Wrought to erase from its depth

Mist and illusion and fear!

Hail to the spirit which dared
Trust its own thoughts, before yet
Echoed her back by the crowd!

Hail to the courage which gave

Voice to its creed, ere the creed

Won consecration from time!

Turn we next to the dead.

-How shall we honour the young,
The ardent, the gifted? how mourn?
Console we cannot, her ear

Is deaf. Far northward from here,

In a churchyard high 'mid the moors
Of Yorkshire, a little earth

Stops it for ever to praise.

Where, behind Keighley, the road
Up to the heart of the moors
Between heath-clad showery hills

Runs, and colliers' carts

Poach the deep ways coming down,

And a rough, grimed race have their homes

There on its slope is built

The moorland town. But the church

Stands on the crest of the hill,

Lonely and bleak ;—at its side

The parsonage-house and the graves.

Strew with laurel the grave
Of the early-dying! Alas,

Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,

Dying too soon!-yet green

Laurels she had, and a course

Short, but redoubled by fame.

And not friendless, and not
Only with strangers to meet,
Faces ungreeting and cold,

Thou, O mourn'd one, to-day

Enterest the house of the grave!

Those of thy blood, whom thou lov❜dst,

Have preceded thee-young,

Loving, a sisterly band;

Some in art, some in gift

Inferior-all in fame.

They, like friends, shall receive
This comer, greet her with joy;
Welcome the sister, the friend;
Hear with delight of thy fame!

Round thee they lie the grass
Blows from their graves to thy own!
She, whose genius, though not

Puissant like thine, was yet

Sweet and graceful;-and she

(How shall I sing her ?) whose soul

Knew no fellow for might,

Passion, vehemence, grief,

Daring, since Byron died,

That world-famed son of fire-she, who sank

Baffled, unknown, self-consumed;

Whose too bold dying song

11

Stirr'd, like a clarion-blast, my soul.

Of one, too, I have heard,

A brother-sleeps he here?

Of all that gifted race

Not the least gifted; young,
Unhappy, eloquent—the child

Of

many hopes, of many tears.

O boy, if here thou sleep'st, sleep well!

On thee too did the Muse

Bright in thy cradle smile;

But some dark shadow came

(I know not what) and interposed.

Sleep, O cluster of friends,

Sleep!-or only when May,

Brought by the west-wind, returns

Back to your native heaths,

And the plover is heard on the moors,

Yearly awake to behold

The opening summer, the sky,

The shining moorland-to hear

The drowsy bee, as of old,

Hum o'er the thyme, the grouse
Call from the heather in bloom!

Sleep, or only for this

Break your united repose!

EPILOGUE

So I sang; but the Muse,

Shaking her head, took the harp—

Stern interrupted my strain,

Angrily smote on the chords.

April showers

Rush o'er the Yorkshire moors.
Stormy, through driving mist,
Loom the blurr'd hills; the rain
Lashes the newly-made grave.

Unquiet souls!

-In the dark fermentation of earth,

In the never idle workshop of nature,

In the eternal movement,

Ye shall find yourselves again!