Yet all things must die. The stream will cease to flow; The wind will cease to blow; The clouds will cease to fleet; The heart will cease to beat; For all things must die.

All things must die.

Spring will come never more.
Oh! vanity!

Death waits at the door.

See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and merrymaking.
We are called-we must go.
Laid low, very low,

In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
Oh! misery!

Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,

The jaw is falling,

The red cheek paling,

The strong limbs failing;

Ice with the warm blood mixing;

The eyeballs fixing.

Nine times goes the passing bell;
Ye merry souls, farewell.

No Western odours wander

On the black and moaning sea, And when thou art dead, Leander,

My soul must follow thee !

Oh go not yet, my love,

Thy voice is sweet and low;

The deep salt wave breaks in above

Those marble steps below.

The turretstairs are wet

That lead into the sea.
Leander! go nct yet.
The pleasant stars have set:
Oh! go not, go not yet,

Or I will follow thee.

THE MYSTIC.

ANGELS have talked with him, and showed him

thrones:

Ye knew him not; he was not one of ye,
Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn:
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction: he hath felt
The vanities of after and before;
Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
The stern experiences of converse lives,
The linked woes of many a fiery change
Had purified, and chastened, and made free.
Always there stood before him, night and day,
Of wayward varycolored circumstance
The imperishable presences serene,
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,
Dim shadows but unwaning presences
Fourfaced to four corners of the sky:
And yet again, three shadows, fronting one,
One forward, one respectant, three but one;
And yet again, again and evermore,

For the two first were not, but only seemed,
One shadow in the midst of a great light,
One reflex from eternity on time,

One mighty countenance of perfect calm,

Awful with most invariable eyes.

I would dwell with thee,
Merry grasshopper,

Thou art so glad and free,

And as light as air;

Thou hast no sorrow or tears,
Thou hast no compt of years,

No withered immortality,

But a short youth sunny and free
Carol clearly, bound along,
Soon thy joy is over,

A summer of loud song,

And slumbers in the clover. What hast thou to do with evil In thine hour of love and revel,

In thy heat of summer pride, Pushing the thick roots aside Of the singing flowered grasses, That brush thee with their silken tresses? What hast thou to do with evil, Shooting, singing, ever springing In and out the emerald glooms, Ever leaping, ever singing, Lighting on the golden blooms?

For him the silent congregated hours,

Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath

Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes

Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light

Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all

Keen knowledges of low-embowéd eld)
Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud
Which droops lowhung on either gate of life,
Both birth and death: he in the centre fixt,
Saw far on each side through the grated gates
Most pale and clear and lovely distances.
He often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart
In intellect and power and will, hath heard
Time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached
The last, which with a region of white flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

LOVE, PRIDE, AND FORGETFULNESS

ERE yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb,
Love laboured honey busily.

I was the hive, and Love the bee,

My heart the honeycomb.

One very dark and chilly night
Pride came beneath and held a light.

The cruel vapours went through all,
Sweet Love was withered in his cell;
Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell
Did change them into gall;

And Memory, though fed by Pride,
Did wax so thin on gall,

Awhile she scarcely lived at all.
What marvel that she died?

THE GRASSHOPPER.

I.

VOICE of the summerwind,

Joy of the summerplain,

Life of the summerhours,

Carol clearly, bound along.

No Tithon thou as poets feign

(Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind),

CHORUS

IN AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA, WRITTEN VERY EARLY

THE varied earth, the moving heaven,
The rapid waste of roving sea,
The fountainpregnant mountains riven
To shapes of wildest anarchy,
By secret fire and midnight storms
That wander round their windy cones,
The subtle life, the countless forms
Of living things, the wondrous tones
Of man and beast are full of strange
Astonishment and boundless change.

Unroof the shrines of clearest vision, In honor of the silver-fleckéd morn;

Long hath the white wave of the virgin light
Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark.
Thou all unwittingly prolongest night,
Though long ago listening the poised lark,
With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene,
Over heaven's parapet the angels lean.

SONNET.

COULD I outwear my present state of woe
With one brief winter, and induc i' the spring
Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow
The wan dark coil of faded suffering-
Forth in the pride of beauty issuing

A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers,
Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers
And watered valleys where the young birds sing:
Could I thus hope my lost delight's renewing,
I straightly would command the tears to creep
From my charged lids; but inwardly I weep;
Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing:
That to itself hath drawn the frozen rain
From my cold eyes, and melted it again.

SONNET.

THOUGH Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon,

And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl,
All night through archways of the bridged pearl,
And portals of pure silver, walks the moon.
Walk on, my soul, nor crouch to agony,
Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy,
And dross to gold with glorious alchemy,
Basing thy throne above the world's annoy.
Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth
That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee;
So shalt thon pierce the woven glooms of truth;
So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee;
So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth,
An honourable eld shall come upon thee.

LOVE AND SORROW.

O MAIDEN, fresher than the first green leaf
With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,
Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee
That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief
Doth hold the other half in sovranty.
Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:
Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:
Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine
My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,
Issue of its own substance, my heart's night
Thou canst not lighten even with thy light,
Allpowerful in beauty as thou art.

Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,

Then might thy rays pass through to the other side,
So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,

But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep;

SONNET.

SHALL the hag Evil die with child of Good,
Or propagate again her loathed kind,
Thronging the cells of the diseased mind,
Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood,
Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?
Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat
Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat
Of their broad vans, and in the solitude
Of middle space confound them, and blow back
Their wild cries down their cavern throats, and slake
With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne!
So their wan limbs no more might come between
The moon and the moon's reflex in the night,
Nor blot with floating shades the solar light.

SONNET.

THE pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain,

TO A LADY SLEEPING.

O THOU whose fringéd lids I gaze upon,
Through whose dim brain the wingéd dreams are

borne,

And sailing on Pactolus in a boat,

Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain
Weak eyes upon the glistening sands that robe
The understream. The wise, could he behold
Cathedralled caverns of thickribbéd gold
And branching silvers of the central globe,
Would marvel from so beautiful a sight

How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow.
But Hatred in a gold cave sits below;
Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light
Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips,
And skins the colour from her trembling lips.

LOVE. I.

Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love,
Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,
Before the face of God didst breathe and move,
Though night and pain and ruin and death reign
here.

Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
The very throne of the eternal God:
Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
Are mellowed into music, borne abroad

By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
Even from its central deeps: thine empery
Is over all; thou wilt not brook eclipse;
Thon goest and returnest to His lips
Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.

II.

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evils which infold thee.
We beat upon our aching hearts in rage;
We cry for thee; we deem the world thy tomb.
As dwellers in lone planets look upon
The mighty disk of their majestic sun,
Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom,
Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee.
Come, thou of many crowns, whiterobéd love,
Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore thee;
Heaven crieth after thee; earth waiteth for thee;
Breathe on thy wingéd throne, and it shall move
In music and in light o'er land and sea.

And now

III.

methinks I gaze upon thee now, As on a serpent in his agonies Awestricken Indians; what time laid low And crushing the thick fragrant reeds he lies, When the new year warmbreathed on the Earth, Waiting to light him with her purple skies, Calls to him by the fountain to uprise. Already with the pangs of a new birth Strain the hot spheres of his convulséd eyes, And in his writhings awful hues begin To wander down his sable-sheeny sides, Like light on troubled waters: from within Anon he rusheth forth with merry din,

And in him light and joy and strength abides; And from his brows a crown of living light

ENGLISH WAR-SONG.

WHо fears to die? Who fears to die!

Is there any here who fears to die?

He shall find what he fears; and none shall grieve
For the man who fears to die:

But the withering scorn of the many shall cleave
To the man who fears to die.
CHORUS.Shout for England!
Ho! for England!

George for England! Merry England! England for aye!

The hollow at heart shall crouch forlorn, He shall eat the bread of common scorn; It shall be steeped in the salt, salt tear,

Shall be steeped in his own salt tear:
Far better, far better he never were born
Than to shame merry England here.
CHORUS. Shout for England! etc.
There standeth our ancient enemy;
Hark! he shouteth - the ancient enemy!
On the ridge of the hill his banners rise;
They stream like fire in the skies;
Hold up the Lion of England on high
Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.
CHORUS.Shout for England! etc.

Come along! we alone of the earth are free:
The child in our cradles is bolder than he:
For where is the heart and strength of slaves?
Oh! where is the strength of slaves?
He is weak! we are strong: he a slave, we are free
Come along! we will dig their graves.
CHORUS.Shout for England! etc.

There standeth our ancient enemy, Will he dare to battle with the free? Spur along! spur amain! charge to the fight: Charge! charge to the fight!

Hold up the Lion of England on high! Shout for God and our right! CHORUS.Shout for England! etc.

NATIONAL SONG.

THERE is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be:
There are no hearts like English hearts.
Such hearts of oak as they be.
There is no land like England
Where'er the light of day be;

There are no men like Englishmen,
So tall and bold as they be.

THE KRAKEN.

BELOW the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep,
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

For the devil a whit we heed 'em:
As for the French, God speed 'em
Unto their heart's desire,
And the merry devil drive 'em
Through the water and the fire.
FULL CHOR. Our glory is our freedom,

We lord it o'er the sea;
We are the sons of freedom,
We are free.

There is no land like England, Where'er the light of day be; There are no wives like English wives, So fair and chaste as they be. There is no land like England, Where'er the light of day be; There are no maids like English maids, So beautiful as they be. CHORUS.For the French, etc.

SONNET.

MINE be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
Like some broad river rushing down alone,
With the selfsame impulse wherewith he was thrown
From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:-
Which with increasing might doth forward flee
By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
And in the middle of the green salt sea
Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.
Mine be the Power which ever to its sway
Will win the wise at once, and by degrees
May into uncongenial spirits flow;
Even as the great gulfstream of Florida
Floats far away into the Northern seas
The lavish growths of southern Mexico.

TO

I.

ALL good things have not kept aloof, Nor wandered into other ways:

I have not lacked thy mild reproof, Nor golden largess of thy praise, But life is full of weary days.

II.

Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go.
Shake hands once more: I cannot sink
So far-far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below.

III.

When, in the darkness over me,

The four-handed mole shall scrape,

Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,

Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape, But pledge me in the flowing grape.

IV.

And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the showery gray,
And rugged barks begin to bud,

And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
Ring sudden laughters of the Jay;

V.

Then let wise Nature work her will, And on my clay the daruels grow. Come only when the days are still, And at my headstone whisper low, And tell me if the woodbines blow,

VI.

If thou art blest, my mother's smile Undimmed, if bees are on the wing: Then cease, my friend, a little while, That I may hear the throstle sing His bridal song, the boast of spring. VII.

Sweet as the noise in parched plains Of bubbling wells that fret the stones (If any sense in me remains),

Thy words will be; thy cheerful tones As welcome to my crumbling bones.