Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,
And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,
To the just-pausing Genius we remit

Our worn-out life, and are-what we have been.

Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire ;

Else wert thou long since number'd with the dead!
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!
The generations of thy peers are fled,
And we ourselves shall go ;

But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page,
Because thou hadst-what we, alas! have not.

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
Fresh, undiverted to the world without,

Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,

Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.
O life unlike to ours!

Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
And each half lives a hundred different lives;

Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,

Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd;
For whom each year we see

V

Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,

And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day-
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Yes, we await it!—but it still delays,

And then we suffer! and amongst us one,
Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne;
And all his store of sad experience he

Lays bare of wretched days;

?

fachen miration

1

Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs,
And how the dying spark of hope was fed,

And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,
And all his hourly varied anodynes.

This for our wisest! and we others pine,

And wish the long unhappy dream would end,
And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear;
With close-lipp'd patience for our only friend,
Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair-
But none has hope like thine!

Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,
Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,

Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,
And every doubt long blown by time away.

flassical

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;

Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife-
Fly hence, our contact fear!

Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern

From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,

With a free, onward impulse brushing through,
By night, the silver'd branches of the glade-
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,
On some mild pastoral slope

Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales
Freshen thy flowers as in former years
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales !

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest.

Soon, soon thy cheer would die,

Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
-As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow

Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow
Among the Ægæan isles;

And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,

Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine— And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light-hearted masters of the waves-
And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail;
And day and night held on indignantly

O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,

To where the Atlantic raves

Outside the western straits; and unbent sails

There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,

Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales.

THYRSIS 17

A MONODY, to commemorate the author's friend, ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, who died at Florence, 1861.

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,

And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks—~
Are ye too changed, ye hills?

See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men

To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!

Here came I often, often, in old days

Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,

The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames ?———
This winter-eve is warm,

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,

The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening,
Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—
Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power

L

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.
Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;
Now seldom come I, since I came with him.
That single elm-tree bright

Against the west-I miss it! is it gone?

We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,
Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,
But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick ;
And with the country-folk acquaintance made

By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.
Ah me! this many a year

My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!

Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart;

But Thyrsis of his own will went away.

It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest.

He loved each simple joy the country yields,