And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine,
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.
WOW little fades from earth when sink to rest
The hours and cares that move a great man's breast! Though naught of all we saw the grave may spare,
His life pervades the world's impregnate air;
Though Shakespeare's dust beneath our footsteps lies,
His spirit breathes amid his native skies;
With meaning won from him forever glows
Each air that England feels, and star it knows;
His whispered words from many a mother's voice
Can make her sleeping child in dreams rejoice;
And gleams from spheres he first conjoined to earth
Are blent with rays of each new morning's birth.
Amid the sights and tales of common things,
Leaf, flower, and bird, and wars, and deaths of kings,
Of shore, and sea, and nature's daily round,
Of life that tills, and tombs that load, the ground,.
His visions mingle, swell, command, pace by,
And haunt with living presence heart and eye;
And tones from him, by other bosoms caught,
Awaken flush and stir of mounting thought;
And the long sigh, and deep impassioned thrill,
Rouse custom's trance and spur the faltering will.
Above the goodly land, more his than ours,
He sits supreme, enthroned in skyey towers;
And sees the heroic brood of his creation
Teach larger life to his ennobled nation.
O shaping brain! O flashing fancy's hues !
O boundless heart, kept fresh by pity's dews!
O wit humane and blithe O sense sublime!
For each dim oracle of mantled Time!
Transcendent Form of Man! in whom we read
Mankind's whole tale of Impulse, Thought, and Deed!
Amid the expanse of years, beholding thee,
We know how vast our world of life may be ;
Wherein, perchance, with aims as pure as thine,
Small tasks and strengths may be no less divine.
IKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood.
E'en such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies,
The spring entombed in autumn lies,
The dew dries up, the star is shot,
The flight is past — and man forgot!
HENRY KING.
CLIMBED the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide:
All was still, save, by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striden Edge round the Red Tarn was bending,
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died.
Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favorite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defended,
And chased the hill fox and the raven away.
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber? When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long nights didst thou number
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?
And oh, was it meet that · no requiem read o’er him,
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretched before him
Unhonored the Pilgrim from life should depart?
When a prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall,
With 'scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall :
Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleam
In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming;
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb, When, wildered, he drops from some cliff huge in stature, And draws his last sob by the side of his dam. And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying, Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedicam.
'HE spearmen heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound,
Obeyed Llewellyn's horn.
And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a lustier cheer,
"Come, Gêlert, come, wert never last
Llewellyn's horn to hear.
"Oh, where does faithful Gêlert roam,
The flower of all his race;
So true, so brave, a lamb at home,
In sooth, he was a peerless hound,
The gift of royal John;
But now no Gêlert could be found,
And all the chase rode on.
That day Llewellyn little loved
The chase of hart and hare;
And scant and small the booty proved,
For Gêlert was not there.
Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied,
When, near the portal seat,
His truant Gêlert he espied,
Bounding his lord to greet.
But, when he gained his castle-door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound all o'er was' smeared with gore;
His lips, his fangs, ran blood.
Llewellyn gazed with fierce surprise;
Unused such looks to meet,
His favorite checked his joyful guise,
And crouched, and licked his feet.
Onward, in haste, Llewellyn passed,
And on went Gêlert too;
And still, where'er his eyes he cast,
Fresh blood-gouts shocked his view.
O'erturned his infant's bed he found,
With blood-stained covert rent;
And all around the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.
He called his child, no voice replied,
He searched with terror wild;
Blood, blood he found on every side,
But nowhere found his child.
"Hell-hound! my child's by thee devoured,"
The frantic father cried;
And to the hilt his vengeful sword
He plunged in Gêlert's side.
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