Through the winding hedge-rows green,
How we wandered, I and you,
With the bowery tops shut in,

And the gates that showed the view;
How we talked there! thrushes soft
Sang our pauses out, or oft
Bleatings took them from the croft.

Till the pleasure, grown too strong,
Left me muter evermore;
And, the winding road being long,
I walked out of sight, before;
And so, wrapt in musings fond,
Issued (past the wayside pond)
On the meadow-lands beyond.

I sat down beneath the beech

Which leans over to the lane,
And the far sound of your speech
Did not promise any pain;
And I blessed you full and free,
With a smile stooped tenderly
O'er the May-flowers on my knee.

But the sound grew into word

As the speakers drew more near—
Sweet, forgive me that I heard

What you wished me not to hear.
Do not weep so, do not shake-
O, I heard thee, Bertha, make
Good, true answers for my sake.

Yes, and he too! let him stand

In thy thoughts, untouched by blame. Could he help it, if my hand

He had claimed with hasty claim!
That was wrong perhaps, but then
Such things be, and will, again!
Women cannot judge for men.

Had he seen thee, when he swore

He would love but me alone?
Thou wert absent, --sent before
To our kin in Sidmouth town.
When he saw thee, who art best
Past compare, and loveliest,
He but judged thee as the rest.
Could we blame him with grave words,
Thou and I, dear, if we might?
Thy brown eyes have looks like birds
Flying straightway to the light;
Mine are older. Hush!-look out-
Up the street! Is none without?
How the poplar swings about!

And that hour- beneath the beech-
When I listened in a dream,
And he said, in his deep speech,
That he owed me all esteem,
Each word swam in on my brain
With a dim, dilating pain,
Till it burst with that last strain.

I fell flooded with a dark,

I am pale as crocus grows

Close beside a rose-tree's root!
Whosoe'er would reach the rose
Treads the crocus underfoot;
I, like May-bloom on thorn-tree,
Thou, like merry summer-bee!
Fit, that I be plucked for thee.

Yet who plucks me?- no one mourns;
I have lived my season out,

And now die of my own thorns,

Which I could not live without.
Sweet, be merry! How the light
Comes and goes! If it be night,
Keep the candles in my sight.

Are there footsteps at the door?
Look out quickly. Yea or nay?
Some one might be waiting for

Some last word that I might say.
Nay? So best!-So angels would
Stand off clear from deathly road,
Not to cross the sight of God.

Colder grow my hands and feet:

When I wear the shroud I made,
Let the folds lie straight and neat,
And the rosemary be spread,
That if any friend should come,
(To see thee, sweet!) all the room
May be lifted out of gloom.

And, dear Bertha, let me keep

On my hand this little ring, Which at nights, when others sleep, I can still see glittering. Let me wear it out of sight, In the grave, where it will light All the dark up, day and night.

On that grave drop not a tear!

Else, though fathom-deep the place, Through the woollen shroud I wear

I shall feel it on my face.

Rather smile there, blessed one,
Thinking of me in the sun,
Or forget me, smiling on!

193

Art thou near me? nearer? so!
Kiss me close upon the eyes,
That the earthly light may go
Sweetly as it used to rise,
When I watched the morning gray
Strike, betwixt the hills, the way
He was sure to come that day.

So

no more vain words be said! The hosannas nearer rollMother, smile now on thy dead, — I am death-strong in my soul! Mystic Dove alit on cross, Guide the poor bird of the snows Through the snow-wind above loss!

Jesus, Victim, comprehending

Love's divine self-abnegation, Cleanse my love in its self-spending, And absorb the poor libation! Wind my thread of life up higher, Up through angels' hands of fire!— I aspire while I expire!

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a
goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river?

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

From the deep, cool bed of the river, The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river,
And hacked and hewed as a great god can
With his hard, bleak steel at the patient
reed,

Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!)

man,

Steadily from the outside ring,
Then notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sate by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,

(Laughed while he sate by the river!) "The only way since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed."

Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and the
pain,

For the reed that grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.

COWPER'S GRAVE.

IT is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying.

It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying: Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence languish ! Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.

O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing! O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging! O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace,

and died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory,

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration;

Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken;

Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken.

With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him,

With meekness that is gratefulness to
God whose heaven hath won him,-
Who suffered once the madness-cloud to
His own love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along where
breath and bird could find him;

And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses

As

The

hills have language for, and stars harmonious influences!

pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number;

And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.

Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses, Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses:

The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing, Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving.

But though in blindness he remained unconscious of that guiding, And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing, He testified this solemn truth, while Nor man nor nature satisfy whom only frenzy desolated,

God created!

Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses; That turns his fevered eyes around, "My mother! where's my mother?"As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other:

The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him; Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, which closed in death to save him!.

Thus? O, not thus! no type of earth can image that awaking,

Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking,

Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted;

But felt those eyes alone, and knew "My Saviour! not deserted!"

Deserted! who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested Upon the Victim's hidden face, no love was manifested?

What frantic hands outstretched have

e'er the atoning drops averted, What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate from his own essence rather:

And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father; Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath shaken,

It went up single, echoless, "My God, I am forsaken!"

It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation,

That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation;

That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition, And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision!

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

THACKERAY.

[1811-1863.]

AT THE CHURCH GATE. ALTHOUGH I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover;

ALFRED TENNYSON.

And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait,

Expectant of her.

The minster bell tolls out
Above the city's rout,

And noise and humming;
They've hushed the minster bell:
The organ 'gins to swell;
She's coming, she's coming!

My lady comes at last, Timid and stepping fast,

195

And hastening hither, With modest eyes downcast, She comes, she's here, she's past, May Heaven go with her!

Kneel undisturbed, fair saint'
Pour out your praise or plaint,
Meekly and duly;

I will not enter there,
To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.

But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute
Like outcast spirits who wait
And see through heaven's gate
Angels within it.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

MARIANA.

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all,
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the peach to the garden-wall.
The broken sheds looked sad and strange,
Unlifted was the clinking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,

When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow; The cock sung out an hour ere light:

From the dark fen the oxen's low

Came to her: without hope of change,

In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
And I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall

A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small,

The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All silver-green with gnarled bark,
For leagues no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding gray.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,

And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,

The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, "I am very dreary,

He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were dead!"

"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK!" BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

MEMORY.

I CLIMB the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend";

No
gray old
grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;

Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw

That hears the latest linnet trill, Nor quarry trenched along the hill, And haunted by the wrangling daw.