THE FUTURE.

A WANDERER is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship

On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy

He spreads out his arms to the light,

Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes

Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed

Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light

Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea-
As is the world on the banks,

So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,

Fable and dream

Of the lands which the river of Time

Had left ere he woke on its breast,

Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.

Only the tract where he sails

He wots of; only the thoughts,

Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?

Who thinks as they thought,

The tribes who then roam'd on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girl

Now reads in her bosom as clear

As Rebekah read, when she sate

At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast

As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure ?

What bard,

At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,

As flashing as Moses felt,

When he lay in the night by his flock

On the starlit Arabian waste?

Can rise and obey

The beck of the Spirit like him?

This tract which the river of Time

Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.

Border'd by cities, and hoarse

With a thousand cries is its stream.

And we on its breast, our minds

Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and shot as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fled

For ever the course of the river of Time.

That cities will crowd to its edge

In a blacker incessanter line;

That the din will be more on its banks,

U

Denser the trade on its stream,

Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.

That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,

Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.

Haply, the river of Time

As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights

On a wider, statelier stream-
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike

Peace to the soul of the man on its breast-
As the pale waste widens around him,

As the banks fade dimmer away,

As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

ELEGIAC POEMS.

THE SCHOLAR-GIPSY.17

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,

Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,

Nor the cropp'd grasses shoot another head;

But when the fields are still,

And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,

And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd

green,

Come, shepherd, and again renew the quest!

Here, where the reaper was at work of late-
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use—
Here will I sit and wait,

While to my ear from uplands far away
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
With distant cries of reapers in the corn-
All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be.

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep;

And air-swept lindens yield

Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers

Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, And bower me from the August-sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book—
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of that Oxford scholar poor,
Of shining parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook

His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore,
And roam'd the world with that wild brother-

hood,

And came, as most men deem'd, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country-lanes,

Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,
Met him, and of his way of life enquired;
Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew,

His mates, had arts to rule as they desired
The workings of men's brains,

And they can bind them to what thoughts they

will.

'And I,' he said, 'the secret of their art,

When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.'