They too, the maddening wine

Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain They feel the biting spears

Of the grim Lapithæ, and Theseus, drive, Drive crashing through their bones; they feel High on a jutting rock in the red stream Alcmena's dreadful son

Ply his bow; such a price

The Gods exact for song:

To become what we sing.

They see the Indian

On his mountain lake; - but squalls
Make their skiff reel, and worms

In the unkind spring have gnawn

Their melon harvest to the heart- They see

The Scythian; but long frosts.

Parch them in winter time on the bare steppe,

Till they too fade like grass; they crawl
Like shadows forth in spring.

They see the merchants

On the Oxus stream; - but care

Must visit first them too, and make them pale. Whether, through whirling sand,

A cloud of desert robber horse have burst

Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,

In the walled cities the way passes through,
Crushed them with tolls; or fever airs,

On some great river's marge,

Mown them down, far from home.

Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,

Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;

Or where the echoing oars

Of Argo first

Startled the unknown sea.

The old Silenus

Came, lolling in the sunshine,
From the dewy forest coverts,
This way, at noon.

Sitting by me, while his Fauns
Down at the water side
Sprinkled and smoothed.
His drooping garland,
He told me these things.

But I, Ulysses,

Sitting on the warm steps,
Looking over the valley,
All day long, have seen,
Without pain, without labor,

Sometimes a wild-haired Mænad-
Sometimes a Faun with torches-
And sometimes, for a moment,
Passing through the dark stems
Flowing-robed, the beloved,
The desired, the divine,
Beloved Iacchus.

Ah, cool night wind, tremulous stars!

Ah, glimmering water,

Fitful earth murmur,

Dreaming woods!

Ah, golden-haired, strangely smiling Goddess,

And thou, provea, much enduring,

Waved-tossed Wanderer!

Who can stand still?

Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me

The cup again!

Faster, faster,

O Circe, Goddess,

Let the wild, thronging train,

The bright procession

Of eddying forms,

Sweep through my soul !

DOVER BEACH.

THE sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true.

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here, as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight Where ignorant armies clash by night.

MEMORIAL VERSES (1850).

GOETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb-
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.

He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;

And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said,
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,

Goethe had done his pilgrimage,

He took the suffering human race,

He read each wound, each weakness clear;

And struck his finger on the place,

And said: Thou ailest here, and here!

He looked on Europe's dying hour

Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life-

He said, The end is everywhere,

Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow

Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.

And Wordsworth! Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!

For never has such soothing voice

Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us
- and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime

Had fallen on this iron time

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.

He found us when the age had bound

Our souls in its benumbing round;

He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.

He laid us as we lay at birth,

On the cool, flowery lap of earth.

Smiles broke from us and we had ease;

The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.

Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,

And against fear our breast to steel; Others will strengthen us to bear

But who, ah! who, will make us feel?

The cloud of mortal destiny,

Others will front it fearlessly

But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave !
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.

RUGBY CHAPEL.

NOVEMBER, 1857.

COLDLY, sadly descends

The autumn evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of withered leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,

Silent; hardly a shout

From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the schoolroom windows; but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,

Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!