Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
150 Or chalets near the Alpine snow?

Ye slumber in your silent grave!—
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
155 The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we we learnt your lore too well!

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
160 And gay without frivolity.

Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But, while we wait, allow our tears!

Allow them! We admire with awe The exulting thunder of your race; 165 You give the universe your law,

You triumph over time and space!
Your pride of life, your tireless powers,
We praise them, but they are not ours.

We are like children rear'd in shade 170 Beneath some old-world abbey wall, Forgotten in a forest-glade,

And secret from the eyes of all.

Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves,
Their abbey, and its close of graves!

175 But, where the road runs near the stream, Oft through the trees they catch a glance

Of passing troops in the sun's beamPennon, and plume, and flashing lance! Forth to the world those soldiers fare, 180 To life, to cities, and to war!

And through the wood, another way,
Faint bugle-notes from far are borne,
Where hunters gather, staghounds bay,
Round some old forest-lodge at morn.
185 Gay dames are there, in sylvan green;
Laughter and cries-those notes between!

The banners flashing through the trees
Make their blood dance and chain their eyes;
That bugle-music on the breeze

190 Arrests them with a charm'd surprise.
Banner by turns and bugle woo:
Ye shy recluses, follow too!

O children, what do ye reply?—

66

Action and pleasure, will ye roam 195 Through these secluded dells to cry And call us?-but too late ye come! Too late for us your call ye blow, Whose bent was taken long ago.

"Long since we pace this shadow'd nave; 200 We watch those yellow tapers shine, Emblems of hope over the grave, In the high altar's depth divine. The organ carries to our ear Its accents of another sphere.

205 "Fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,

How should we grow in other ground?
How can we flower in foreign air?

-Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease; 210 And leave our desert to its peace!"

GEIST'S GRAVE

(January, 1881)

Four years!-and didst thou stay above
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,
Were crowded, Geist! into no more?

5 Only four years those winning ways,
Which make me for thy presence yearn,
Call'd us to pet thee or to praise,
Dear little friend! at every turn?

That loving heart, that patient soul,

10 Had they indeed no longer span,

To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?

That liquid, melancholy eye,

From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
15 Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,
The sense of tears in mortal things—

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
By spirits gloriously gay,

And temper of heroic mould—

20 What, was four years their whole short day?

Yes, only four!-and not the course
Of all the centuries yet to come,
And not the infinite resource

Of nature, with her countless sum

25 Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.

Stern law of every mortal lot!

30 Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear, And builds himself I know not what

Of second life I know not where.

But thou, when struck thine hour to go,
On us, who stood despondent by,

35 A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.

Yet would we keep thee in our heart—
Would fix our favourite on the scene,
Nor let thee utterly depart

40 And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.

And so there rise these lines of verse
On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:

Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!

45 We stroke thy broad brown paws again,
We bid thee to thy vacant chair,
We greet thee by the window-pane,
We hear thy scuffle on the stair;

We see the flaps of thy large ears
50 Quick raised to ask which way we go;
Crossing the frozen lake, appears
Thy small black figure on the snow!

Nor to us only art thou dear

Who mourn thee in thine English home; 55 Thou hast thine absent master's tear, Dropt by the far Australian foam.

Thy memory lasts both here and there,
And thou shalt live as long as we.
And after that-thou dost not care!
60 In us was all the world to thee.

Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame,
Even to a date beyond our own
We strive to carry down thy name,
By mounded turf, and graven stone.

65 We lay thee, close within our reach,
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
Between the holly and the beech,

Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form,

Asleep, yet lending half an ear

70 To travellers on the Portsmouth road;-
There choose we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode!

Then some, who through this garden pass,
When we too, like thyself, are clay,
75 Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
And stop before the stone, and say:

People who lived here long ago
Did by this stone, it seems, intend
To name for future times to know
80 The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.

DOVER BEACH

(From New Poems, 1867)

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 5 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.