Undisturb'd with their secret within them. For who
To the heart of the flowret can follow the dew ?
O'er the silence, unseen,
The footsteps of sentinel angels, between
The dark land and deep sky were moving. You heard Pass'd from earth up to heaven the happy watch-word Which brighten'd the stars as amongst them it fell From earth's heart, which it eased . . . 'All is well! all is well!'
THE Poets pour wine; and, when 'tis new, all decry it,
But, once let it be old, every trifler must try it.
And Polonius, who praises no wine that's not Massic,
Complains of my verse, that my verse is not classic.
And Miss Tilburina, who sings, and not badly,
My earlier verses, sighs Commonplace sadly!
As for you, O Polonius, you vex me but slightly;
But you, Tilburina, your eyes beam so brightly
In despite of their languishing looks, on my word,
That to see you look cross I can scarcely afford.
Yes! the silliest woman that smiles on a bard
Better far than Longinus himself can reward
The appeal to her feelings of which she
And the critics I most care to please are the Loves.
Alas, friend! what boots it, a stone at his head
And a brass on his breast,--when a man is once dead?
Ay! were fame the sole guerdon, poor guerdon were
Theirs who, stripping life bare, stand forth models for
The reformer's?—a creed by posterity learnt
A century after its author is burnt!
—a laurel that hides the bald brow
It hath blighted! The painter's ?-ask Raphael now Which Madonna's authentic! The statesman's ?-a
For parties to blacken, or boys to declaim!
The soldier's ?—three lines on the cold Abbey pave
Were this all the life of the wise and the brave meant, All it ends in, thrice better, Neæra, it were Unregarded to sport with thine odorous hair, Untroubled to lie at thy feet in the shade
And be loved, while the roses yet bloom overhead, Than to sit by the lone hearth, and think the long
A severe, sad, blind schoolmaster, envied for nought
Save the name of John Milton! For all men, indeed,
Who in some choice edition may graciously read,
With fair illustration, and erudite note,
The song which the poet in bitterness wrote,
Beat the poet, and notably beat him, in this--
The joy of the genius is theirs, whilst they miss
The grief of the man: Tasso's song-not his madness!
Dante's dreams-not his waking to exile and sadness!
Milton's music-but not Milton's blindness! ...
Yet rise,
My Milton, and answer, with those noble eyes
Which the glory of heaven hath blinded to earth!
Say-the life, in the living it, savours of worth:
That the deed, in the doing it, reaches its aim:
That the fact has a value apart from the fame :
That a deeper delight, in the mere labour, pays
Scorn of lesser delights, and laborious days:
And Shakespeare, though all Shakespeare's writings were lost,
And his genius, though never a trace of it cross'd
Posterity's path, not the less would have dwelt
In the isle with Miranda, with Hamlet have felt
All that Hamlet hath utter'd, and haply where, pure
On its death-bed, wrong'd Love lay, have moan'd with
the Moor!
When Lord Alfred that night to the salon return'd
He found it deserted. The lamp dimly burn'd
As though half out of humour to find itself there
Forced to light for no purpose a room that was bare.
He sat down by the window alone. Never yet
Did the heavens a lovelier evening beget
Since Latona's bright childbed that bore the new moon!
The dark world lay still, in a sort of sweet swoon,
Wide open to heaven; and the stars on the stream
Were trembling like eyes that are loved on the dream
Of a lover; and all things were glad and at rest
Save the unquiet heart in his own troubled breast.
He endeavour'd to think-an unwonted employment,
Which appear'd to afford him no sort of enjoyment.
• Withdraw into yourself. But, if peace you seek there
Your reception, beforehand, be sure to prepare for,'
Wrote the tutor of Nero; who wrote, be it said,
Better far than he acted-but peace to the dead!
He bled for his pupil: what more could he do?
But Lord Alfred, when into himself he withdrew,
Found all there in disorder. For more than an hour
He sat with his head droop'd like some stubborn flower
Beaten down by the rush of the rain-with such force
Did the thick, gushing thoughts hold upon him the
Of their sudden descent, rapid, rushing, and dim,
From the cloud that had darken'd the evening for him.
At one moment he rose rose and open'd the door,
And wistfully look'd down the dark corridor
Toward the room of Matilda. Anon, with the sigh
Of an incomplete purpose, he crept quietly
Back again to his place in a sort of submission
To doubt, and return'd to his former position-
That loose fall of the arms, that dull droop of the face,
And the eye vaguely fix'd on impalpable space.
The dream, which till then had been lulling his life,
As once Circe the winds, had seal'd thought; and his
And his home for a time he had quite, like Ulysses, Forgotten; but now o'er the troubled abysses
Of the spirit within him, æolian, forth leapt
To their freedom new-found, and resistlessly swept
All his heart into tumult, the thoughts which had been
Long pent up in their mystic recesses unseen.
How long he thus sat there, himself he knew not,
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