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WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

N this lone open glade I lie,

IN

Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand. Where ends the glade, to stay the eye

Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum;

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 187

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod

Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,

And, eased of basket and of rod,

Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I

Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass;
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.

188 LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,

That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar!

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

PALLADIUM.

ET where the upper streams of Simois flow

SET

Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;

And Hector was in Ilium, far below,

And fought, and saw it not-but there it stood.

It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight
Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul!
Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

Men will renew the battle in the plain
To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be,
Hector and Ajax will be there again,

Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,

And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,

And fancy that we put forth all our life,

And never know how with the soul it fares.

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send;

And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,

And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

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