SAILORS' SONG. [From Death's Jest Book, Act i.] To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er; To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark Like mighty eagle soaring light The anchor heaves, the ship swings free, HESPERUS' SONG. [From The Bride's Tragedy, Act 1.] Poor old pilgrim Misery, Beneath the silent moon he sate, Anon a wanton imp astray His piteous moaning hears, And from his bosom steals away With his plunder fled that urchin elf, Then tell me back the stolen pelf, Or your cry shall be ever, alack! SONG OF THE STYGIAN NAIADES. Proserpine may pull her flowers, And comes home nightly, laden, 'Mongst the reeds and flowers of Styx; Yesterday, Where the Furies made their hay For a bed of tiger-cubs, A great fly of Beelzebub's, The bee of hearts, whom mortals name Cupid, Love, and Fie for shame. Proserpine may weep in rage, Bird or serpent, wild or tame, It shall sing out loud his shame. What hast caught then? What hast caught? Which so light did fall and fix 'Mongst the reeds and flowers of Styx, Where the Furies made their hay For a bed of tiger-cubs, A great fly of Beelzebub's, The bee of hearts, whom mortals name Cupid, Love, and Fie for shame. WOLFRAM'S SONG. [From Death's Jest Book, Act v.] Old Adam, the carrion crow, The old crow of Cairo ; He sat in the shower, and let it flow Leaked the wet weather; And the bough swung under his nest; It's only two devils, that blow Ho! Eva, my grey carrion wife, When we have supped on kings' marrow, Where shall we drink and make merry our life? Our nest it is Queen Cleopatra's skull, 'Tis cloven and cracked, And battered and hacked, But with tears of blue eyes it is full: FROM DREAM-PEDLARY.' If there were dreams to sell Some cost a passing bell; Some a light sigh, That shakes from Life's fresh crown Only a rose-leaf down. If there were dreams to sell, Merry and sad to tell, And the crier rang the bell, A cottage lone and still, Shadowy, my woes to still, Such pearl from Life's fresh crown Fain would I shake me down. Were dreams to have at will, This would I buy. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [BORN 1809: died 1861. Published Prometheus Bound and other poems, 1835; the Seraphim and other poems, 1838; Romaunt of the Page, 1839; two volumes of Poems, 1844; married Robert Browning, 1846; published Casa Guidi Windows, 1848; Aurora Leigh, 1856; Poems before Congress. 1860. The Last Poems were published posthumously in 1862, with a dedication to 'grateful Florence,' in allusion to the inscription on the tablet which after her death the city of Florence had put up in her honour.] Elizabeth Barrett began verse-making at a very early age. Besides the unacknowledged Essay on Mind, an attempt in the style of l'ope, which was written when she was a mere girl, she translated Prometheus Bound before she was twenty. Writing to her friend Mr. Horne, under the date of Oct. 5, 1843, she says: 'Most of my events and nearly all my intense pleasures have passed in my thoughts. I wrote verses--as I daresay many have done who never wrote any poems - very early; at eight years old and earlier. But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me, and from that day to this poetry has been a distinct object with me-an object to read, think, and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips.' Her life seems to have been a happy one till she was growing into womanhood. Then two things happened, at no great distance of time from one another, which altered and saddened it. Of the impression she made upon all who saw her before her great trial and sorrow came upon her let her old and tried friend Miss Mitford speak :— 'My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smil! like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty |