Why should it look like Maud ?
Am I to be overawed
By what I cannot but know
Is a juggle born of the brain?

Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow. Was it he lay there with a fading eye! “ The fault was mine," he whisper'd, “fly!" Then glided out of the joyous wood The ghastly Wraith of one that I kuow; 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.

6. Ba 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.

2. Is it goue! my pulses beatWhat 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.

7. 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.

8.

XXIV.

1.

Ser 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!

Strange, that the mind, when fraugnt
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 past by!
And now 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.

9.

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

3.

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 uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world !

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, tind her asleep,
Powers of the height, Powers of the deep,
And comfort her tho' I die.

6. T is a morning pure and sweet, And a dewy splendor falls On the little flower that clings To the turrets and the walls ; 'T is 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.

But the broad light glares 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.

XXVII.

1.

7.

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 roll'd;
For a tumult shakes the city,
And I wake, my dream is fled ;
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the enrtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.

DEAN, long dead,
Long dead!
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,
Aud the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
The hoofs of the horses beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of passivg feet,
Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying,
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 so;
To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad?
But up and down and to and fro,
Ever about me the dead men go;
And then to hear a dead man chatter
Is enough to drive one mad.

8.

Get thee hence, nor come again,
Mix not memory with doubt,
Pass, thou deathlike type of pain,
Pass and cease to move about,
T is the blot upon the brain
That irill show itself without.

2.

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

Wretchedest age, since Time began,
They cannot even bury a man;
And tho' we paid our tithes in the days that are gone,
Not a bell was rung, not a prayer was read;
It is that which makes us loud in the world of the

dead ;
There is none that does his work, not one;
A touch of their office might have sufficed,
But the churchmen fain would kill their church,
As the churches have kill'd their Christ.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroild !
Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring

claims, Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant

liar; And many a darkness into the light shall leap And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, And noble thought be freer under the sun, And the heart of a people beat with one desire ; For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and

done, And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic

deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of tire.

With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a tield and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

"But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird: Old Philip; all about the fields you canght

His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a losty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

5. Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a

wind, We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are

noble still, And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better

mind ; It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the

ill; I have felt with my native land, I am one with my

kind, I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom as

sigu'd.

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

"O darling Katie Willows, his one child ! A maiden of our century, yet most meek: A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand; Her eyes a bashfui azure, and her hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the sheil Divides threefold to show the fruit within.

THE BROOK ;

AN IDYL.
"Rere, by this brook, we parted; I to the East
And he for Italy—too late-too late:
One whom the strong sons of the world despise ;
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent for cent;
Nor could he understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing: yet himself could make
The thing taat is not as the thing that is.
O had he lived ! In our school-hooks we say,
of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourish'd then or then : but life in hiin
Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd
On such a time as goes before the leaf,
When all the wood stands in a mist of green,
And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved,
For which, in branding summers of Bengal,
Or ev’n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air,
I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,
To me that loved him ; for 'O brook,' he says,
"O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
• Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? re-

plies.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally
And sparkle ont among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry dowr.

Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may g9

But I go on forever,
"Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,
Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge,
It has more ivy; there the river; and there
Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

"Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn, Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed, James Willows, of one name and heart with her. For here I came, twenty years back,-the week Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry-crust, Whistling a random bar of Bonuy Doon, And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate, Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge, Stuck; and he clamor'd from a casement, 'run' To Katie somewhere in the walks below, * Run, Katie!" Katie never ran : she moved To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers, A little futter'd with her eyelids down, Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.

“What was it? less of sentiment than sense Had Katie; not illiterate: neither one Who babbling in the fount of fictive tears, And nursed by mealy-mouthed philanthropies, Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

" She told me. She and James had quarrell'd

Why? What cause of quarrel ? None, she said, no cause: James had no cause: but when I prest the cause, I learnt that James had flickering jealousies Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine, And sketching with her slender-pointed foot Some figure like a wizard's pentagram On garden gravel, let my query pass Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd

I linger by my shingly hare ;

I loiter rouud my cresses ; And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river, For men may come aud men may go,

But I go on forever.

Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone.
All gone. My dearest brother, Edmnud, sleeps,
Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire,
But unfamiliar Arno, and the domne
Of Brunelleschi; sleeps in peace: and he,
Poor Pbilip, of all his lavish waste of words
Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb:
I scraped the licheu from it: Katie walks
By the long wash of Australasian seas
Far off, and holds her head to other stars,
And breathes in converse seasons. All are gone."

If James were coming. “Coming every day,'
She answer'd, 'ever longing to explain,
But evermore her father came across
With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;
Aud James departed vext with him and her.'
How could I help her? Would I-was it wrong?'
(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace
Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)
O would I take her father for one hour,
For one half-hour, and let him talk to me!'
And even while she spoke, I saw where James
Made towards us, like a wader in the surf,
Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.

"O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake!
For in I went and call'd old Philip out
To show the farm : full willingly he rose:
He led me thru' the short sweet-smelling lanes
or his wheat suburb, babbling as he went.
He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
He praised his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs ;
He praised his hens, his geese, his gniuea-nens;
His pigeoas, who in session on their roofs
Approved him, bowing at their own deserts :
Then from the plaintive mother's teat, he took
Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,
Aud naming those, his friends, for whom they were:
Then crost the common into Darnley chase
To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern
Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,
He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said :
“That was the four-year-old I sold the squire.'
And there be told a long, long-winded tale
of how the squire had seen the colt at grass,
And how it was the thing his danghter wish'd,
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm
To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd,
Aud how the bailiff swore that he was mad,
But he stood tirm; and so the matter hung;
He gave them line: and tive days after that
He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,
Who then and there had offer'd something more,
But he stood firm ; and so the matter hug;
He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;
He gave them live: and how by chance at last
(It might be May or April, he forgot,
The last of April or the first of May)
He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
And, talking from the point, he drew him in,
And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale,
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.

"Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he, Poor fellow, could he help it? recommenced, And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle, Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho, Reform, Whi'e Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt, Arbaces and Phenomenon, and the rest, Till, not to die a listener, I arose, And with me Philip, talking still; and so We torn'd our foreheads from the falling fun, And following our own shadows thrice as long As when they follow'd us from Philip's door, Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content He-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-ine-pois

That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.
murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses ;

So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind Old waifis of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook A tousured head in middle age forlorn, Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breatlı of tender air made tremble in the hedge The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings ; And he look'd up. There stood a maiden near, Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides threefold 10 show the fruit within : Ther, wondering, ask'd her, “Are you from the

farm!" “Yes," auswer'd she. “Pray stay a little : pardou

me : What do they call you ?".

" Katie." "That wer strange. What suruame?" “Willows." “No!" "That is

my name. " Tudeed!” and here he look'd so self-perplext, That Katie laugh'd, and laughing blush'd, till he Langh'd also, but as oue before he wakes, Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream. Then looking at her; “Too happy, fresh and fair, Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom, To be the ghost of one who bore your name About these meadows, twenty years ago."

“Hare you not heard ?” said Katie, “we came

back.
We bought the farm we tenanted before.
Am I so like her? so they said on board.
Sr, if you knew her in her English days,
My mother, as it seems you did, the days
That most she loves to talk of, come with m..
My brother James is in the harvest-field:
But she-you will be welcome-O, come in ."

THE LETTERS.

1. STILL on the tower stood the vane,

A black yew gloom'd the stagnant air, I peer'd ath wart the chancel pane

And saw the altar cold aud bare. A clog of lead was round my feet,

A band of pain across my brow : "Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall mcct

Before you hear my marriage vow."

2. I turn'd and hamm'd a bitter song

That mock'd the wholesome human heart, And then we met in wrath and wrong,

We met, but only meant to part.