scarce saw her till the end of his life; when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her and she received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures! even as a matter of Art, I am sure. - EDWARD FITZGERALD, 'Letters and Literary Remains,' vol. i.]

BEAT, little heart-I give you this and this.

Who are you? What the Lady Hamilton ?

Good, I am never weary painting you.
fo sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe, Joan,
Or spinning at your wheel beside the
vine

Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail
To conjure and concentrate into form
And color all you are, the fault is less
In me than Art. What artist ever yet
Could make pure light live on the canvas?
Art!

Why should I so disrelish that short word? Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot,

So fever'd never colt would more delight
To roll himself in meadow grass than I
To wallow in that winter of the hills.
Nurse, were you hired? or came of your
own will

To wait on one so broken, so forlorn?
Have I not met you somewhere long ago?
I am all but sure I have in Kendal
church-

My curse upon the Master's apothegm, That wife and children drag an artist down!

This seem'd my lodestar in the heaven of Art,

And lured me from the household fire on earth.

To you my days have been a lifelong lie, Grafted on half a truth; and tho' you say, Take comfort you have won the painter's fame,'

The best in me that sees the worst in me, And groans to see it, finds no comfort there.

What fame? I am not Raphael, Titian,

I dream'd last night of that clear summer noon,

When seated on a rock, and foot to foot With your own shadow in the placid lake, You claspt our infant daughter, heart to heart.

I had been among the hills, and brought you down

A length of staghorn-moss, and this you twined

About her cap. I see the picture yet,
Mother and child. A sound from far away,
No louder than a bee among the flowers,
A fall of water lull'd the noon asleep.
You still'd it for the moment with a song
Which often echo'd in me, while I stood
Before the great Madonna-masterpieces
Of ancient Art in Paris, or in Rome.

'Sleep, little blossom, my honey, my bliss!
For I give you this, and I give you this!
And I blind your pretty blue eyes with a kiss!
Sleep!'

Too early blinded by the kiss of death
'Father and Mother will watch you grow' -

You watch'd, not I; she did not grow, she died.

'Father and Mother will watch you grow, And gather the roses whenever they blow, And find the white heather wherever you go, My sweet.'

Ah, my white heather only blooms in hea

ven

With Milton's amaranth. There, there, there a child

Had shamed me at it-Down, you idle tools,

WHAT be those crown'd forms high over the sacred fountain?

Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain, And over the flight of the Ages: O Goddesses, help me up thither! Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither. Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,

And stand with my head in the zenith, and

roll my voice from the summit, Sounding for ever and ever thro' Earth and her listening nations, And mixt with the great sphere-music of stars and of constellations.

II

What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,

Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?

On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening; Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by more than lightning!

BY AN EVOLUTIONIST

THE Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,

And the man said, Am I your debtor?' And the Lord-Not yet; but make it as clean as you can,

And then I will let you a better.'

I

If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,

Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines,

I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable,

Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines?

II

What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack?

Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar !

OLD AGE

Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back.

Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star.