In haste they drove, and honey-hearted | And valley, and the immeasurable fifty in the blaze of burning fire; And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, And every height comes out, and jut- Fixt by their cars, waited the golden ting peak Iliad vIII. 542-561. dawn. 1 Or ridge. THE WINDOW; OR, THE SONG OF THE WRENS. Four years ago Mr. Sullivan requested me to write a little song-cycle, German fashion, for him to exercise his art upon. He had been very successful in setting such old songs as "Orpheus with his lute," and I drest up for him, partly in the old style, a puppet, whose almost only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr. Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry that my four-year-old puppet should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days; but the music is now completed, and I am bound by my promise. December, 1870. A. TENNYSON. AT THE WINDOW. Vine, vine and eglantine, Bite, frost, bite! The woods are all the searer, You have bitten into the heart of the Trail and twine and clasp and kiss, Gone, till the end of the year, SPRING. Birds' love and birds' song Flying here and there, Passing with the weather, To love once and for ever. Men's love and birds' love, And women's love and men's! Gone, and the light gone with her, and And you my wren with a crown of left me in shadow here! Gone - flitted away, Taken the stars from the night and the sun from the day! Gone, and a cloud in my heart, and a Flown to the east or the west, flitted Down in the south is a flash and a WINTER. The frost is here, And fuel is dear, And woods are sear, And fires burn clear, And frost is here gold, We'll be birds of a feather, I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens, And all in a nest together. THE LETTER. Where is another sweet as my sweet, Dewy blue eye. Shall I write to her? shall I go? And has bitten the heel of the going Ay or no, if ask'd to her face? Ay or no, from shy of the shy? Go, little letter, apace, apace, Fly; MARRIAGE MORNING. Light, so low upon earth, You send a flash to the sun. All my wooing is done. Woods where we hid from the wet, Stiles where we stay'd to be kind, Meadows in which we met! Light, so low in the vale You flash and lighten afar, For this is the golden morning of love, And you are his morning star. Flash, I am coming, I come, By meadow and stile and wood, Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart, Into my heart and my blood! Heart, are you great enough For a love that never tires? O heart, are you great enough for love! I have heard of thorns and briers. Over the thorns and briers, Over the meadows and stiles, Over the world to the end of it Flash for a million miles. IDYLS OF THE KING. Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantageground For pleasure, but thro' all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot: for where is he, Who dares foreshadow for an only son A lovelier life, a more unstain'd, than his? Or how should England dreaming of his sons Hope more for these than some inheritance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine, Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Commingled with the gloom of im- Laborious for her people and her |