And struck upon the corn-laws, where we split,
And came again together on the king

With heated faces; till he laugh'd aloud;
And, while the blackbird on the pippin hung

To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang

'Oh! who would fight and march and countermarch, Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field,

And shovell'd up into a bloody trench

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

66

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 arm,

And sleeping, haply dream her arm is mine.

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Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia's arm;

Emilia, fairer than all else but thou,

For thou art fairer than all else that is.

Sleep, breathing health and peace upon her breast: Sleep, breathing love and trust against her lip :

I go to-night: I come to-morrow morn.
66 I go, but I return: I would I were
The pilot of the darkness and the dream.
Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of me."
So sang we each to either, Francis Hale,
The farmer's son who lived across the bay,
My friend; and I, that having wherewithal,
And in the fallow leisure of my life,

Did what I would; but ere the night we rose
And saunter'd home beneath a moon, that, just
In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf
Twilights of airy silver, till we reach'd
The limit of the hills; and as we sank

From rock to rock upon the glooming quay,
The town was hush'd beneath us: lower down
The bay was oily-calm; the harbour-buoy
With one green sparkle ever and anon
Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart.

LXVIII

WALKING TO THE MAIL

John. I'm glad I walk'd. How fresh the meadows look Above the river, and, but a month ago,

The whole hill-side was redder than a fox.

Is yon plantation where this byway joins
The turnpike ?

No, not the County Member's with the vane :
Up higher with the yewtree by it, and half
A score of gables.

James.

That? Sir Edward Head's:

But he's abroad: the place is to be sold.
John. Oh, his. He was not broken.
James.

Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood

No, sir, he,

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 And bristles; half has fall'n and made a bridge; And there he caught the younker tickling troutCaught 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 flitting," says the ghost, (For they had pack'd the thing among the beds,)

66

Oh well," says he, "you flitting with us tooJack, turn the horses' heads and home again.'

John. He left his wife behind; for so I heard.
James. He left her, yes. I met my lady once:
A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.

John. Oh 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 pear
In growing, modest eyes, a hand, a foot
Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin
As clean and white as privet when it flowers.

James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and they that loved At first like dove and dove were cat and dog.

She was the daughter of a cottager,

Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride,
New things and old, himself and her, she sour'd

To what she is: a nature never kind!

Like men, like manners: like breeds like, they say.
Kind nature is the best: those manners next

That fit us like a nature second-hand;
Which are indeed the manners of the great.

John. But I had heard it was this bill that past,
And fear of change at home, that drove him hence.
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
From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,
And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.
Large range of prospect had the mother sow,
And but for daily loss of one she loved,
As one by one we took them-but for this-
As never sow was higher in this world-
Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?
We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,
And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.
John. They found you out?

James.

John.

Not they.

Well-after all

What know we of the secret of a man?

His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound,
That we should mimic this raw fool the world,
Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,
As ruthless as a baby with a worm

As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows

To Pity-more from ignorance than will.

But put your best foot forward, or I fear

That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes
With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand
As you shall see-three pyebalds and a roan.

LXIX

EDWIN MORRIS;

OR, THE LAKE

O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake,
My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year,
My one Oasis in the dust and drouth

Of city life! I was a sketcher then:

See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge,
Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built

When men knew how to build, upon a rock,
With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock:
And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,
New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,
Here lived the Hills-a Tudor-chimnied bulk
Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.

O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names, Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern, Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks, Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim, Who read me rhymes elaborately good, His own-I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'd All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail.

And once I ask'd him of his early life,

And his first passion; and he answer'd me ;
And well his words became him: was he not
A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence
Stored from all flowers ?

Poet-like he spoke.

My love for Nature is as old as I;

But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that,

And three rich sennights more, my love for her.
My love for Nature and my love for her,
Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew,
Twin-sisters differently beautiful.

To some full music rose and sank the sun,

And some full music seem'd to move and change
With all the varied changes of the dark,
And either twilight and the day between ;
For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again
Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet
To walk, to sit, to sleep, to breathe, to wake."

Or this or something like to this he spoke.
Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull,
"I take it, God made the woman for the man,
And for the good and increase of the world.
A pretty face is well, and this is well,
To have a dame indoors, that trims us up,
And keeps us tight; but these unreal ways
Seem but the theme of writers, and indeed
Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff.
I say, God made the woman for the man,
And for the good and increase of the world.”

"Parson," said I, "you pitch the pipe too low: But I have sudden touches, and can run My faith beyond my practice into his : Tho' if, in dancing after Letty Hill, I do not hear the bells upon my cap,