M A UD.

I.

1.

I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little

wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood

red heath,

The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of

blood,

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

2.

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was

found,

His who had given me life-0 father! O 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.

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a

great speculation had fail'd,

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

4.

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 on

my

heart as I heard

The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the

shuddering night.

te

5.

Villainy somewhere! whose ? One says, we are

villains all.

Not he: his honest fame should at least by me

be maintain'd:

But that old man, now lord of the broad estate

and the Hall,

Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us

6.

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? we

have made them a curse,

Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is

not its own;

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

or worse

Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war

his own hearthstone ?

7.

But these are the days of advance, 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