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Their faces grow between me and my book:
With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine
They burst my prayer. Yet this way was left,
And by this way I 'scaped them. Mortify
Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns ;
Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fast
Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps→
With slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain-
Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that still
Sing in mine ears. But yield not me the praise:
God only through his bounty hath thought fit,
Among the powers and princes of this world,
To make me an example to mankind,
Which few can reach to. Yet I do not say
But that a time may come-yea, even now,
Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs
Of life—I say, that time is at the doors
When you may worship me without reproach;
For I will leave my relics in your land,
And you may carve a shrine about my dust,
And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones,
When I am gathered to the glorious saints.

While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain
Ran shrivelling through me, and a cloudlike change,
In passing, with a grosser film made thick
These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end!
Surely the end! What's here? a shape, a shade,
A flash of light. Is that the angel there

That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come.
I know thy glittering face. I waited long;
My brows are ready. What! deny it now?
Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ!
'Tis gone: 'tis here again; the crown! the crown!
So now 'tis fitted on and grows to me,

And from it melt the dews of Paradise,

Sweet! sweet! spikenard, and balm, and frankin

cense.

Ah! let me not be fooled, sweet saints: I trust That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven.

Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God,
Among you there, and let him presently
Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,
And climbing up into my airy home,
Deliver me the blessed sacrament;
For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,
I prophesy that I shall die to-night,
A quarter before twelve.

But thou, oh Lord,
Aid all this foolish people; let them take
Example, pattern: lead them to thy light.

THE SE A-FAIRIES.

SLOW sailed the weary mariners, and saw, Betwixt the green brink and the running foam, Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest To little harps of gold; and, while they mused, Whispering to each other half in fear,

Shrill music reached them on the middle sea.

Whither away, whither away, whither away? fly

no more.

Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore?

Day and night to the billow the fountain calls;
Down shower the gambolling waterfalls

From wandering over the lea:

Out of the live-green heart of the dells

They freshen the silvery-crimson shells,

And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells

High over the full-toned sea :

O hither, come hither, and furl your sails,

Come hither to me and to me!

Hither, come hither, and frolic and play;
Here it is only the mew that wails;

We will sing to you all the day:

Mariner, mariner, furl your sails,

For here are the blissful downs and dales,
And merrily, merrily carol the gales,
And the spangle dances in bight and bay,
And the rainbow forms and flies on the land
Over the islands free;

And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand;
Hither, come hither and see;

And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave,
And sweet is the color of cove and cave,

And sweet shall your welcome be;

O hither, come hither, and be our lords,

For merry brides are we!

We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words: O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten

With pleasure and love and jubilee!

O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten

When the sharp, clear twang of the golden chords Runs up the ridgéd sea!

Who can light on as happy a shore

All the world o'er, all the world o'er?

Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner fly no more.

THE DESERTED HOUSE.

I.

LIFE and Thought have gone away

Side by side,

Leaving door and windows wide :

Careless tenants they!

II.

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.

III.

Close the door, the shutters close,
Or through the windows we shall see
The nakedness and vacancy

Of the dark, deserted house.

IV.

Come away; no more of mirth

Is here or merry-making sound.
The house was builded of the earth,
And shall fall again to ground.

V.

Come away; for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell;

But in a city glorious

A great and distant city-have bought
Å mansion incorruptible.

Would they could have stayed with us.

EDWIN MORRIS;

OR, THE LAKE.

O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake,
My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year,
My one Oasis in the dust and drouth

Of city life! I was a sketcher then;

See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge,
Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built

When men knew how to build, upon a rock,
With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock;
And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,
New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,
Here lived the Hills,-a Tudor-chimneyed bulk
Of mellow brick work on an isle of bowers.

O me! my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull, The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names,
Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern,
Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks,
Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim,
Who read me rhymes elaborately good,
His own,-I called him Crichton, for he seemed
All-perfect, finished to the finger nail.

And once I asked him of his early life,
And his first passion; and he answered me;
And well his words became him: was he not
A full-celled honeycomb of eloquence
Stored from all flowers? Poet-like he spoke:

66

My love for Nature is as old as I;

But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that,

And three rich sennights more, my love for her.
My love for Nature and my love for her,
Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew,
Twin-sisters differently beautiful.

To some full music rose and sank the sun,
And some full music seemed to move and change
With all the varied changes of the dark,
And either twilight and the day between;
For daily hope fulfilled, to rise again
Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet
To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe.”

Or this or something like to this he spoke. Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull, "I take it, God made the woman for the man, And for the good and increase of the world. A pretty face is well, and this is well, To have a dame indoors that trims us up, And keeps us tight; but these unreal ways

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