Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers

of Ill,

Strowing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will,

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine. Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

Follow Light, and do the Right--for man can half control his doom

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly, and mingle with the Past. I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

Gone at eighty, mine own age, and I and you will bear the pall; Then I leave thee Lord and Master, latest Lord of Locksley Hall.

DUET FROM BECKET.

First Voice: Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead?

Second Voice: No; but the voice of the deep as it hollows the cliffs of the land.

First Voice: Is there a voice coming up with the voice of the deep from the strand,

One coming up with a song in the flush of the glimmering red?

Second Voice: Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea.

First Voice: Love that can shape or can shatter a life till the life shall have fled?

Second Voice: Nay, let us welcome him, Love that can lift up a life from the dead.

First Voice: Keep him away from the lone little isle. Let us be, let us be.

Second Voice: Nay, let him make it his own, let him reign in it-he, it is he,

Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from

the sea.

MARJORY'S SONG FROM BECKET.

BABBLE in bower

Under the rose!

Bee mustn't buzz,

Whoop-but he knows.

Kiss me, little one,

Nobody near!
Grasshopper, grasshopper,
Whoop-you can hear.

Kiss in the bower,

Tit on the tree!

Bird mustn't tell,

Whoop-he can see.

ROSAMUND'S SONG FROM BECKET.

RAINBOW, stay,
Gleam upon gloom,
Bright as my dream,
Rainbow, stay!

But it passes away,
Gloom upon gleam,
Dark as my doom-
O rainbow, stay.

SONGS FROM THE PROMISE OF MAY.

I.

The tower lay still in the low sunlight,
The hen cluckt late by the white farm gate,
The maid to her dairy came in from the cow,
The stock-dove coo'd at the fall of night,
The blossom had open'd on every bough;
O joy for the promise of May, of May,
O joy for the promise of May.

-Page 449.

II.

O happy lark, that warblest high
Above thy lowly nest,

O brook, that brawlest merrily by
Thro' fields that once were blest,
O tower spiring to the sky,

O graves in daisies drest,
O Love and Life, how weary am I,
And how I long for rest!

THE PROGRESS OF SPRING.

I.

THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould,
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea,
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold
That trembles not to kisses of the bee:
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves
The spear of ice has wept itself away,
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves
O'er his uncertain shadow droops the day.

She comes! The loosen'd rivulets run;

The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair;

Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun,

Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bare To breaths of balmier air;

II.

Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her,
About her glance the tits, and shriek the jays,
Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker,
The linnet's bosom blushes at her gaze,
While round her brows a woodland culver flits,
Watching her large light eyes and gracious looks,
And in her open palm a halcyon sits

Patient-the secret splendour of the brooks.
Come Spring! She comes on waste and wood,
On farm and field: but enter also here,
Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blood,
And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere,
Lodge with me all the year!