Far to the south, beyond the blue, there spreads

Another Heaven, the boundless-no one yet

Hath reach'd it; there hereafter shall arise

The second Asgard, with another name. Thither, when o'er this present earth and Heavens

The tempest of the latter days hath swept,

And they from sight have disappear'd, and sunk,

Shall a small remnant of the Gods repair;

Hoder and I shall join them from the grave.

There re-assembling we shall see emerge From the bright Ocean at our feet an earth

More fresh, more verdant than the last, with fruits

Self-springing, and a seed of man preserved,

Who then shall live in peace, as now in

THROUGH Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled
sound

Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain, Where that wet smoke, among the woods.

Over his boiling cauldron broods.

Swift rush the spectral vapors white Past limestone scars with ragged pines, Showing-then blotting from

sight!

our

Halt-through the cloud-drift something shines!

High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.

Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher

Mounts up the stony forest-way.
At last the encircling trees retire;

The library, where tract and tome
Not to feed priestly pride are there.
To hymn the conquering march of Rome,
Nor yet to amuse, as ours are!
They paint of souls the inner strife,
Their drops of blood, their death in life.

The garden, overgrown-yet mild,
See, fragrant herbs are flowering there!
Strong children of the Alpine wild
Whose culture is the brethren's care;
Of human tasks their only one,
And cheerful works beneath the sun.

Those halls, too, destined to contain
Each its own pilgrim-host of old,
From England, Germany, or Spain-
All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere!
--And what am I, that I am here?

For rigorous teachers seized my youth.
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its

fire,

Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom;

What dost thou in this living tomb ?

Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago

So much unlearnt, so much resign'd—
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;

Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone-
For both were faiths, and both are gone.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world deride-
I come to shed them at their side.

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me
round

Till I possess my soul again;

Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!

For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme-
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!

Ah, if it be pass'd, take away,
At least, the restlessness, the pain;
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone-
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!
But--if you cannot give us ease-
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent-the best are silent now.

Achilles ponders in his tent,

The kings of modern thought are dumb; Silent they are, though not content,

And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more.

Our fathers water'd with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail,
Their voices were in all men's ears
We pass'd within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute,and watch the waves.

For what avail'd it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men ?—
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then ;
The sufferers died, they left their pain-
The pangs which tortured them remain.

What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mock'd the

smart,

Through Europe to the Etolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?

What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian
bay?

Inheritors of thy distress

Have restless hearts one throb the less?

Or are we easier, to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy
head

From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or chalets near the Alpine snow?

Ye slumber in your silent grave!—
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we we learned your lore too well!

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.

Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But, while we wait, allow our tears!

Allow them! We admire with awe
The exulting thunder of your race;
You give the universe your law,

TO MARGUERITE-CONTINUED

YES! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they
know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;

And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour-

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent !
Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh, might our marges meet again!

Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire ?--
A God, a God their severance ruled !
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
(1852.)1 1857.

THYRSIS 2

A MONODY, to commemorate the author's

friend,

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, who died at Florence, 1861

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!

In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the

same;

The village street its haunted mansion lacks,

And from the sign is gone Sibylla's

name,

And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks

1 Standing alone, under the title: To Marguerite. There are in the English language three elegiac poems so great that they eclipse and efface all the elegiac poetry we know; all of Italian, all of Greek. It is only because the latest born is yet new to us that it can seem strange or rash to say so. The Thyrsis of Mr. Arnold makes a third with Lycidas and Adonais. Thyrsis, like Lycidas, has a quiet and tender undertone which gives it something of sacred." (Swinburne.)

Lovely all times she lies, lovely tonight!

Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.

Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;

Now seldom come I, since I came with him.

That single elm-tree bright Against the west-I miss it! is it gone? We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,

Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;

While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,

But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;

And with the country-folk acquaintance made

By barn in threshing-time, by newbuilt rick.

Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.

Ah me! this many a year

My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!