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She comes! The loosen'd rivulets run; The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair;

Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun, Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bare

To breaths of balmier air;

II.

Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her,

About her glance the tits, and shriek the jays,

Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker, The linnet's bosom blushes at her gaze, While round her brows a woodland culver Alits,

Watching her large light eyes and gracious looks,

And in her open palm a halcyon sits Patient-the secret splendour of the brooks.

Come, Spring! She comes on waste and wood,

On farm and field: but enter also here, Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blood, And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere, Lodge with me all the year!

III.

Once more a downy drift against the brakes,

Self-darken'd in the sky, descending slow!

But gladly see I thro' the wavering flakes Yon blanching apricot like snow in

snow.

These will thine eyes not brook in forestpaths,

On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech;

They fuse themselves to little spicy baths, Solved in the tender blushes of the peach;

They lose themselves and die

On that new life that gems the haw

thorn line;

Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put them by, And out once more in varnish'd glory

shine

Thy stars of celandine.

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Across my garden! and the thicket stirs, The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets, The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs, The starling claps his tiny castanets. Still round her forehead wheels the woodland dove,

And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew,

The kingcup fills her footprint, and above Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue.

Hail ample presence of a Queen,

Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay, Whose mantle, every shade of glancing green,

Flies back in fragrant breezes to display
A tunic white as May!

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The coming year's great good and varied ills,

And new developments, whatever spark Be struck from out the clash of warring

wills;

Or whether, since our nature cannot rest, The smoke of war's volcano burst

again

From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West,

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And slowly brightening
Out of the glimmer,

And slowly moving again to a melody

Yearningly tender,
Fell on the shadow,

No longer a shadow,

But clothed with The Gleam.

VIII.

And broader and brighter
The Gleam flying onward,
Wed to the melody,
Sang thro' the world;
And slower and fainter,
Old and weary,

But eager to follow,
I saw, whenever

In passing it glanced upon

ROMNEY'S REMORSE.

'I read Hayley's Life of Romney the other day - Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter; but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and because Sir Joshua and others had said that "marriage spoilt an artist" almost immediately left his wife in the North and scarce saw her till the end of his life; when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her and she received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures! even as a matter of Art, I am sure.' (Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i.)

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Good, I am never weary painting you.
To sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe,
Joan,

Or spinning at your wheel beside the

vine Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail To conjure and concentrate into form And colour all you are, the fault is less In me than Art. What Artist ever yet Could make pure light live on the canvas? Art!

Why should I so disrelish that short word?

Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot,

So fever'd never colt would more delight

To roll himself in meadow grass than I To wallow in that winter of the hills.

Nurse, were you hired? or came of your own will

To wait on one so broken, so forlorn? Have I not met you somewhere long ago? I am all but sure I have-in Kendal church

O yes! I hired you for a season there, And then we parted; but you look so kind

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That you will not deny my sultry throat One draught of icy water. There you spill

The drops upon my forehead.

hand shakes.

Your

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And lured me from the household fire on earth.

To you my days have been a life-long lie, Grafted on half a truth; and tho' you say 'Take comfort, you have won the Painter's fame,'

The best in me that sees the worst in me, And groans to see it, finds no comfort there.

What fame? I am not Raphaël,
Titian - no

Nor even a Sir Joshua, some will cry. Wrong there! The painter's fame? but mine, that grew

Blown into glittering by the popular breath,

May float awhile beneath the sun, may

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