She will not come though you call all day; Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the whitewall'd town ;

Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,

To the little gray church on the windy hill.

From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gaz'd up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear :
"Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!

And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare ;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mer maiden

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away, children;
Come, children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows colder;
Lights shine in the town.

She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,

A pavement of pearl.

Singing: "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie.
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;

At the church on the hill-side-
And then come back down.

Singing: "There dwells a lov'd one,
But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever

The kings of the sea."

What triumph! hark!—what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain
That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-
world pain -

Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame ?

Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound

With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale? Listen, Eugenia —

How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves !

Again thou hearest ?

Eternal passion!

Eternal pain!

Listen! you hear the grating roar

FROM "EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA"

AND you, ye stars,

Who slowly begin to marshal,
As of old, in the fields of heaven,
Your distant, melancholy lines!

Have you, too, surviv'd yourselves?

Are you, too, what I fear to become?
You, too, once liv'd ;

You too mov'd joyfully,

Among august companions,

In an older world, peopled by Gods,
In a mightier order,

The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of
Heaven.

But now, ye kindle

Your lonely, cold-shining lights,

fling,

In the heavenly wilderness,

Upon whose charr'd and quaking crust I stand

Thou, too, brimmest with life! the sea of cloud,

That heaves its white and billowy vapors up
To moat this isle of ashes from the world,
Lives; and that other fainter sea, far down,
O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams
leads

To Etna's Liparëan sister-fires
And the long dusky line of Italy

That mild and luminous floor of waters lives,

With held-in joy swelling its heart; I only, Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has fail'd,

I, who have not, like these, in solitude
Maintain'd courage and force, and in myself
Nurs'd an immortal vigor - I alone
Am dead to life and joy, therefore I read
In all things my own deadness.

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd ;
For that which seals them hath been deep-
ordain'd!

Fate, which foresaw

How frivolous a baby man would be —
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our
breast

The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see

The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us to know
Whence our lives come and where they

go.

But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves

Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through
our breast,

But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well-but 't is not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;

Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,

From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land,

Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all our day.

Only - but this is rare —

When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,

Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear

MEMORIAL VERSES

APRIL, 1850

GOETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd 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 bow'd 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 watch'd the fount of fiery life
Which serv'd 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 has 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 look'd 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!
joice!

Ah, pale ghosts, re

For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world convey'd,
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 wintery 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 loos'd our hearts in tears.