race;
You give the universe your law,

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1Standing alone, under the title: To Marguerite.

There are in the English language three elegiac poems so great that they eclipse and efface all the elegiac poetry we know; all of Italian, all of Greek. It is only because the latest born is yet new to us that it can seem strange or rash to say so. The Thyrsis of Mr. Arnold makes a third with Lycidas and Adonais.... Thyrsis, like Lycidas, has a quiet and tender undertone which gives it something of sacred." (Swinburne.)

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The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley
Downs,

The Vale, the three lone weirs, the
youthful Thames ?-

This winter-eve is warm, Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,

The tender purple spray on copse and briars!

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,

She needs not June for beauty's heightening.

Lovely all times she lies, lovely tonight!-

Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.

Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;

Now seldom come I, since I came with him.

That single elm-tree bright Against the west-I miss it! is it gone? We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,

Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;

While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,

But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;

And with the country-folk acquaintance made

By barn in threshing-time, by newbuilt rick.

Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.

Ah me! this many a year

My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!

Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart

Into the world and wave of men de

part;

But Thyrsis of his own will went away.

It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country yields,

He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,

For that a shadow lour'd on the fields, Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.

Some life of men unblest

He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.

He went his piping took a troubled sound

Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;

He could not wait their passing, he is dead.

June,

So. some tempestuous morn in early [is o'er, When the year's primal burst of bloom Before the roses and the longest day[floor When garden-walks and all the grassy With blossoms red and white of fallen May

And chestnut-flowers are strewnSo have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,

From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,

Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze :

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?

Soon will the high Midsummer pomps

come on,

Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,

Soon shall we have gold-dusted snap

dragon, Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,

And stocks in fragrant blow; Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, And groups under the dreaming garden trees,

And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

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