And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
-Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude

To death: ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—
Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through—
And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
-Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers—
Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!

(1845.)

THE LOST LEADER

I

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat-
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:

How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,

Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
-He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II

We shall march prospering,-not thro' his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,-while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
There will be doubt, hesitation and pain,

Forced praise on our part-the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him—strike gallantly,
Menace our heart ere we master his own;

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

(1845.)

DAVID SINGING BEFORE SAUL

(From Saul)

VIII

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart; And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart

From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a start,
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.
So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,
As I sang,-

IX

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou

didst guard

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Didst thou kiss the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness 'Let one more attest, I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a lifetime, and all was for best?'

Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest.

And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence

grew

Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true:

And the friends of thy boyhood—that boyhood of wonder and hope, Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;

And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine! On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the

throe

That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go) High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,—

all

Brought to blaze on the head of one creature-King Saul!"

X

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,—heart, hand, harp and voice,
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul's fame in the light it was made for-as when, dare I say,
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array.
And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot—“Saul!” cried I, and stopped,
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung
propped

By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name.
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim,
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust
of stone

A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, leaves grasp of the sheet?

Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,

With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold:

Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest-all hail, there they are!

-Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest For their food in the ardours of summer. One long shudder thrilled All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.

(1845.)

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Oh, to be in England

Now that April 's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

II

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles,

On the solitary pastures where our sheep

Half-asleep

(1845-)

Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop

As they crop—

Was the site once of a city great and gay,

(So they say)

Of our country's very capital, its prince,
Ages since,

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.