I shall never see her more

Where the reeds and rushes quiver,
Shiver, quiver;

Stand beside the sobbing river,
Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling
To the sandy lonesome shore;
I shall never hear her calling,
'Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
Mellow, mellow;

Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;

Comme uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot;
Quit your pipes of parsley hollow,

Hollow, hollow;

Come uppe Lightfoot, rise and follow;

Lightfoot, Whitefoot,

From your clovers lift the head;

Come uppe Jetty, follow, follow,

Jetty, to the milking shed.'

Jean Ingelow

CCCLXXXIV

A SUMMER NIGHT

In the deserted moon-blanch'd street
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world;-but see!
A break between the housetops shows
The moon, and, lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity

Down at the far horizon's rim,

Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose,

And to my mind the thought

Is on a sudden brought

Of a past night, and a far different scene.
Headlands stood out into the moon-lit deep
As clearly as at noon;

The spring-tide's brimming flow

Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses with long white sweep
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,

The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair-

But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright calm moon.

And the calm moonlight seems to say:
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which never deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow

That whirls the spirit from itself away,

But fluctuates to and fro,
Never by passion quite possess'd,

Any never quite benumb'd by the world's sway?
And I, I know not if to pray

Still to be what I am, or yield, and be
Like all the other men I see.

For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where in the sun's hot eye,

With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.
And as, year after year,

Fresh products of their barren labour fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,

Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;

And while they try to stem

The waves of mournful thought by which they are

prest,

Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

And the rest, a few,

Escape their prison, and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.

There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart

Listeth, will sail;

Nor doth he know how there prevail,

Despotic on that sea,

Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr'd
By thwarting signs, and braves

The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen

Only a driving wreck,

And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguish'd face and flying hair

Grasping the rudder hard,

Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar

Of sea and wind, and through the deepening

gloom

Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.

Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?

Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain! Clearness divine!

Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign Of languor, though so calm, and though so great Are yet untroubled and unpassionate!

Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,

And, though so task'd, keep free from dust and

soil!

I will not say that your mild deeps retain

A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain

Who have long'd deeply once, and long'd in vain;

But I will rather say that you remain

A world above man's head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizons be,

How vast, yet of what clear transparency!

How it were good to live there, and breathe free!

How fair a lot to fill

Is left to each man still!

M. Arnold

CCCLXXXV

PHILOMELA

Hark! ah, the nightingale!

The tawny-throated!

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark-what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,

Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain

That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world

pain

Say, will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,

Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound

With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?

Listen, Eugenia—

How thick the bursts come crowding through the

leaves !

Again-thou hearest?

Eternal passion!

Eternal pain!

M. Arnold

CCCLXXXVI

REQUIESCAT

Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!

In quiet she reposes;

Ah! would that I did too.

Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound;
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin'd, ample spirit,

It flutter'd and fail'd for breath;
To-night it doth inherit

The vasty hall of death.

M. Arnold

CCCLXXXVII

RUGBY CHAPEL

November, 1857

Coldly, sadly descends

The autumn evening! The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of wither'd leaves, and the elms,