Cold northern natures borne perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings
Unable to repress the tear,

Each as his scepter down he flings,
To Dian's fame at Taurica,

Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach:
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!

In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely, 'tis in Spain

That we and Waring meet again

Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane

Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid

All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall

From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,

I love to think

The leaving us was just a feint ;
Back here to London did he slink,
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint:
Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o'er and o'er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore.
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favor yet, to pity won

By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,--
"Give me my so-long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!"
Then down he creeps and out he steals,
Only when the night conceals
His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,
Or hops are picking: or at prime
Of March he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,

Some mild eve when woods grew sappy,
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;

While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
Made as if they were the throng

That crowd around and carry aloft

The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure, Out of a myriad noises soft,

Into a tone that can endure

Amid the noise of a July noon

When all God's creatures crave their boon,

All at once, and all in tune,

And get it, happy as Waring then,

Having first within his ken

What a man might do with men :
And far too glad, in the even glow,

To mix with the world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so—
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
O Waring! what's to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius-am I right?---shall tuck
His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!

Someone shall somehow run a muck
With this old world, for want of strife
Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
Distinguished names !—but 'tis, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!

Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II.

I.

"When I last saw Waring'

(How all turned to him who spoke!

You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel or sea-faring?)

II.

"We were sailing by Triest
Where a day or two we harbored:
A sunset was in the West,

When, looking over the vessel's side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And as a sea-duck flies and swims
At once, so came the light craft up,
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
A pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne'er so big,
They'll never let you up the bay !
We natives should know best.'

I turned, and just those fellows' way,'
Our captain said, ' The 'long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

III.

In truth, the boy leaned laughing back; And one half hidden by his side

Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
With great grass hat and kerchief black
Who looked up with his kingly throat,
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow
Her sparkling path beneath our bow,
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rosy and golden half
O' the sky, to overtake the sun

And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar
Those features: so I saw the last
Of Waring!"-You? Oh, never star
Was lost here but it rose afar!

Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar ?

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD.

I.

OH, to be in England now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning

AND THE WHITE-THROAT BUILDS, AND ALL THE SWALLOWS!

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows

And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
And will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melonflower!

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND.
THAT second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her bloodhounds through the countryside
Breathed hot and instant on my trace.-
I made six days a hiding-place

Of that dry green old aqueduct

Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,

Bright creeping through the moss they love:
-How long it seems since Charles was lost!
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed
The country in my very sight;.

And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out in red dismay
With signal fires; well, there I lay
Close covered o'er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress,
Thinking on Metternich our friend,
And Charles's miserable end,
And much beside, two days; the third,
Hunger o'ercame me when I heard
The peasants from the village go
To work among the maize; you know,
With us in Lombardy, they bring
Provisions packed on mules, a string,
With little bells that cheer their task,
And casks, and boughs on every cask
To keep the sun's heat from the wine;
These I let pass in jingling line,
And, close on them, dear, noisy crew,
The peasants from the village, too;
For at the very rear would troop
Their wives and sisters in a group
To help, I knew; when these had passed,
I threw my glove to strike the last,