Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou

art staring at the wall,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,

To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never, never,' whisper'd by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the

ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking an

cient kindness on thy pain. Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry. 'T is a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down my latest

rival brings thee rest. Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.

Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

she herself was not exemptTruly, she herself had suffer'd"- Perish in thy self-contempt !

Overlive it lower yet-be happy! wherefore should I care?

I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.

I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,

When the ranks are roll'd in vapor, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels,

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.

Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to b gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest

of the things that they shall do:

eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, ar

gosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the

south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one in

creasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd

with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's? Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving toward

the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sound

ing on the bugle-horn, They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn :

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on

such a moulder'd string?

I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's painNature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine

Here at least, where nature sickens, noth

ing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd ;

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,

Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree --Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There In the

methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks, Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books

For

wander far away,

ways of the day.

ward, forward let us range.

the ringing grooves of change.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help

me as when life begun : Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

well to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

I waited for the train at Coventry: I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,

To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped

The city's ancient legend into this:

Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,

And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she

Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled In Coventry for when he laid a tax

Upon his town, and all the mothers brought

Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"

She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode

About the hall, among his dogs, alone, His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears,

And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax,

they starve."

"O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-"Alas!" she said,

"But prove me what it is I would not do." And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town,

And I repeal it"; and nodding, as in

scorn,

He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind, As winds from all the compass shift and blow,

Made war upon each other for an hour, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, 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 barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower,

and there

Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath She linger'd, looking like a summer moon Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,

And shower'd 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 reach'd The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt

In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:

The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed

for fear.

The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout

Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot

Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind walls

Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead

Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she

Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field

Gleam thro' 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 augur-hole in fear,
Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had
their will,

Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait

On noble deeds, cancell'da sense misused; And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all

at once,

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon

Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,

One after one but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away And built herself an everlasting name.

THE TWO VOICES.

A STILL small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?"

Then to the still small voice I said; "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made."

66

To which the voice did urge reply;
To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie

"An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

"He dried his wings like gauze they grew:

Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."

I said, "When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.