THE DAISY.

WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH.

O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine In lands of palm and southern pine;

In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

What Roman strength Turbia show'd
In ruin, by the mountain road;

How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd.
How richly down the rocky dell
The torrent vineyard streaming fell

To meet the sun and sunny waters,
That only heaved with a summer swell.
What slender campanili grew
By bays, the peacock's neck in hue;
Where, here and there, on sandy beaches
A milky-bell'd amaryllis blew.

How young Columbus seem'd to rove,
Yet present in his natal grove,

Now watching high on mountain
cornice,

And steering, now, from a purple cove,
Now pacing mute by ocean's rim
Till, in a narrow street and dim',

I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto, And drank, and loyally drank to him.

Nor knew we well what pleased us most,
Not the clipt palm of which they boast;
But distant color, happy hamlet,
A moulder'd citadel on the coast,

Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen
A light amid its olives green;

Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;
Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,

Where oleanders flush'd the bed
Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten
Of ice, far up on a mountain head.

We loved that hall, tho' white and cold,
Those niched shapes of noble mould,

A princely people's awful princes,
The grave, severe Genovese of old.

At Florence too what golden hours,
In those long galleries, were ours;
What drives about the fresh Cascine,
Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.

In bright vignettes, and each complete,
Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet,

Or palace, how the city glitter'd,
Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.
But when we crost the Lombard plain
Remember what a plague of rain;

Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma ;
At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.

And stern and sad (so rare the smiles
Of sunlight) look'd the Lombard piles;
Porch-pillars on the lion resting,
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.

O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,

The height, the space, the gloom, the
glory!

A mount of marble, a hundred spires ! I climb'd the roofs at break of day; Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.

I stood among the silent statues, And statued pinnacles, mute as they. How faintly-flushed, how phantom-fair, Was Monte Rosa hanging there

A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys And snowy dells in a golden air.

Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast

Had blown the lake beyond his limit, And all was flooded; and how we past

From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head, for half the day,

The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,
Like ballad-burden music, kept,
As on The Lariano crept

To that fair port below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept;
Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake,

The moonlight touching o'er a terrace One tall Agave above the lake. What more? we took our last adieu, And up the snowy Splugen drew,

But ere we reach'd the highest summit I pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you. It told of England then to me, And now it tells of Italy.

O love, we two shall go no longer To lands of summer across the sea;

TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.
COME, when no graver cares employ,
God-father, come and see your boy:
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.

For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,
Should eighty-thousand college-coun-
cils

Thunder "Anathema," friend, at you;
Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome

(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twilight falling brown

All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine:
For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand;

Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,
And on thro' zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

We might discuss the Northern sin Which made a selfish war begin ;

Dispute the claims, arrange the
chances;

Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win :
Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood ;

Till you should turn to dearer matters, Dear to the man that is dear to God;

How best to help the slender store, How mend the dwellings, of the poor; How gain in life, as life advances, Valor and charity more and more. Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;

But when the wreath of March has blossom'd,

Crocus, anemone, violet,

Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear;
Nor pay but one, but come for many,
Many and many a happy year.

January, 1854.

WILL.

I.

O WELL for him whose will is strong! He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong: For him nor moves the loud world's ran

dom mock,

Norall Calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,
That, compass'd round with turbulent
sound,

In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.

II.

But ill for him who, bettering not with
time,
Corrupts the strength of heaven - de-
scended Will,

And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still!
He seems as one whose footsteps hast,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o'er a weary, sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,

Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

And high in heaven behind it a gray down With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood, By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.

Here on this beach a hundred years ago, Three children of three houses, Annie Lee, The prettiest little damsel in the port, And Philip Ray the miller's only son, And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd

Among the waste and lumber of the shore, Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishingnets,

Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats up

drawn ;

And built their castles of dissolving sand To watch them overflow'd, or following

A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff: In this the children play'd at keeping house.

Enoch was host one day, Philip the next, While Annie still was mistress; but at times

Enoch would hold possession for a week: "This is my house and this my little wife." "Mine too" said Philip "turn and turn about":

When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger-made

Was master: then would Philip, his blue eyes

All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears, Shriek out "I hate you, Enoch," and at this

The little wife would weep for company, And pray them not to quarrel for her sake, And say she would be little wife to both.

But when the dawn of rosy childhood

past, And the new warmth of life's ascending

sun

Was felt by either, either fixt his heart
On that one girl; and Enoch spoke his love,
But Philip loved in silence; and the girl
Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him;
But she loved Enoch ; tho' she knew it not,
And would if ask'd deny it. Enoch set
A purpose evermore before his eyes,
To hoard all savings to the uttermost,

home

Then, on a golden autumn eventide, The younger people making holiday, With bag and sack and basket, great and small,

Went nutting to the hazels. Philipstay'd (His father lying sick and needing him) An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill,

Just where the prone edge of the wood began

To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair, Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand, His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face

All-kindled by a still and sacred fire, That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd, And in their eyes and faces read his doom; Then, as their faces drew together, groan'd, And slipt aside, and like a wounded life Crept down into the hollows of the wood; There, while the rest were loud in merrymaking,

Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past

Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart.

So these were wed, and merrily rang the bells,

And merrily ran the years, seven happy years,

Seven-happy years of health and compe

tence,

And mutual love and honorable toil;

wish

To save all earnings to the uttermost,
And give his child a better bringing-up
Than his had been, or hers; a wish re-
new'd,

When two years after came a boy to be
The rosy idol of her solitudes,
While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas,
Or often journeying landward; for in
truth

Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's oceanspoil

In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redde.'d with a thousand winter gales,

Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering.

Then came a change, as all things hu

man change. Ten miles to northward of the narrow port Open'd a larger haven: thither used Enoch at times to go by land or sea; And once when there, and clambering on

a mast

In harbor, by mischance he slipt and fell: A limb was broken when they lifted him ; And while he lay recovering there, his wife Bore him another son, a sickly one Another hand crept too across his trade Taking her bread and theirs and on him fell,

Altho' a grave and staid God-fearing man, Yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom. He seem'd, as in a nightmare of the night, To see his children leading evermore Low miserable lives of hand-to-mouth, And her, he loved, a beggar: then he pray'd

"Save them from this, whatever comes