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 hair 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 says, we 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 his own hearthstone ? 7 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 hundred thrones. :.1. |