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?

ground:

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

3.

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast specu

lation 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 whisperd

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.

Villany somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all. Not he his honest fame should at least by me be main

:

tain'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?

Is it peace or war?

kind

Civil war, as I think, and that of a

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,

Would theme te sorrow fe me there was love in the pas

Core for the went thing that had male fise bate to the ゴー

Wrist la a bad I saw him ol thought he would rise

And me a the De and the Ear, ab God, as be med to

16.

I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main.

Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me

here?

O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of

pain,

Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear?

17.

Workmen up at the Hall! they are coming back from

abroad;

The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a million

naire :

I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of

Maud;

I play'd with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair.

18.

Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and child

ish escapes,

Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the

Hall,

Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled

the grapes,

Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of

all,

19.

What is she now? My dreams are bad.. She may bring

me a curse.

No, there is fatter game on the moor; she will let me alone. Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be

the worse.

I will bury myself in my books, and the Devil may pipe to his own.

II.

LONG have I sigh'd for a calm: God grant I may find it at

last!

It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savor nor

salt,

But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage

past,

Lerfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the

fault?

All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen) Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,

Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour's defect of the

rose,

Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full,
Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose,
From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch
of spleen.

III.

COLD and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek, Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd, Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the

cheek,

Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound; Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as

before

Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound, Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no

more,

But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground,

Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung ship-wrecking

roar,

Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by

the wave,

Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave.

IV.

1.

A MILLION emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime
In the little grove where I sit -ah, wherefore cannot I be
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season

bland,

When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,

Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,

The silent sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land?