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MAUD.

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

'Death.'

2.

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was

found,

His who had given me life-O 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

vast 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

thro' the air.

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.

5.

Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we

villains all.

are

Nct 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.

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 on

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

sword.

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