I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Maud Its lips in the field above. are dabbled with

'i' blood-red heath, s 1: The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror

of blood, And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers

Death.'

2

For there in the ghastly pit long since - a body

was found, His whò' had given me life-0 father

' ! : 0 God! was it well ?

:: :: Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted

into the ground: There yet lies the rock that fell with him when

he fell.

3 :!!!!! .itsb virii Did he fling himself down? who knows for

vast speculation had fail'd; ..

1,

Maud And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever

wann'd with despair, And out he walk'd when the wind like a

broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands

drove, thro’ the air, :

-4

! 1
I remember the time, for the roots of my

hair
were stirr'd
By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by

a whisper'd fright, And my pulses closed their..gates with a shock

...oh my heart, as I heard The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the

shuddering night.

5
Villainy somewhere! whose ? One

says, we
are villains all.
Not he: his honest fame should at least by me

be maintained : But that old man, now lord of the broad estate

and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left

us flaccid and drain'd. ."s! ; :..:: ::

6 Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ?

we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand Tusting for all that is

got its own;

::

And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it Maud

better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war' on

his own hearthstone ?
; !,

7
But these are the days of advancë, the works

of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a

tradesman's ware or his word ? Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and

that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing

the sword.

8 Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age—why not? I have neither

hope nor trust; May make my heart as a millstone, set my face

as a flint, Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows?

we are ashes and dust.

9 Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the

days gone by, When the poor are hovellid and hustled to

gether, each sex, like swine. When only the ledger lives, and when only not

all men lie; Peace in her vineyard - yes ! --but a company

forges the wine.

Andis the.ivitriol, madness): Alushes: up in the ruffian's head,

11:49 cm Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the

trampled wife, And chalk, and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,

11:: :: 1 : i:) And the spirit of murder, works in the very

means of life, '!! Min

1

10 And Sleep must lie down arm’d, for the villain

ous centre-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the

moonless nights, While another is cheating the sick of a few last

gasps, as he sits To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson

lights.

12

on

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for

a burial fee, And: Timour-Mammon grins a pile of

children's bones, . . ! Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by

land and by sea, War, with :: a thousand battles, and shaking a