"What do you here, my

friend?"

The man

Looked first at me, and then at the dead. "There is a portrait here," he began ;

66 There is. It is mine," I said.

Said the friend of my bosom, "Yours, no doubt,
The portrait was, till a month ago,
When this suffering angel took that out,
And placed mine there, I know."

"This woman, she loved me well," said I.
"A month ago," said my friend to me:
"And in your throat," I groaned, "you lie !"
He answered... "Let us see."

66

Enough!" I returned, "let the dead decide:
And whose soever the portrait prove,

His shall it be, when the cause is tried,
Where Death is arraigned by Love."

We found the portrait there, in its place:
We opened it by the tapers' shine :
The gems were all unchanged: the face
Was-neither his nor mine.

"One nail drives out another, at least! The face of the portrait there," I cried, "Is our friend's the Raphael-faced young Priest, Who confessed her when she died."

The setting is all of rubies red,

And pearls which a Peri might have kept. For each ruby there my heart hath bled:

For each pearl my eyes have wept.

BABYLONIA.

NOUGH of simpering and grimace!

EN

Enough of damning one's soul for nothing! Enough of Vacuity trimmed with lace!

And Poverty proud of her purple clothing! In Babylon, whene'er there's a wind

(Whether it blow rain, or whether it blow sand), The weathercocks change their mighty mind;

And the weathercocks are forty thousand. Forty thousand weathercocks,

Each well-minded to keep his place,

Turning about in the great and small ways! Each knows, whatever the weather's shocks, That the wind will never blow in his face;

And in Babylon the wind blows always.

I cannot tell how it may strike you,

But it strikes me now, for the first and last time, That there may be better things to do,

Than watching the weathercocks for pastime.

And I wish I were out of Babylon,

Out of sight of column and steeple,

Out of fashion and form, for one,

And out of the midst of this double-faced people. Enough of catgut! Enough of the sight

Of the dolls it sets dancing all the night!

For there is a notion come to me,
As here, in Babylon, I am lying,

That far away, over the sea,

And under another moon and star,

Braver, more beautiful beings are dying

(Dying, not dancing, dying, dying!)

To a music nobler far.

Full well I know that, before it came
To inhabit this feeble, faltering frame,
My soul was weary; and, ever since then,

It has seemed to me, in the stir and bustle
Of this eager world of women and men,
That my life was tired before it began,
That even the child had fatigued the man,
And brain, and heart, have done their part
To wear out sinew and muscle.

Yet, sometimes, a wish has come to me,
To wander, wander, I know not where,
Out of the sight of all that I see,

Out of the hearing of all that I hear;
Where only the tawny, bold wild beast
Roams his realms; and find, at least,

The strength which even the beast finds there.

A joy, though but a savage joy ;

Were it only to find the food I need,

The scent to track, and the force to destroy,

And the very appetite to feed;

The bliss of the sense without the thought,

And the freedom, for once in my life, from aught That fills my life with care.

And never this thought hath so wildly crossed
My mind, with its wildering, strange temptation,

As just when I was enjoying the most

The blessings of what is called Civilization :

The glossy boot which tightens the foot;

The club at which my friend was black-balled

(I am sorry, of course, but one must be exclusive); The yellow kid glove whose shape I approve,

And the journal in which I am kindly called

Whatever's not libellous-only abusive:

The ball to which I am careful to go,

Where the folks are so cool, and the rooms are so hot; The opera, which shows one what music-is not; but why should you

And the simper from Lady..

know?

Yet, I am a part of the things I despise,
Since my life is bound by their common span :

And each idler I meet, in square or in street, Hath within him what all that's without him belies,— The miraculous, infinite heart of man,

With its countless capabilities!

The sleekest guest at the general feast,

That at every sip, as he sups, says grace, Hath in him a touch of the untamed beast; And change of nature is change of place.

The judge on the bench, and the scamp at the dock, Have, in each of them, much that is common to both; Each is part of the parent stock,

And their difference comes of their different cloth. "Twixt the Seven Dials and Exeter Hall

The gulf that is fixed is not so wide:

And the fool that, last year, at Her Majesty's Ball,
Sickened me so with his simper of pride,

Is the hero now heard of, the first on the wall,
With the bayonet-wound in his side.

Oh, for the times which were (if any

Time be heroic) heroic indeed!
When the men were few,

And the deeds to do

Were mighty, and many,

And each man in his hand held a noble deed.

Now the deeds are few,

And the men are many,

And each man has, at most, but a noble need.

Blind fool!... I know that all acted time
By that which succeeds it, is ever received
As calmer, completer, and more sublime,
Only because it is finished: because
We only behold the thing it achieved;
We behold not the thing that it was.

For, while it stands whole, and immutable,

In the marble of memory,-we, who have seen

But the statue before us,—how can we tell

What the men that have hewn at the block may have

been?

Their passion is merged in its passionlessness;

Their strife in its stillness closed forever: Their change upon change, in its changelessness:

In its final achievement, their feverish endeavour: Who knows how sculptor on sculptor starved With the thought in the head by the hand uncarved ? And he that spread out in its ample repose

That grand, indifferent, godlike brow,

How vainly his own may have ached, who knows, "Twixt the laurel above and the wrinkle below?