VIOLA. A blank, my lord. She never told In the spring a livelier iris changes on the

her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed?

burnished dove;

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

We men may say more, swear more: but, indeed, And her eyes on all my motions with a mute

observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me;

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,

't is early morn,

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the upon the bugle horn. northern night.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the And she turned, - her bosom shaken with a curlews call, sudden storm of sighs; Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of Locksley Hall: hazel eyes,

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they sandy tracts, should do me wrong"; And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping,

"I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in
golden sands.

Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all
the chords with might;
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed
in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the
copses ring,

And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy,

Is it well to wish thee happy?- having known | Never! though my mortal summers to such length me; to decline of years should come

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart As the many-wintered crow that leads the clang. than mine! ing rookery home.

Yet it shall be thou shalt lower to his level day Where is comfort? in division of the records of by day, the mind? What is fine within thee growing coarse to sym- Can I part her from herself, and love her, as 1 pathize with clay. knew her, kind?

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated I remember one that perished; sweetly did she with a clown, speak and move; And the grossness of his nature will have weight Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to drag thee down. to love.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the spent its novel force, love she bore?

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than No, she never loved me truly; love is love forhis horse.

evermore.

What is this? his eyes are heavy, think not Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth they are glazed with wine. the poet sings,

Go to him; it is thy duty, kiss him; take his That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering hand in thine. happier things.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy overwrought, heart be put to proof, Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain thy lighter thought. is on the roof.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to un- Like a dog, he hunts in dreams; and thou art derstand,staring at the wall, Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the thee with my hands. shadows rise and fall.

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to heart's disgrace, his drunken sleep, Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last To thy widowed marriage-pillows, to the tears embrace. that thou wilt weep.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered strength of youth! by the phantom years, Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the And a song from out the distance in the ringing living truth! of thine ears;

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindnature's rule! ness on thy pain.

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened fore- Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to head of the fool! thy rest again.

Well

't is well that I should bluster! - Hadst Nay, but nature brings thee solace; for a tender
thou less unworthy proved,
voice will cry;

Would to God - for I had loved thee more than 'T is a purer life than thine, a lip to drain thy ever wife was loved.

trouble dry.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears | Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival but bitter fruit?

brings thee rest,

I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the

be at the root.

mother's breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dear- And his spirit leaps within him to be gone beness not his due. fore him then, Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ;

of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reappart, ing something new : With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a | That which they have done but earnest of the

daughter's heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not exempt

Truly, she herself had suffered ' - Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it—lower yet-be happy! wherefore should I care?

I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?

Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could

see,

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the Far along the world-wide whisper of the southmarkets overflow. wind rushing warm,

I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I With the standards of the peoples plunging through should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,

When the ranks are rolled in vapor, and the winds are laid with sound.

the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt There the common sense of most shall hold a that honor feels,

fretful realm in awe,

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in uniother's heels.

versal law.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry,

earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou won- Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with drous mother-age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,

When I heard my days before me, and the tu-
mult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the com-
ing years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his
father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and
nearer drawn,

Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint.

Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point :

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his | Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the youthful joys, heavy-fruited tree, Though the deep heart of existence beat forever Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres like a boy's? of sea.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers; and I There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than linger on the shore, in this march of mind

And the individual withers, and the world is more In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts and more. that shake mankind.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have bears a laden breast, scope and breathing-space ;

Full of sad experience moving toward the still- I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my ness of his rest. dusky race.

Hark! my merry comrades call me, sounding on Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive, and the bugle horn, they shall run, They to whom my foolish passion were a target Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their for their scorn; lances in the sun,

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainmouldered string? bows of the brooks,

I am shamed through all my nature to have loved Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable so slight a thing. books

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my pleasure, woman's painwords are wild, Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a But I count the gray barbarian lower than the shallower brain; Christian child.

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our matched with mine, glorious gains,

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast unto winewith lower pains!

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah Mated with a squalid savage, what to me were for some retreat sun or clime?

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of began to beat! time,

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father, I, that rather held it better men should perish evil-starred; one by one,

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's ward. moon in Ajalon!

Or to burst all links of habit, there to wander Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, far away, forward let us range; On from island unto island at the gateways of the Let the great world spin forever down the ringday, ing grooves of change.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into happy skies, the younger day: Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, | Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of knots of Paradise.

Cathay.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European Mother-age, (for mine I knew not,) help me as flag, when life begun, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun,

trailer from the crag, —