"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all, And my mockeries of the world. "Fill the cup, and fill the can! The voice grew faint: there came a further change; By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross, power; A little grain of conscience made him sour.” Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" THE SKIPPING-ROPE. SURE never yet was Antelope Could skip so lightly by. Stand off, or else my skipping-rope Will hit you in the eye. How lightly whirls the skipping-rope! Go, get you gone, you muse and mope— Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope, There, take it, take my skipping-rope MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH, AND LEAVE. MOVE eastward, happy earth, and leave Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borne, BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. BREAK, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, oh Sea! O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, oh Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead THE POET'S SONG. THE rain had fallen, the Poet arose, He passed by the town, and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat, And he sat him down in a lonely place, And chanted a melody loud and sweet, The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away." THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. PROLOGUE. SIR WALTER VIVIAN all a summer's day The neighboring borough with their Institute, And me that morning Walter showed the house, Greck, set with busts: from vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names, Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay And " this," he said, “was Hugh's at Agincourt; And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon: A good knight he! we keep a chronicle With all about him," which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died; And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate, Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. "O miracle of women," said the book, "O noble heart who, being strait-besieged By this wild king to force her to his wish, Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death, Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, She trampled some beneath her horses' heels, So sang the gallant glorious chronicle; And, I all rapt in this," Come out," he said, "To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth And sister Lilia with the rest." We went (I kept the book and had my finger in it) Down through the park: strange was the sight to me; There moved the multitude, a thousand heads: Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone, And drew, from butts of water on the slope, A little clock-work steamer paddling plied A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves And there through twenty posts of telegraph VOL. I. 17 |