It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.

O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across the sea;

So dear a life your arms enfold
Whose crying is a cry for gold:

Yet here to-night in this dark city,
When ill and weary, alone and cold,

I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry,
This nurseling of another sky

Still in the little book you lent me,

And where you tenderly laid it by:

And I forgot the clouded Forth,

The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth, The bitter east, the misty summer

And gray metropolis of the North.

Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain,

Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,

Perchance, to dream you still beside me,

My fancy fled to the South again.

TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.

COME, when no graver cares employ,
God-father, come and see your boy:

Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.

For, being of that honest few,

Who give the Fiend himself his due,

Should eighty-thousand college-councils

6

Thunder Anathema,' friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite

At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome

(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,

I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine:

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand;

TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.

157

Where, if below the milky steep

Some ship of battle slowly creep,

And on thro' zones of light and shadow

Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

We might discuss the Northern sin

Which made a selfish war begin;

Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;

Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:

Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;

Till you should turn to dearer matters,
Dear to the man that is dear to God;

How best to help the slender store,
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,

Valour and charity more and more.