'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.

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 curtains of my bed
That abiding phantom cold.

8

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

9

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

ΙΟ

Thro' the hubbub of the market

I steal, a wasted frame,

It crosses here, it crosses there,

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

And on my heavy eyelids
My anguish hangs like shame.

II

Alas for her that met me,
That heard me softly call,

Came glimmering thro' the laurels
At the quiet evenfall,

In the garden by the turrets

Of the old manorial hall.

12

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"?
13

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.

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,

With never an end to the stream of passing feet,

Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying,

Clamour 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.

2

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.

3

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!

4

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 whisper'd a private affair

Within the hearing of cat or mouse,

No, not to myself in the closet alone,

But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house; Everything came to be known:

Who told him we were there?

5

Not that gray old wolf, for he came not back

From the wilderness, full of wolves, where he used to lie; He has gather'd the bones for his o'ergrown whelp to crack; Crack them now for yourself, and howl, and die.

6

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.

7

Tell him now: she is standing here at my head;
Not beautiful now, not even kind;

He

may take her now; for she never speaks her 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.

8

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,

And I almost fear they are not roses, but blood;
For the keeper was one, so full of pride,

He linkt 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?

9

But what will the old man say?

He laid a cruel snare in a pit

To catch a friend of mine one stormy day;
Yet now I could even weep to think of it;
For what will the old man say

When he comes to the second corpse in the pit?

ΙΟ

Friend, to be struck by the public foe,
Then to strike him and lay him low,
That were a public merit, far,
Whatever the Quaker holds, from sin;
But the red life spilt for a private blow-
I swear to you, lawful and lawless war
Are scarcely even akin.

II

O me, why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?

Maybe still I am but half-dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;

I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come
To bury me, bury me

Deeper, ever so little deeper.

XXVIII

I

My life has crept so long on a broken wing
Thro' cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing:
My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year
When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs,
And the shining daffodil dies, and the Charioteer
And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion's grave low down in the west,
That like a silent lightning under the stars

She seem'd to divide in a dream from a band of the blest,
And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars—
"And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest,
Knowing I tarry for thee," and pointed to Mars

As he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast.

2

And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight
To have look'd, tho' but in a dream, upon eyes so fair,
That had been in a weary world my one thing bright;
And it was but a dream, yet it lighten'd my despair
When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the
right,

That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,