And there rises ever a passionate cry
From underneath in the darkening land-
What is it, that has been done?

Oh, dawn of Eden bright over earth and sky,
The fires of hell brake out of thy rising sun,
The fires of hell and of hate;

For she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a word,
When her brother ran in his rage to the gate;
He came with the babe-faced lord;
Heaped on her terms of disgrace,

And while she wept, and I strove to be cool,
He fiercely gave me the lie,

Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,

And he struck me, madman, over the face,
Struck me before the languid fool,
Who was gaping and grinning by:
Struck for himself an evil stroke:
Wrought for his house an unredeemable woe;
For front to front in an hour we stood,

And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke
From the red-ribbed hollow behind the wood,
And thundered up into heaven the Christless
code,

That must have life for a blow.

Ever and ever afresh they seemed to grow.
Was it he lay there with a fading eye?
"The fault was mine," he whispered, "fly!"
Then glided out of the joyous wood
The ghastly wraith of one that I know;
And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry,
A cry for a brother's blood:

It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die,

till I die.

Is it gone? my pulses beat

What was it? a lying trick of the brain?
Yet I thought I saw her stand,
A shadow there at my feet,
High over the shadowy land.

It is gone: and the heavens fall in a gentle rain, When they should burst and drown with deluging storms

The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust, The little hearts that know not how to forgive: Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just, Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous

worms,

That sting each other here in the dust;

We are not worthy to live.

XXIV.

SEE what a lovely shell,

Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot,

Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,

How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name,
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door

Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurled,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Through this dim water-world?

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

Breton, not Briton; here
Like a shipwrecked man on a coast
Of ancient fable and fear-
Plagued with a flitting to and fro,
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
Nor ever arose from below,
That never came from on high

But only moves with the moving eye,
Flying along the land and the main-
Why should it look like Maud?
Am I to be overawed
By what I cannot but know
Is a juggle born of the brain?

Back from the Breton coast,

Sick of a nameless fear,

Back to the dark sea-line
Looking, thinking of all I have lost;
An old song vexes my ear;
But that of Lamech is mine.

For years, a measureless ill,
For years, forever, to part-
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she
Have a grain of love for me,
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.

Strange, that the mind, when fraught
With a passion so intense

One would think that it well

Might drown all life in the eye

That it should, by being so overwrought,

Suddenly strike on a sharper sense

For a shell, or a flower, little things

Which else would have been passed by!
And now I remember, I,

When he lay dying there,

I noticed one of his many rings

(For he had many, poor worm) and thought

It is his mother's hair.

Who knows if he be dead?

Whether I need have fled?

Am I guilty of blood?

However this may be,

Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,
While I am over the sea!

Let me and my passionate love go by,
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happen to me!

Me and my harmful love go by;

But come to her waking, find her asleep, Powers of the height, powers of the deep, And comfort her though I die.

XXV.

COURAGE, poor heart of stone!

I will not ask thee why

Thou canst not understand

That thou art left forever alone:

Courage, poor stupid heart of stone.Or if I ask thee why,

Care not thou to reply:

She is but dead, and the time is at hand When thou shalt more than die.

XXVI.

OH, that 't were possible
After long grief and pain

To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixed with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.

A shadow flits before me,
Not thou, but like to thee;

Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us

What and where they be!

It leads me forth at evening,

It lightly winds and steals

In a cold white robe before me,

When all my spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.

'Tis a morning pure and sweet,
And a dewy splendor falls
On the little flower that clings
To the turrets and the walls;
'Tis a morning pure and sweet,
And the light and shadow fleet;
She is walking in the meadow,
And the woodland echo rings;
In a moment we shall meet;
She is singing in the meadow,
And the rivulet at her feet
Ripples on in light and shadow
To the ballad that she sings.

Do I hear her sing as of old,

My bird with the shining head,

My own dove with the tender eye?

But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry,

There is some one dying or dead,
And a sullen thunder is rolled;
For a tumult shakes the city,
And I wake, my dream is fled;
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.

Get thee hence, nor come again,

Mix not memory with doubt,
Pass, thou death-like type of pain,
Pass and cease to move about,
'Tis the blot upon the brain
That will show itself without.

Then I rise, the eavedrops fall,
And the yellow vapors choke
The great city sounding wide;
The day comes, a dull red ball
Wrapped in drifts of lurid smoke
On the misty river-tide.

Through the hubbub of the market

I steal, a wasted frame,

It crosses bere, it crosses there,

Through all that crowd confused and loud,
The shadow still the same;

And on my heavy eyelids
My anguish hangs like shame.

Alas for her that met me,

That heard me softly call,

Came glimmering through the laurels

At the quiet evenfall,

In the garden by the turrets

Of the old manorial hall.

Would the happy spirit descend,
From the realms of light and song,
In the chamber or the street,
As she looks among the blest,
Should I fear to greet my friend
Or to say "Forgive the wrong,"
Or to ask her, "Take me, sweet,
To the regions of thy rest?"

But the broad light flares and beats,
And the shadow flits and fleets
And will not let me be;

And I loathe the squares and streets,
And the faces that one meets,
Hearts with no love for me:
Always I long to creep
Into some still cavern deep,
There to weep, and weep, and weep
My whole soul out to thee.

DEAD, long dead, Long dead!

XXVII.

And my heart is a handful of dust,
And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain,
For into a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street,
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
The hoofs of the horses beat,

Beat into my scalp and my brain,

Clamor and rumble, and ringing and clatter,
And here beneath it is all as bad,

For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not

Wretchedest age, since Time began,

They cannot even bury a man;

mind,

But is ever the one thing silent here.

She is not of us, as I divine;

She comes from another stiller world of the dead,

Stiller, not fairer than mine.

But I know where a garden grows,
Fairer than aught in the world beside,

All made up of the lily and rose

That blow by night, when the season is good, To the sound of dancing music and flutes:

It is only flowers, they had no fruits,

See, there is one of us sobbing,
No limit to his distress:

And another, a lord of all things, praying
To his own great self, as I guess :
And another, a statesman there, betraying
His party-secret, fool, to the press;
And yonder, a vile physician, blabbing
The case of his patient-all for what?

To tickle the maggot born in an empty head,
And wheedle a world that loves him not,
For it is but a world of the dead.

Nothing but idiot gabble!
For the prophecy given of old

And then not understood,

Has come to pass as foretold;

Not let any man think for the public good,

But babble, merely for babble.

For I never whispered a private affair

Within the hearing of cat or mouse,

No, not to myself in the closet alone,

For the keeper was one, so full of pride,
He linked a dead man there to a spectral bride;
For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes,
Would he have that hole in his side?

To bury me, bury me

the house;

Everything came to be known:

Who told him we were there?

Not that gray old wolf, for he came not back From the wilderness, full of wolves, where he . used to lie:

He has gathered the bones for his o'ergrown whelp to crack;

Crack them now for yourself, and howl, and die.

Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,
And curse me the British vermin, the rat;

I know not whether he came in the Hanover ship,

But I know that he lies and listens mute
In an ancient mansion's crannies and holes:
Arsenic, arsenic, sure, would do it,

Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls!

It is all used up for that.

rest,

breast.

The towering car, the sable steeds:

Bright let it be with his blazoned deeds, Dark in its funeral fold.

Let the bell be tolled:

And a deeper knell in the heart be knolled;
And the sound of the sorrowing anthem rolled
Through the dome of the golden cross;
And the volleying cannon thunder his loss;
He knew their voices of old.

For many a time in many a clime
His captain's-ear has heard them boom
Bellowing victory, bellowing doom;
When he with those deep voices wrought,
Guarding realms and kings from shame;

With those deep voices our dead captain taught
The tyrant, and asserts his claim

In that dread sound to the great name,
Which he has worn so pure of blame,
In praise and in dispraise the same,

A man of well-attempered frame.
O civic muse, to such a name,
To such a name for ages long,

To such a name,

Preserve a broad approach of fame, And ever-ringing avenues of song.

VI.

Who is he that cometh, like an honored guest, With banner and with music, with soldier and

with priest,

With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest? Mighty seaman, this is he

Was great by land as thou by sea.

Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man, The greatest sailor since our world began.

Now, to the roll of muffled drums,

To thee the greatest soldier comes;
For this is he

Was great by land as thou by sea;
His foes were thine; he kept us free;
Oh, give him welcome, this is he,
Worthy of our gorgeous rites,
And worthy to be laid by thee;
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye
Clashed with his fiery few and won;
And underneath another sun,
Warring on a later day,
Round affrighted Lisbon drew
The treble works, the vast designs
Of his labored rampart-lines,
Where he greatly stood at bay,

Whence he issued forth anew,
And ever great and greater grew,
Beating from the wasted vines
Back to France her banded swarms,
Back to France with countless blows,
Till o'er the hills her eagles flew
Past the Pyrenean pines,
Followed up in valley and glen
With blare of bugle, clamor of men,
Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
And England pouring on her foes.
Such a war had such a close.
Again their ravening eagle rose

In anger, wheeled on Europe-shadowing wings,
And barking for the thrones of kings;

Till one that gought but duty's iron crown

On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down; A day of onsets of despair!

Dashed on every rocky square

Their surging charges foamed themselves away;
Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;
Through the long-tormented air

Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray,

And down we swept and charged and overthrew.
So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world's-earthquake, Waterloo!
Mighty seaman, tender and true,

savior of the silver-coasted isle,
And pure as he from taint of craven guile,

O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine,

If love of country move thee there at all,

Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine! And through the centuries let a people's voice In full acclaim,

A people's voice,

The proof and echo of all human fame,

A people's voice, when they rejoice At civic revel and pomp and game, Attest their great commander's claim With honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name.

VII.

A people's voice! we are a people yet.
Though all men else their nobler dreams forget
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless powers;
Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set
His Saxon in blown seas and storming showers,
We have a voice, with which to pay the debt
Of boundless love and reverence and regret
To those great men who fought, and kept it ours.
And keep it ours, O God, from brute control;
O statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole,
And save the one true seed of freedom sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne,
That sober freedom out of which there springs
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings;
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,
And drill the raw world for the march of mind,
Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just.
But wink no more in slothful overtrust,
Remember him who led your hosts;

He bade you guard the sacred coasts.

Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall;

His voice is silent in your council-hall