2.

And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight

To have look'd, tho' but in a dream, upon eyes so fair,

That had been in a weary world my one thing bright;

And it was but a dream, yet it lighten'd my despair When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,

That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,
Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionnaire:
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase,
Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore,
And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat,
Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more.

3.

And as months ran on and rumor of battle grew, "It is time, it is time, O passionate heart," said I (For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and

true,)

"It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye,
That old hysterical mock-disease should die.”
And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath
With a loyal people shouting a battle cry,
Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly
Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death.

4.

Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and

shames,

Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;

And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd!

Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep

For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims,

Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;

And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire ;
For the peace that I deemed no peace is over and

done,

And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,

And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress,

flames

The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

5.

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,

We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,

And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;

It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill;

I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,

I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.

THE BROOK

AN IDYL.

“HERE, by this brook, we parted; I to the East And he for Italy-too late-too late : One whom the strong sons of the world despise; For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share, And mellow metres more than cent for cent; Nor could he understand how money breeds, Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make The thing that is not as the thing that is. O had he lived! In our school-books we say, Of those that held their heads above the crowd, They flourish'd then or then; but life in him Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd On such a time as goes before the leaf, When all the wood stands in a mist of green, And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved, For which, in branding summers of Bengal, Or ev❜n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air, I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it, Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy, To me that loved him; for ' O brook,' he says, 'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme, Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies.

I come from haunts of coot and herr,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

THE BROOK.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

"Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out, Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge, It has more ivy; there the river; and there Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

"But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird; Old Philip; all about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel,
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

"O darling Katie Willows, his one child!
A maiden of our century, yet most meek;
A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse;
Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.

"Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn, Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed, James Willows, of one name and heart with her. For here I came, twenty years back-the week Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry-crost, Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon, And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate, Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge, Stuck; and he clamor'd from a casement, ' run,' To Katie somewhere in the walks below, 'Run, Katie!' Katie never ran: she moved To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers, A little flutter'd, with her eyelids down, Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.

"What was it? less of sentiment than sense
Had Katie; not illiterate; neither one
Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,
And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philanthropies,
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

"She told me. She and James had quarrell'd. Why?

What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause ;
James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,
I learnt that James had flickering jealousies
Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said.
But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine,
And sketching with her slender pointed foot