But eager to follow,
I saw, whenever

In passing it glanced upon
Hamlet or city,

That under the Crosses
The dead man's garden,
The mortal hillock,

Would break into blossom;

And so to the land's

Last limit I came

And can no longer,
But die rejoicing,
For thro' the Magic
Of Him the Mighty,

Who taught me in childhood,
There on the border

Of boundless Ocean,

And all but in Heaven
Hovers The Gleam.

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! Look, in their deep double shadow the crown'd ones all disappearing!

Sing like a bird and be happy, nor hope for a deathless hearing! "Sounding for ever and ever?" pass on! the sight confusesThese are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses!

III.

If the lips were touch'd with fire from off a pure Pierian altar, Tho' their music here be mortal need the singer greatly care? Other songs for other worlds! the fire within him would not falter;

Let the golden Iliad vanish, Homer here is Homer there.

FAR-FAR-AWAY.

(FOR MUSIC.)

WHAT sight so lured him thro' the fields he knew
As where earth's green stole into heaven's own hue,
Far-far-away?

What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells

Far-far-away.

What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy,

Thro' those three words would haunt him when a boy,
Far-far-away?

A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death
Far-far-away?

Far, far, how far? from o'er the gates of Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,

Far-far-away?

What charm in words, a charm no words could give?
O dying words, can Music make you live

Far-far-away?

BEAUTIFUL CITY.

BEAUTIFUL city, the centre and crater of European confusion, O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal humanity,

How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Roll'd again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!

THE ROSES ON THE TERRACE.

ROSE, on this terrace fifty years ago,

When I was in my June, you in your May,
Two words," My Rose," set all your face aglow,
And now that I am white, and you are gray,
That blush of fifty years ago, my dear,

Blooms in the Past, but close to me to-day
As this red rose, which on our terrace here
Glows in the blue of fifty miles away.

TO ONE WHO RAN DOWN THE ENGLISH.

You make our faults too gross, and thence maintain
Our darker future. May your fears be vain!
At times the small black fly upon the pane

May seem the black ox of the distant plain.

THE SNOWDROP.

MANY, many welcomes
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,

Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes
February fair-maid !

THE THROSTLE.

"SUMMER is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.

Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,"
Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue.

Last year you sang it as gladly.

"New, new, new, new!" Is it then so new

That you should carol so madly?

"Love again, song again, nest again, young again,"

Never a prophet so crazy!

And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,

66

See, there is hardly a daisy.

Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"

O warble unchidden, unbidden!

Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,

And all the winters are hidden.

THE OAK.

LIVE thy Life,

Young and old,

Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich

Then; and then

Autumn-changed,
Soberer-hued

Gold again.