Where no one knows? but let me live my life.

"Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk,

Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd stool,

Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints

Are full of chalk ? but let me live my life.

"Who'd serve the state? for if I carved my name

Upon the cliffs that guard my native land,

I might as well have traced it in the sands;

The sea wastes all: but let me live my life.

"Oh! who would love? I woo'd a woman once,

But she was sharper than an eastern

wind,

And all my heart turn'd from her, as a

thorn

Turns from the sea; but let me live my life."

He sang his song, and I replied with mine:

I found it in a volume, all of songs, Knock'd down to me, when old Sir Robert's pride,

His books the more the pity, so I said

Came to the hammer here in March and this

I set the words, and added names I knew.

"Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me :

Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister's

James. That? Sir Edward Head's: But he's abroad: the place is to be sold.

John. O, his. He was not broken. James. No, sir, he, Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood

That veil'd the world with jaundice, hid his face

From all men, and commercing with himself,

He lost the sense that handles daily

life

That keeps us all in order more or less

And sick of home went overseas for change.

John.

And whither?

James. Nay, who knows? he's here and there.

But let him go; his devil goes with

him,

As well as with his tenant, Jocky

Dawes.

John. What's that?

James. You saw the man on Monday, was it?

There by the humpback'd willow; half stands up

Caught in flagrante what's the Latin word?

Delicto: but his house, for so they say, Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that shook

The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors,

And rummaged like a rat: no servant stay'd:

The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs,

And all his household stuff; and with his boy

Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt,

Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him. "What!

You're flitting!" "Yes, we're fitting," says the ghost,

(For they had pack'd the thing among the beds,)

"O well," says he, "you flitting with us too

Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again.

John. He left his wife behind; for so I heard.

James. He left ber, yes. I met my lady once:

A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.

John. O yet but I remember, ten years back

'Tis now at least ten years-and then she was

You could not light upon a sweeter thing:

A body slight and round, and like a

James. That was the last drop in the cup of gall.

I once was near him, when his bailiff brought

A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince

As from a venomous thing: he thought himself

A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest a cry Should break his sleep by night, and his nice eyes

Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs

Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir, you know

That these two parties still divide the world

Of those that want, and those that have and still

The same old sore breaks out from age to age

With much the same result. Now I myself,

A Tory to the quick, was as a boy Destructive, when I had not what I would.

I was at school-a college in the South:

There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit,

His hens, his eggs; but there was law

for us:

We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She,

With meditative grunts of much content,

Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.

By night we dragg'd her to the college

tower

were.

Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull:

"God made the woman for the use of man,

And for the good and increase of the world."

And I and Edwin laugh'd; and now we paused

About the windings of the marge to hear

The soft wind blowing over meadowy holms

And alders, garden-isles; and now we left

The clerk behind us, I and he, and ran By ripply shallows of the lisping lake, Delighted with the freshness and the sound,

But, when the bracken rusted on their

Clung to the lake. I boated over, ran My craft aground, and heard with beating heart

The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelv. ing keel;

And out I stept, and up I crept : she moved,

Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering flowers:

Then low and sweet I whistled thrice; and she,

She turn'd, we closed, we kiss'd, swore faith, I breathed

In some new planet: a silent cousin stole

Upon us and departed: Leave," she cried,

"O leave me!" "Never, dearest, never here

I brave the worst: " and while we stood like fools

Embracing, all at once a score of pugs And poodles yell'd within, and out they came

Trustees and Aunts and Uncles. "What, with him!

Go" (shrill'd the cotton - spinning chorus ;)" him!"

I choked. Again they shriek'd the burden-" Him!"

Again with hands of wild rejection "Go!

Girl, get you in!" She went-and in one month

They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds,

To lands in Kent and messuages in York,

And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile

And educated whisker. But for me, They set an ancient creditor to work: It seems I broke a close with force and arms:

There came a mystic token from the king

To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy ! I read, and fled by night, and flying turn'd:

Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below: 1 turn'd once more, close-button'd to

the storm;

It may be, for her own dear sake but She seems a part of those fresh days to

While the gold-lily blows, and overhead

The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag.

ST. SIMEON STYLITES. ALTHO' I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,

Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce

meet

For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,

I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold

Of saintdom, and to clamor, mourn and sob,

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,

This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,

Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,

In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold,

In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,

A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,

Patient on this tall pillar I have borne Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;

And I had hoped that ere this period closed

Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,

Denying not these weather-beaten limbs

The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.

O take the meaning, Lord : I do not breathe,

Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold, to this, were still

Less burden, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,

Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd

My spirit flat before thee.

O Lord, Lord,

About the column's base, and almost blind,

And scarce can recognize the fields I know;

And both my thighs are rotted with the dew;

Yet cease I not to clamor and to cry, While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,

Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,

Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,

Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?

Show me the man hath suffer'd more than I.

For did not all thy martyrs die one death?

For either they were stoned, or crucified,

Or burn'd in fire, or boil'd in oil, or

sawn

In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here

To-day, and whole years long, a life of death.

Bear witness, if I could have found a way

(And heedfully I sifted all my thought) More slowly-painful to subdue this home

Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,

I had not stinted practice, O my God.

For not alone this pillar-punishment, Not this alone I bore: but while I lived In the white convent down the valley there,

For many weeks about my loins I wore The rope that haled the buckets from the well,

Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;

And spake not of it to a single soul, Until the ulcer, eating thro' my skin, Betray'd my secret penance, so that all

My brethren marvell'd greatly. More than this

I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all.

Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee,

I lived up there on yonder mountain side.

My right leg chain'd into the crag, I lay

Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;