He came with the babe-faced lord;

Heap'd on her terms of disgrace,

And while she wept, and I strove to be cool,

He fiercely gave me the lie,

Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,

And he struck me, madman, over the face,

Struck me before the languid fool,

Who was gaping and grinning by:

Struck for himself an evil stroke;

Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe;
For front to front in an hour we stood,

And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke
From the red-ribb'd hollow behind the wood,

And thunder'd up into Heaven the Christless code,

That must have life for a blow.

Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow.

Was it he lay there with a fading eye?

'The fault was mine,' he whisper'd, 'fly!'

Then glided out of the joyous wood

The ghastly Wraith of one that I know;

And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry,

A cry for a brother's blood:

It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till

I die.

2.

Is it gone? my pulses beat

What was it? a lying trick of the brain?

Yet I thought I saw her stand,

A shadow there at my feet,

High over the shadowy land.

It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain,

When they should burst and drown with deluging

storms

The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust,

The little hearts that know not how to forgive:

Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just,

Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous

worms,

That sting each other here in the dust;

We are not worthy to live.

II.

1.

SEE what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot,

Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,

How exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design!

2.

What is it? a learned man

Could give it a clumsy name.

Let him name it who can,

The beauty would be the same.

3.

The tiny cell is forlorn,

Void of the little living will

That made it stir on the shore.

Did he stand at the diamond door

Of his house in a rainbow frill?

Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,

A golden foot or a fairy horn

Thro' his dim water-world?

Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,

Small, but a work divine,

Frail, but of force to withstand,

Year upon year, the shock

Of cataract seas that snap

The three-decker's oaken spine

Athwart the ledges of rock,

Here on the Breton strand!

5.

Breton, not Briton; here

Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast

Of ancient fable and fear

Plagued with a flitting to and fro,

A disease, a hard mechanic ghost

That never came from on high

Nor ever arose from below,

But only moves with the moving eye, Flying along the land and the main

Why should it look like Maud?

Am I to be overawed

By what I cannot but know

Is a juggle born of the brain?