And left his coal all turn'd into gold
To a grandson, first of his noble line,
Rich in the grace all women desire,
Strong in the power that all men adore,
And simper and set their voices lower,
And soften as if to a girl, and hold
Awe-stricken breaths at a work divine,
Seeing his gewgaw castle shine,
New as his title, built last year,
There amid perky larches and pine,
And over the sullen-purple moor
(Look at it) pricking a cockney ear.

2.

What, has he found my jewel out?

For one of the two that rode at her side
Bound for the Hall, I am sure was he:
Bound for the Hall, and I think for a bride.
Blithe would her brother's acceptance be.
Maud could be gracious too, no doubt,
To a lord, a captain, a padded shape,
A bought commission, a waxen face,
A rabbit mouth that is ever agape-
Bought? what is it he cannot buy?
And therefore splenetic, personal, base,
A wounded thing with a rancorous cry,
At war with myself and a wretched race,
Sick, sick to the heart of life, am I.

3.

Last week came one to the county town,
To preach our poor little army down,
And play the game of the despot kings,
Tho' the state has done it and thrice as well:
This broad-brim'd hawker of holy things,
Whose ear is stuff'd with his cotton, and rings
Even in dreams to the chink of his pence,
This huckster put down war! can he tell
Whether war be a cause or a consequence?
Put down the passions that make earth Hell!
Down with ambition, avarice, pride,
Jealousy, down! cut off from the mind
The bitter springs of anger and fear;
Down too, down at your own fireside,
With the evil tongue and the evil ear,
For each is at war with mankind.

4.

I wish I could hear again

The chivalrous battle-song

That she warbled alone in her joy!

I might persuade myself then

She would not do herself this great wrong To take a wanton, dissolute boy

For a man and leader of men.

5.

Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand,
Like some of the simple great ones gone
For ever and ever by,

One still strong man in a blatant land,
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat,—one
Who can rule and dare not lie.

6.

And ah for a man to arise in me,

That the man I am may cease to be:

XI. 1.

O LET the solid ground

Not fail beneath my feet

Before my life has found

What some have found so sweet;

Then let come what come may, What matter if I go mad,

I shall have had my day.

2.

Let the sweet heavens endure, Not close and darken above me Before I am quite quite sure

That there is one to love me; Then let come what come may To a life that has been so sad, I shall have had my day.

XII. 1.

BIRDS in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Mand, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.

2.

Where was Maud? in our wood; And I, who else, was with her, Gathering woodland lilies, Myriads blow together.

3.

Birds in our woods sang
Ringing thro' the valleys,
Maud is here, here, here
In among the lilies.

4.

I kiss'd her slender hana, She took the kiss sedately. Maud is not seventeen,

But she is tall and stately

5.

I to cry out on pride

Who have won her favor!

O Mand were sure of Heaven If lowliness could save her.

6.

I know the way she went

Home with her maiden posy,

For her feet have touch'd the meadows And left the daisies rosy.

7.

Birds in the high Hall-garden
Were crying and calling to her,
Where is Maud, Maud, Maud,
One is come to woo her.

8.

Look, a horse at the door,

And little King Charles is snarling, Go back, my lord, across the moor, You are not her darling.

XIII. 1.

SCORN'D, to be scorn'd by one that I scorn,

Is that a matter to make me fret ?

That a calamity hard to be borne?

Well, he may live to hate me yet.
Fool that I am to be vext with his pride!

I past him, I was crossing his lands;

He stood on the path a little aside;
His face, as I grant, in spite of spite,
Has a broad-blown comeliness, red and white

And six feet two, as I think, he stands; But his essences turn'd the live air sick, And barbarous opulence jewel-thick Sunn'd itself on his breast and his hands.

2.

Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;

But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding whip
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonized me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.

3.

Why sits he here in his father's chair?
That old man never comes to his place:
Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?
For only once, in the village street,
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face,
A gray old wolf and a lean.

Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat;
For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,
She might by a true descent be untrue;
And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet;
Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due
To the sweeter blood by the other side:
Her mother has been a thing complete,
However she came to be so allied.
And fair without, faithful within,
Maud to him is nothing akin:
Some peculiar mystic grace

Made her only the child of her mother,
And heap'd the whole inherited sin
On that huge scapegoat of the race,
All, all upon the brother.

THIS lump of earth has left his estate
The lighter by the loss of his weight;
And so that he find what he went to seek,
And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and drown
His heart in the gross mud-honey of town,
He may stay for a year who has gone for a week
But this is the day when I must speak,

And I see my Oread coming down,

O this is the day!

O beautiful creature, what am I

That I dare to look her way;

Think I may hold dominion sweet,

Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast,
And dream of her beauty with tender dread,
From the delicate Arab arch of her feet
To the grace that, bright and light as the crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head,
And she knows it not: O, if she knew it,
To know her beauty might half undo it.

I know it the one bright thing to save
My yet young life in the wilds of Time,
Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime
Perhaps from a selfish grave.

2.

What, if she were fasten'd to this fool lord,
Dare I bid her abide by her word?
Should I love her so well if she

Had given her word to a thing so low?
Shall I love her as well if she

Can break her word were it even for me?
I trust that it is not so.

3.

Catch not my breath, O clamorous heart,
Let not my tongue be a thrall to my eye,
For I must tell her before we part,
I must tell her, or die.

XVII.

Go not, happy day,

From the shining fields,

Go not, happy day,

Till the maiden yields.

Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her mouth. When the happy Yes

Falters from her lips, Pass and blush the news O'er the blowing ships, Over blowing seas,

Over seas at rest, Pass the happy news,

Blush it thro' the West, Till the red man dance

By his red cedar-tree, And the red man's babe Leap, beyond the sea. Blush from West to East, Blush from East to West, Till the West is East,

Blush it thro' the West. Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her mouth.

There is none like her, none.

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

5.

But now shine on, and what care I,
Who in this stormy gulf have found a psarl
The countercharm of space and hollow sky,
And do accept my madness and would die
To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

6.

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give More life to Love than is or ever was

In our low world, where yet 't is sweet to live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;

It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

7.

Not die but live a life of truest breath,
And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.
O, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs,
Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death?
Make answer, Maud my bliss.

Maud made my Maud by that long lover's kiss,

Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?

"The dusky strand of Death inwoven here With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear.

8.

Is that enchanted moan only the swell

Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell

Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight
And given false death her hand, and stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fancies of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,
My own heart's heart and ownest own farewell;
It is but for a little space I go

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell
Beat to the noiseless music of the night!

Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow

Of your soft splendors that you look so bright? I have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell.

East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,

Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

And looking to the South, and fed

With honey'd rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there
Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she

came.

4.

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway,
And you fair stars that crown a happy day
Go in and out as if at merry play,

Who am no more so all forlorn,

As when it seem'd far better to be born

To labor and the mattock-harden'd hand,
Than nursed at ease and brought to understand
A sad astrology, the boundless plan
That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand
His nothingness into man.

Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tel
Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe
That seems to draw-but it shall not be so
Let all be well, be well.

XIX. 1.

HER brother is coming back to-night, Breaking up my dream of delight.

2.

My dream do I dream of bliss ?
I have walk'd awake with Truth.
O when did a morning shine
So rich in atonement as this
For my dark dawning youth,

Darken'd watching a mother deciine

And that dead man at her heart and minc: For who was left to watch her but I?

Yet so did I let my freshness die.

3.

I trust that I did not talk

To gentle Maud in our walk

(For often in lonely wanderings

I have cursed him even to lifeless things)

But I trust that I did not talk,
Not touch on her father's sin:
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother's faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,

That I felt she was slowly dying

Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt:

For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing
A world of trouble within!

4.

And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved
As one scarce less forlorn,

Dying abroad and it seems apart

From him who had ceased to share her heart, And ever mourning over the feud,

The household Fury sprinkled with blood

By which our houses are torn;
How strange was what she said,
When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed,-
That Maud's dark father and mine
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine

On the day when Maud was born;

Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath. Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death, Mine, mine-our fathers have sworn.

5.

But the true blood spilt had in it a heat
To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,
That, if left nacancell'd, had been so sweet:
And none of us thought of a something beyond,
A desire that awoke in the heart of the child,
As it were a duty done to the tomb,
To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom,
And letting a dangerous thought run wild
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
of foreign churches,-I see her there,
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer
To be friends, to be reconciled!

6.

But then what a flint is he!
Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,

I find whenever she touch'd on me
This brother had laugh'd her down,
And at last, when each came home,
He had darken'd into a frown,
Chid her, and forbid her to speak

To me, her friend of the years before;

And this was what had redden'd her cheek, When I bow'd to her on the moor.

7.

Yet Mand, altho' not blind

To the faults of his heart and mind,

I see she cannot but love him,

And says he is rough but kind,
And wishes me to approve him,
And tells me, when she lay
Sick once, with a fear of worse,

That he left his wine and horses and play,
Sat with her, read to her, night and day,
And tended her like a nurse.

8.

Kind? but the death-bed desire Spurn'd by this heir of the liarRough but kind? yet I know

He has plotted against me in this,

That he plots against me still.

Kind to Maud? that were not amiss.

Well, rough but kind: why, let it be so: For shall not Maud have her will?

9.

For, Maud, so tender and true,
As long as my life endures

I feel I shall owe you a debt,
That I never can hope to pay;
And if ever I should forget
That I owe this debt to you
And for your sweet sake to yours;
O then, what then shall I say?—
If ever I should forget,

May God make me more wretched
Than ever I have been yet!

10.

So now I have sworn to bury
All this dead body of hate,

I feel so free and so clear

By the loss of that dead weight,

That I should grow light-headed, I fear, Fantastically merry;

But that her brother comes, like a blight On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.

XX. 1.

STRANGE, that I felt so gay,
Strange that I tried to-day
To beguile her melancholy;
The Sultan, as we name him,—
She did not wish to blame him-
But he vext her and perplext her
With his worldly talk and folly:
Was it gentle to reprove her
For stealing out of view
From a little lazy lover

Who but claims her as his due?

Or for chilling his caresses
By the coldness of her manners,
Nay, the plainness of her dresses?
Now I know her but in two,
Nor can pronounce upon it
If one should ask me whether
The habit, hat, and feather,
Or the frock and gypsy bonnet
Be the neater and completer;
For nothing can be sweeter
Than maiden Maud in either.

2.

But to-morrow, if we live,
Our ponderous squire will give
A grand political dinner

To half the squirelings near;

And Maud will wear her jewels, And the bird o. prey will hover, And the titmouse hope to win her With his chirrup at her ear.

3.

A grand political dinner
To the men of many acres,
A gathering of the Tory,

A dinner and then a dance

For the maids and marriage-makers, And every eye but mine will glance At Maud in all her glory.

4.

For I am not invited,

But, with the Sultan's pardo

I am all as well delighted,

For I know her own rose-garden,

And mean to linger in it
Till the dancing will be over;
And then, O then, come out to me
For a minute, but for a minute,
Come out to your own true lover,
That your true lover may see
Your glory also, and render
All homage to his own darling,
Queen Maud in all her splendor.

XXI.

RIVULET crossing my ground,

And bringing me down from the Hall
This garden-rose that I found,
Forgetful of Maud and me,

And lost in trouble and moving round
Here at the head of a tinkling fall
And trying to pass to the sea;
O Rivulet, born at the Hall,

My Maud has sent it by thee

(If I read her sweet will right)
On a blushing mission to me,
Saying in odor and color, "Ah, be
Among the roses to-night."

XXII. 1.

COME into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the roses blown.

2.

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky,

To faint in the light of the sun that she loves, To faint in his light, and to die.

3.

All night have the roses heard

The flute, violin, bassoon ;

All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

4.

I said to the lily, "There is but one With whom she has heart to be gay. When will the dancers leave her alone? She is weary of dance and play." Now half to the setting moon are gone, And half to the rising day;

Low on the sand and loud on the stone The last wheel echoes away.

5.

i said to the rose, "The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.

O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?

But mine, but mine," so I sware to the rose, "For ever and ever, mine."

6.

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash'd in the hall;

And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall

7.

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs

He sets the jewel-print of your feet,

In violets blue as your eyes,

To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys. of Paradise.

8.

The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;

The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,

As the pimpernel dozed on the lee;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;

The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.

9.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,

In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;

Shine, out, little head, sunning over with curis,
To the flowers, and be their sun.

10.

There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life, my fate;

The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."

11.

She is coming, my own, my sweet.
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,

Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

XXIII. 1.

"The fault was mine, the fault was mine".
Why am I sitting here so stunn'd and still,
Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill?-
It is this guilty hand!-

And there rises ever a passionate cry
From underneath in the darkening land-
What is it, that has been done?

O dawn of Eden bright over earth and sky,
The fires of Hell brake out of thy rising sun,
The fires of Hell and of Hate;

For she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a word,
When her brother ran in his rage to the gate,
He came with the babe-faced lord;
Heap'd on her terms of disgrace,

And while she wept, and I strove to be cool,
He fiercely gave me the lie,

Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,
And he struck me, madman, over the face,
Struck me before the languid fool,
Who was gaping and grinning by:
Struck for himself an evil stroke:
Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe;
For front to front in an hour we stood,
And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke
From the red-ribb'd hollow behind the wood,

That must have life for a blow.