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VI.

AT THE AUST FERRY HOTEL.

O DAINTY diamond-ornamented fingers,

Puzzling plain folks, and leading some astray Who pore o'er panes where the inscription lingers Recording jovial rest, or anxious stay,

I rather wish your Latin were away, Although the epigrams are obvious stingers; And the fine Roman hand - it makes one say, Was 't Coleridge, Southey, Lamb was 't one of Earth's fine singers?

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"One touch," et cætera ; - banter as they may, We see ourselves in him who could not pass

Nor leave remembrance of himself some way, Though 't were but on the fragile face of glass. And who this mild ambition would gainsay In my opinion writes himself an ass!

VII.

A RENCONTRE AT TYTHERINGTON.

(Merci, Monsieur, merci!)

FORTH from the farmer's hospitable nook,
Among the trees and where the waters gushed,
A holy calmness all the welkin hushed,

And lo! before me stood, or rather shook,
A tall gaunt figure iron want had crushed

Into a thing scarce humanlike. He spoke,
Help in his native accents did invoke,

While through his frame a tide of diverse feelings rushed.

"Poor, wretched, and from Paris!" all he said;

Yet, plainly written in his visage pale,

Fancy could still piece out the mournful tale;
And, right or wrong, the history fully read
Of the wan outcast in a Gloucester vale,

In that sad, low, strange tongue, imploring bread.

BLOW

ALFRED TENNYSON.

I.

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

ye the trumpet; gather from afar

The hosts to battle; be not bought and sold.
Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;
Break through your iron shackles, - fling them far.

O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar

Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;
When even to Moscow's cupolas were rolled
The growing murmurs of the Polish war!
Now must your noble anger blaze out more
Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,
The Moslem myriads fell and fled before;
Than when Zamoyski smote the Tartar Khan;
Than, earlier, when on the Baltic shore

Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.

II.

A SOLDIER-PRIEST.

To J. M. K.

My hope and heart is with thee,

thou wilt be

A latter Luther and a soldier-priest

To scare church-harpies from the Master's feast; Our dusted velvets have much need of thee: Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws

Distilled from some worm-cankered homily;
But spurred at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark

The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone

Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk Browbeats his desk below. Thou, from a throne

Mounted in heaven, wilt shoot into the dark

Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.

III.

SONNET.

O, WERE I loved as I desire to be!

What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
Or range of evil between death and birth,

That I should fear, if I were loved by thee?

All the inner, all the outer world of pain,

Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine; As I have heard that somewhere in the main

Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.

'T were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee, To wait for death - mute - careless of all ills, Apart upon a mountain, though the surge

Of some new deluge from a thousand hills

Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye

could see.

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