He'll never put on the black cap except for the worst of the worst,

And the first may be last—I have heard it in church—and the last may be first.

Suffering—O, long-suffering—yes, as the Lord must know, Year after year in the mist and the wind and the shower and the snow.

Heard, have you? what? they have told you he never repented his sin.

How do they know it? are they his mother? are you of his kin?

Heard! have you ever heard, when the storm on the downs began,

The wind that 'll wail like a child and the sea that 'l1 moan like a man?

Election, Election, and Reprobation—it's all very well.

But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell. For I cared so much for my boy that the Lord has look'd into my care,

And He means me I'm sure to be happy with Willy, I know not where.

And if he be lost—but to save my soul, that is all your desire—

Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire?

I have been with God in the dark—go, go, you may leave me alone—

You never have borne a child—you are just as hard as a stone.

Madam, I beg your pardon! I think that you mean to be kind,

But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy's voice in

the wind—

The snow and the sky so bright—he used but to call in the dark,

And he calls to me now from the church and not from the gibbet—for hark!

Nay—you can hear it yourself—it is coming—shaking the walls—

Willy—the moon 's in a cloud—Good-night. I am going. He calls.

Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,

Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's

pyre;

Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the "Works and Days,"

All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase;

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;"

All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word;

Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers;

Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be,

Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and earless sea;

Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind;

Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind;

Light among the vanish'd ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore;

Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more;

Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple

Cæsar's dome—

Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome—

Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen holds her place,

I, from out the Northern Islands sunder'd once from all the human race,

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began,

Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.

I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,
The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers "Death."

2

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,
His who had given me life—O father! O God! was it

well?—

Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the

ground:

There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell.

3

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail'd,

And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with

despair,

And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling

wail'd,

And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.

4

I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd

fright,

And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard

The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering

night.

5

Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all. Not he: his honest fame should at least by me be maintain'd: But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd.

6

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,

Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?

7

But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of

mind,

When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's

ware or his word?

(C) HC—Vol. 42

Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind

The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.

8

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print

Of the golden age—why not? I have neither hope nor trust;

May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint, Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.

9

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine,

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; Peace in her vineyard—yes!—but a company forges the wine.

10

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled

wife,

And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for

bread,

And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.

11

And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villainous center-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits

To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights.

12

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones,
Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.