On the blossom'd gable-ends/data1
At the head of the village street,
But b'm99s 3
And thus a delicate spark
Of glowing and growing light
Thro' the livelong hours of the dark
Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams,
Ready to burst in a colour'd flame
Till at last when the morning came
In a cloud, it faded, and seems
But an ashen-gray delight.
Ah, what shall I be at fifty
Should Nature keep me alive,
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five? ban ghu að
Yet, if she were not a cheat, of st of If Maud were all that she seem'd, di 1A And her smile were all that I dream'd, 08 Then the world d were not so bitter
But a smile could make it sweet wa
What if tho' her eye seem'd full
Of a kind intent to me,
What if that dandy-despot, he, la baA
That jewell'd mass of millinery, wol 10
That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bulld
eat of musk and of insolence,
Her brother, from whom I keep aloof,
Who wants the finer
politic sense
To mask, tho' but in his own behoof,"
With a glassy smile his brutal scorn
What if he had told her yestermorn
How prettily for his own sweet sake
A face of tenderness might be feign'd,
And a moist mirage in desert eyes,
That so, when the rotten hustings shake
In another month to his brazen lies, 10
A wretched vote may be gain'd. pool!
de sw nadw our colgantes eT *en nedle s ni on neil ned oved o
otory s an awet ba
For a raven ever croaks, at my side,
Keep watch and ward, keep watch and ward,
Or thou wilt prove their too
tool.
Yea, too, myself from myself I guard, p
For often a man's own angry pride
Is cap and bells for a fool. I godW
Perhaps the smile and tender tone
Came out of her pitying womanhood,
For am I not, am I not, here alone
So many a summer since she died,
My mother, who was so gentle and good?
Living alone in an empty house,
Here half-hid in the gleaming wood,
Where I hear the dead at midday moan,
And the shrieking rush of the wainscot
And my own sad name in corners cried,
When the shiver of dancing leaves is thrown
About its echoing chambers wide,
Till a morbid hate and horror have grown
Of a world in which I have hardly mixt,
And a morbid eating lichen fixt
On a heart half turn'd to stone.
O heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught
By that you swore to withstand?
For what was it else within me wrought
But, I fear, the new strong wine of love,
That made my tongue so stammer and trip
When I saw the treasured splendour, her hand,
Come sliding out of her sacred glove,
And the sunlight broke from her lip?
I have play'd with her when a child;
She remembers it now we meet.
Ay well, well, well, I may be beguiled
By some coquettish deceit.
Yet, if she were not a cheat,
If Maud were all that she seem'd,
And her smile had all that I dream'd,
Then the world were not so bitter
But a smile could make it sweet.
ry Did I hear it half in a doze
Long since, I know not where?
Did I dream it an hour ago,
When asleep in this arm-chair?n{
Men were drinking together,
Drinking and talking of me;
Well, if it prove a girl, the boy
Will have plenty: so let it be. and
Is it an echo of somethingo yan den Juf but Read with a boy's delight,
Viziers nodding together on naibila snu?
In some Arabian night?
Strange, that I hear two men,
Somewhere, talking of me;
Well, if it prove a girl, my boy
Will have plenty so let it be.'
She came to the village church,
And sat by a pillar alone;
An angel watching an urn
Wept over her, carved in stone;
And once, but once, she lifted her eyes,
And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blush'd
To find they were met by my own;
And suddenly, sweetly, my heart beat stronger
And thicker, until I heard no longer
The snowy-banded, dilettante,
Delicate-handed priest intone;
And thought, is it pride, and mused and sigh'd
No surely, now it cannot be pride.'
I was walking a mile,
More than a mile from the shore, back
The sun look'd out with a smile
Betwixt the cloud and the moor
And riding at set of day
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