Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd!
Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring

claims,

Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;

And many a darkness into the light shall leap
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire ;
For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and
done,

And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,

And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

5.

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,

We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,

And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;

It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill;

I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,

I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.

THE BROOK;

AN IDYL.

"HERE, by this brook, we parted; I to the East
And he for Italy-too late-too late:
One whom the strong sons of the world despise;
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent for cent;
Nor could he understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.
O had he lived! In our school-books we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourish'd then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd
On such a time as goes before the leaf,
When all the wood stands in a mist of green,
And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved,
For which, in branding summers of Bengal,
Or ev'n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air,
I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,

To me that loved him; for 'O brook,' he says,
'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? re-
plies.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

"Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,
Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge,
It has more ivy; there the river; and there
Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and 'men may go,

But I go on forever.

"But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird: Old Philip; all about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass.

I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

"O darling Katie Willows, his one child! A maiden of our century, yet most meek; A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse; Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand; Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides threefold to show the fruit within.

"Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn, Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed, James Willows, of one name and heart with her. For here I came, twenty years back,-the week Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry-crost, Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon, And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate, Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge, Stuck; and he clamor'd from a casement, 'run' To Katie somewhere in the walks below, 'Run, Katie Katie never ran: she moved To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers, A little flutter'd with her eyelids down, Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.

"What was it? less of sentiment than sense Had Katie; not illiterate; neither one Who babbling in the fount of fictive tears, And nursed by mealy-mouthed philanthropies, Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

"She told me. She and James had quarrell'd.

Why?

What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause;
James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,
I learnt that James had flickering jealousies
Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said.
But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine,
And sketching with her slender-pointed foot
Some figure like a wizard's pentagram
On garden gravel, let my query pass
Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd

If James were coming. Coming every day,'
She answer'd, 'ever longing to explain,
But evermore her father came across

With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;
And James departed vext with him and her.'
How could I help her? Would I-was it wrong?'
(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace

Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)
'O would I take her father for one hour,
For one half-hour, and let him talk to me!'
And even while she spoke, I saw where James
Made towards us, like a wader in the surf,
Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.

"O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake!
For in I went and call'd old Philip out
To show the farm: full willingly he rose :
He led me thro' the short sweet-smelling lanes
Of his wheat suburb, babbling as he went.
He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
He praised his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs;
He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens;
His pigeons, who in session on their roofs
Approved him, bowing at their own deserts:
Then from the plaintive mother's teat, he took
Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,
And naming those, his friends, for whom they were:
Then crost the common into Darnley chase
To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern
Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,
He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said:
'That was the four-year-old I sold the squire.'
And there he told a long, long-winded tale
Of how the squire had seen the colt at grass,
And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd,
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm

To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd,
And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,
But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;
He gave them line: and five days after that
He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,
Who then and there had offer'd something more,
But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;
He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;
He gave them line: and how by chance at last
(It might be May or April, he forgot,
The last of April or the first of May)
He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
And, talking from the point, he drew him in,
And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale,
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.

"Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he,
Poor fellow, could he help it? recommenced,
And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle,
Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho,
Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt,
Arbaces and Phenomenon, and the rest,
Till, not to die a listener, I arose,

And with me Philip, talking still; and so
We turn'd our foreheads from the falling sun,
And following our own shadows thrice as long
As when they follow'd us from Philip's door,
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content
Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone,
All gone. My dearest brother, Edmund, sleeps,
Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire,
But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome

Of Brunelleschi; sleeps in peace: and he,
Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words
Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb:

I scraped the lichen from it: Katie walks
By the long wash of Australasian seas
Far off, and holds her head to other stars,
And breathes in converse seasons. All are gone."

So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile
In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind
Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook
A tonsured head in middle age forlorn,
Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath
Of tender air made tremble in the hedge
The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings;
And he look'd up. There stood a maiden near,
Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared
On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair

In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within:
Then, wondering, ask'd her, "Are you from the
farm?"

"Yes," answer'd she. "Pray stay a little pardon "That were

me;

What do they call you?" "Katie."
strange.
What surname ?"

"Willows." "No!" "That is

my name. "Indeed!" and here he look'd so self-perplext, That Katie laugh'd, and laughing blush'd, till he Laugh'd also, but as one before he wakes, Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream. Then looking at her; "Too happy, fresh and fair, Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom, To be the ghost of one who bore your name About these meadows, twenty years ago."

"Have you not heard?" said Katie, "we came back.

We bought the farm we tenanted before.
Am I so like her? so they said on board.
Sir, if you knew her in her English days,
My mother, as it seems you did, the days
That most she loves to talk of, come with me.
My brother James is in the harvest-field:
But she-you will be welcome-O, come in "

THE LETTERS.

1.

STILL on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloom'd the stagnant air,

I peer'd athwart the chancel pane
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
"Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow."

2.

I turn'd and humm'd a bitter song

That mock'd the wholesome human heart, And then we met in wrath and wrong, We met, but only meant to part.

144

Full cold my greeting was and dry;

She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;

I saw with half-unconscious eye

She wore the colors I approved.

3.

She took the little ivory chest,

With half a sigh she turn'd the key,
Then raised her head with lips comprest,
And gave my letters back to me.
And gave the trinkets and the rings,

My gifts, when gifts of mine could please; As looks a father on the things

Of his dead son, I look'd on these.

4.

She told me all her friends had said;
I raged against the public liar;
She talk'd as if her love were dead,
But in my words were seeds of fire.
"No more of love; your sex is known:
I never will be twice deceived.
Henceforth I trust the man alone,
The woman cannot be believed.

5.

"Thro' slander, meanest spawn of Hell
(And women's slander is the worst),
And you, whom once I lov'd so well,
Thro' you, my life will be accurst."
I spoke with heart, and heat and force,
I shook her breast with vague alarms-
Like torrents from a mountain source
We rush'd into each other's arms.

6.

We parted: sweetly gleam'd the stars,
And sweet the vapor-braided blue,
Low breezes fann'd the belfry bars,

As homeward by the church I drew.
The very graves appear'd to smile,

So fresh they rose in shadow'd swells; "Dark porch," I said, "and silent aisle, There comes a sound of marriage bells."

4.

Mourn, for to us he seems the last,
Remembering all his greatness in the Past.
No more in soldier fashion will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
O friends, our chief state-oracle is dead:
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
Our greatest yet with least pretence,
Great in council and great in war,
Foremost captain of his time,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,

In his simplicity sublime.

O good gray head which all men knew,

O voice from which their omens all men drew,

O iron nerve to true occasion true,

O fall'n at length that tower of strength

Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew! Such was he whom we deplore.

The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.

The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more.

5.

All is over and done:
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son.
Let the bell be toll'd.

Render thanks to the Giver,
And render him to the mould.
Under the cross of gold
That shines over city and river,
There he shall rest forever
Among the wise and the bold.
Let the bell be toll'd:

And a reverent people behold

The towering car, the sable steeds: Bright let it be with his blazon'd deeds, Dark in its funeral fold.

Let the bell be tolled:

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd;
And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd
Thro' the dome of the golden cross;

And the volleying cannon thunder his loss;
He knew their voices of old.

For many a time in many a clime
His captain's-ear has heard them boom

With an empire's lamentation,

Let us bury the Great Duke

When he with those deep voices wrought,
Guarding realms and kings from shame;
With those deep voices our dead captain taught
The tyrant, and asserts his claim

In that dread sound to the great name,
Which he has worn so pure of blame,

Mourning when their leaders fall,

Warriors carry the warrior's pall,

And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

2.

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London's central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones forevermore.

3.

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,

As fits an universal woe,

Let the long long procession go,

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.

Was great by land as thou by sea;

His foes were thine; he kept us free
O give him weicome, this is he,
Worthy of our gorgeous rites,
And worthy to be laid by thee;
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gain'd a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye

Clash'd with his fiery few and won;
And underneath another sun,
Warring on a later day,
Round affrighted Lisbon drew
The treble works, the vast designs
Of his labor'd rampart-lines,
Where he greatly stood at bay,
Whence he issued forth anew,
And ever great and greater grew,
Beating from the wasted vines
Back to France her banded swarms,
Back to France with countless blows,
Till o'er the hills her eagles flew
Past the Pyrenean pines,
Follow'd up in valley and glen
With blare of bugle, clamor of men,
Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
And England pouring on her foes.
Such a war had such a close.
Again their ravening eagle rose

In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing wings,
And barking for the thrones of kings;
Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown
On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down;
A day of onsets of despair!

Dash'd on every rocky square

Their surging charges foam'd themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew ;

Thro' the long-tormented air

Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray.

And down we swept and charged and overthrew.

So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world's-earthquake, Water!cc!
Mighty seaman, tender and true,

And pure as he from taint of craven guile,

O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,

O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine,
If love of country move thee there at all,

Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine!
And thro' the centuries let a people's voice
In full acclaim,

A people's voice,

The proof and echo of all human fame,

A people's voice, when they rejoice At civic revel and pomp and game, Attest their great commander's claim With honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name.

7.

A people's voice! we are a people yet.
Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers;
Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set
His Saxon in blown seas and storming showers,
We have a voice, with which to pay the debt
Of boundless love and reverence and regret
To those great men who fought, and kept it ours.
And keep it ours, O God, from brute control;
O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole,
And save the one true seed of freedom sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne,
That sober freedom out of which there springs
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings;

145

For, saving that, ye help to save mankind

Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,
And drill the raw world for the march of mind,
Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just.
But wink no more in slothful overtrust.
Remember him who led your hosts;

He bade you guard the sacred coasts.
Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall;
His voice is silent in your council-hall
Forever; and whatever tempests lower
Forever silent; even if they broke

In thunder, silent: yet remember all

He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke ;
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power;
Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow
Thro' either babbling world of high and low;
Whose life was work, whose language rife
With rugged maxims hewn from life:
Who never spoke against a foe:
Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke
All great self-seekers trampling on the right:
Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named;
Truth-lover was our English Duke;
Whatever record leap to light

He never shall be shamed.

8.

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Follow'd by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honor shower'd all her stars,
And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn.
Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great,

But as he saves or serves the state.
Not once or twice in our rough island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.

Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands

To which our God Himself is moon and sun.

Such was he: his work is done.

But while the races of mankind endure,

Let his great example stand

Colossal, seen of every land,

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure;

Till in all lands and thro' all human story

The path of duty be the way to glory:

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame
For many and many an age proclaim
At civic revel and pomp and game,
And when the long-illumined cities flame,
Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,
With honor, honor, honor, honor to him,
Eternal honor to his name.

9.

Peace, his triumph will be sung
By some yet unmoulded tongue

Far on in summers that we shall not see:
Peace, it is a day of pain

For one about whose patriarchal knee
Late the little children clung:

O peace, it is a day of pain

For one upon whose hand and heart and brain
Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.

Ours the pain, be his the gain!

More than is of man's degree
Must be with us, watching here
At this, our great solemnity.
Whom we see not we revere.
We revere, and we refrain

From talk of battles loud and vain,

And brawling memories all too free
For such a wise humility

As betits a solemn fane:
We revere, and while we hear
The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting toward eternity,

Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,
Until we doubt not that for one so true
There must be other nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be.
For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will:
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?

On God and Godlike men we build our trust.
Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears:
The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears:
The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears;
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust:

He is gone who seem'd so great.

Gone; but nothing can bereave him

Of the force he made his own

Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in state,
And that he wears a truer crown

Than any wreath that man can weave him.

But speak no more of his renown,

Lay your earthly fancies down,

And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him. 1852.

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 "tood among the silent statues, And statued pinnacles, mute as they.

How faintly-flush'd, 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-burthen 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 Agavè 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.