And, moved through life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;

No longer half-akin to brute,

For all we thought and loved and did, And hoped, and suffered, is but seed Of what in them is flower and fruit;

Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type,
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

MAUD.

I.

1.

I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with bloodred heath,

The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,

And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.'

2.

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,

His who had given me life-O father! O God! was it well?

Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground:

There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he

fell.

3.

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail'd,

And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair,

And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken

worldling wail'd,

And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.

4.

I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd

By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright,

And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard

The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night.

5.

Villany somewhere ! whose ? One says, we are

villains all.

Not he his honest fame should at least by me be maintain'd:

But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall,

Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd.

6.

!

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,

Pick pockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its

own;

And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better

or worse

Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?

7.

But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,

When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word?

Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that

of a kind

The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the

sword.

8.

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age-why not? I have neither hope nor trust;

May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,

Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.

9.

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,

When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine,

When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;

Peace in her vineyard-yes!—but a company forges the wine.

10.

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head,

Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,

While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,

And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.

11.

And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villanous centre-bits

Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights,

While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits

To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights.

12.

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a

burial fee,

And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones,

Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea,

War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.

13.

For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,

And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the threedecker out of the foam,

That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,

And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home.

14.

What am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood?

Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die

Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood

On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie?

15.

Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek,

Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave

Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak

And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave.