She glanced across the plain; But not a creature was in sight: She kiss'd me once again.

'Her kisses were so close and kind,
That, trust me on my word,
Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,
But yet my sap was stirr'd:

'And even into my inmost ring

A pleasure I discern'd,

Like those blind motions of the Spring, That show the year is turn'd.

'Thrice-happy he that may caress
The ringlet's waving balm-
The cushions of whose touch may press
The maiden's tender palm.

'I, rooted here among the groves But languidly adjust

My vapid vegetable loves

With anthers and with dust:

At last, tired out with play, She sank her head upon her arm And at my feet she lay.

'Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves.
I breathed upon her eyes
Thro' all the summer of my leaves
A welcome mix'd with sighs.

'I took the swarming sound of life-
The music from the town-
The murmurs of the drum and fife
And lull'd them in my own.

'Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip,
To light her shaded eye;
A second flutter'd round her lip
Like a golden butterfly;

'A third would glimmer on her neck To make the necklace shine;

Another slid, a sunny fleck,

6

From head to ancle fine,

Whereof the poets talk,

And shadow'd all her rest

'But could I, as in times foregone, From spray, and branch, and stem, Have suck'd and gather'd into one

The life that spreads in them,

'She had not found me so remiss; But lightly issuing thro',

I would have paid her kiss for kiss, With usury thereto.'

O flourish high, with leafy towers,
And overlook the lea,
Pursue thy loves among the bowers

But leave thou mine to me.

O flourish, hidden deep in fern,
Old oak, I love thee well;

A thousand thanks for what I learn
And what remains to tell.

An acorn in her breast.

'But in a pet she started up,

And pluck'd it out, and drew My little oakling from the cup, And flung him in the dew.

'And yet it was a graceful giftI felt a pang within

As when I see the woodman lift His axe to slay my kin.

'I shook him down because he was The finest on the tree.

He lies beside thee on the grass.
O kiss him once for me.

'O kiss him twice and thrice for me, That have no lips to kiss,

For never yet was oak on lea
Shall grow so fair as this.'

Step deeper yet in herb and fern, Look further thro' the chace, Spread upward till thy boughs discern The front of Sumner-place.

This fruit of thine by. Love is blest,

That but a moment lay Where fairer fruit of Love may rest

Some happy future day.

I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice,
The warmth it thence shall win
To riper life may magnetise
The baby-oak within.

But thou, while kingdoms overset, Or lapse from hand to hand, Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet

Thine acorn in the land.

May never saw dismember thee,

Nor wielded axe disjoint, That art the fairest-spoken tree From here to Lizard-point.

O rock upon thy towery-top
All throats that gurgle sweet!
All starry culmination drop
Balm-dews to bathe thy feet!

All grass of silky feather grow

And while he sinks or swells The full south-breeze around thee blow The sound of minster bells.

The fat earth feed thy branchy root,

That under deeply strikes! The northern morning o'er thee shoot, High up, in silver spikes!

Nor ever lightning char thy grain,

But, rolling as in sleep, Low thunders bring the mellow rain, That makes thee broad and deep!

And hear me swear a solemn oath,
That only by thy side
Will I to Olive plight my troth,
And gain her for my bride.

And when my marriage morn may fall, She, Dryad-like, shall wear Alternate leaf and acorn-ball

In wreath about her hair.

And I will work in prose and rhyme,
And praise thee more in both
Than bard has honour'd beech or lime,
Or that Thessalian growth,

In which the swarthy ringdove sat,
And mystic sentence spoke;
And more than England honours that,
Thy famous brother-oak,

Wherein the younger Charles abode
Till all the paths were dim,
And far below the Roundhead rode,
And humm'd a surly hymn.

LOVE AND DUTY.

Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?

Or all the same as if he had not been?
Not so.
Shall Error in the round of

time Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout

For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself

Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by year alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself?

If this were thus, if this, indeed, were

all,

Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless

days,

The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?
O three times less unworthy! likewise
thou

Art more thro' Love, and greater than

thy years,

The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring

The drooping flower of knowledge changed

to fruit

If the sense is hard

To alien ears, I did not speak to theseNo, not to thee, but to thyself in me: Hard is my doom and thine: thou knowest it all.

Could Love part thus? was it not well to speak,

himself

To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love— O this world's curse,-beloved but hated

-came

Like Death betwixt thy dear embrace and mine,

come.

O then like those, who clench their nerves to rush

Upon their dissolution, we two rose, There closing like an individual life— In one blind cry of passion and of pain, Like bitter accusation ev'n to death,

bride,'

She push'd me from thee.

it,

And bade adieu for ever.

Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all

Life needs for life is possible to will—

how,

Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, 'Give,

My blessing! Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts

Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou For calmer hours to Memory's darkest hold,

If not to be forgotten-not at onceNot all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams,

O might it come like one that looks content,

With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth, And point thee forward to a distant light, Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee freer, till thou wake refresh'd

Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown

Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearl

Far furrowing into light the mounded rack,

Beyond the fair green field and eastern

sea.

THE GOLDEN YEAR.

WELL, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote:

It was last summer on a tour in Wales: Old James was with me: we that day

had been

herd!

But I was born too late the fair new forms,

That float about the threshold of an age, Like truths of Science waiting to be caught

Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown'd

Are taken by the forelock. Let it be. But if you care indeed to listen, hear These measured words, my work of yestermorn.

'We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move;

The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun; The dark Earth follows wheel'd in her ellipse;

And human things returning on them

selves

Move onward, leading up the golden year. Ah, tho' the times, when some new thought can bud,

Are but as poets' seasons when they flower,

Yet seas, that daily gain upon the shore, Have ebb and flow conditioning their march,

And slow and sure comes up the golden

year.

"When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps,

there,

And found him in Llanberis: then we

crost

Between the lakes, and clamber'd half

way up

The counter side; and that same song of his

melt

In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker

man

Thro' all the season of the golden year. 'Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?

swore

They said he lived shut up within himself, A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,

that?

The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the cagle. Happy days