The bitter springs of anger and fear;
Down too, down at your own fireside,
With the evil tongue and the evil ear,
For each is at war with mankind.
4.
I wish I could hear again
The chivalrous battle-song
That she warbled alone in her joy!
I might persuade myself then
She would not do herself this great wrong
To take a wanton dissolute boy
For a man and leader of men.
5.
Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone Forever and ever by,
One still strong man in a blatant land,
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat--one
Who can rule and dare not lie.
6.
And ah for a man to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be!
XI.
1.
O LET the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet;
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day.
2. Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me
Before I am quite quite sure
That there is one to love me; Then let come what come may To a life that has been so sad, I shall have had my day.
BIRDS in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling
2.
Where was Maud? in our wood;
And I, who else, was with her,
Gathering woodland lilies,
Myriads blow together.
3.
Birds in our wood sang
Ringing thro' the valleys,
Maud is here, here, here
In among the lilies.
4.
I kiss'd her slender hand,
She took the kiss sedately;
Maud is not seventeen,
But she is tall and stately.
5.
I to cry out on pride
Who have won her favor! O Maud were sure of Heaven If lowliness could save her.
6.
I know the way she went
Home with her maiden posy,
For her feet have touch'd the meadows
And left the daisies rosy.
7.
Birds in the high Hall-garden
Were crying and calling to her,
Where is Maud, Maud, Maud,
One is come to woo her.
8.
Look, a horse at the door,
And little King Charles is snarling,
Go back, my lord, across the moor,
You are not her darling.
XIII.
1.
SCORN'D, to be scorn'd by one that I scorn, Is that a matter to make me fret?
That a calamity hard to be borne ?
Well, he may live to hate me yet.
Fool that I am to be vext with his pride!
I past him, I was crossing his lands;
He stood on the path a little aside ;
His face, as I grant, in spite of spite,
Has a broad-blown comeliness, red and white,
And six feet two, as I think, he stands;
But his essences turn'd the live air sick,
And barbarous opulence jewel-thick
Sunn'd itself on his breast and his hands.
2.
Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding-whip
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.
3.
Why sits he here in his father's chair?
That old man never comes to his place :
Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?
For only once, in the village street,
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face,
A gray old wolf and a lean.
Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat;
For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,
She might by a true descent be untrue;
And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet:
Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due
To the sweeter blood by the other side;
Her mother has been a thing complete,
However she came to be so allied.
And fair without, faithful within,
Maud to him is nothing akin:
Some peculiar mystic grace
Made her only the child of her mother,
And heap'd the whole inherited sin
On that huge scapegoat of the race,
All, all upon the brother.
4.
Peace, angry spirit, and let him be!
Has not his sister smiled on me?
XIV.
1.
MAUD has a garden of roses,
And lilies fair on a lawn;
There she walks in her state
And tends upon bed and bower,
And thither I climb'd at dawn
And stood by her garden-gate;
A lion ramps at the top,
He is claspt by a passion-flower.
2.
Maud's own little oak-room
(Which Maud, like a precious stone
Set in the heart of the carven gloom,
Lights with herself, when alone
She sits by her music and books,
And her brother lingers late
With a roystering company) looks
Upon Maud's own garden gate:
And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white
As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid
On the hasp of the window, and my Delight
Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide
Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my side,
There were but a step to be made.
3.
The fancy flatter'd my mind,
And again seem'd overbold;
Now I thought that she cared for me,
Now I thought she was kind
Only because she was cold.
4.
I heard no sound where I stood
But the rivulet on from the lawn
Running down to my own dark wood;
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