True love turn'd round on fixed poles, Love, that endures not sordid ends, For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time,

Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might

To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day,

Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.
Watch what main-currents draw the years:
Cut Prejudice against the grain :
But gentle words are always gain :
Regard the weakness of thy peers :

Nor toil for title, place, or touch

Of pension, neither count on praise : It grows to guerdon after-days: Nor deal in watch-words overmuch :

Not clinging to some ancient saw;

Not master'd by some modern term; Not swift nor slow to change, but firm: And in its season bring the law;

That from Discussion's lip may fall With Life, that, working strongly, binds

Set in all lights by many minds, To close the interests of all.

For Nature also, cold and warm, And moist and dry, devising long, Thro' many agents making strong, Matures the individual form.

Meet is it changes should control

Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul.

T

So let the change which comes be free To ingroove itself with that which flies, And work, a joint of state, that plies Its office, moved with sympathy.

A saying, hard to shape in act;

For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.

Ev'n now we hear with inward strife A motion toiling in the gloom— The Spirit of the years to come Yearning to mix himself with Life.

A slow-develop'd strength awaits Completion in a painful school; Phantoms of other forms of rule, New Majesties of mighty States—

The warders of the growing hour,

But vague in vapour, hard to mark ; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power.

Of many changes, aptly join'd,

Is bodied forth the second whole. Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind;

A wind to puff your idol-fires,

And heap their ashes on the head; To shame the boast so often made, That we are wiser than our sires.

Oh yet, if Nature's evil star

Drive men in manhood, as in youth, To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war

If New and Old, disastrous feud,

Must ever shock, like armed foes, And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rain'd in blood;

Not yet the wise of heart would cease

To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt, But with his hand against the hilt, Would pace the troubled land, lik Peace;

F

bowl,

And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,

To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapt

his hand

On Everard's shoulder, with 'I hold by him.'

'And I,' quoth Everard, by the wassailbowl.' 'Why yes,' I said, 'we knew your gift that way

At college

a talk,

How all the old honour had from Christmas

gone,

Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games

In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out

With cutting eights that day upon the pond,

Where, three times slipping from the

outer edge,

I bump'd the ice into three several stars, Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard The parson taking wide and wider

sweeps,

Now harping on the church - commissioners,

Now hawking at Geology and schism;

What came of that?' 'You know,' said Frank, he burnt

His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books'—

And then to me demanding why? 'Oh, sir,

He thought that nothing new was said, or else

Something so said 'twas nothing-that a truth

Looks freshest in the fashion of the day: God knows he has a mint of reasons: ask. It pleased me well enough.' 'Nay, nay,' said Hall,

'Why take the style of those heroic times? For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times; and why should any

man

mine

Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing