And then some other question'd if she came
From foreign lands, and still she did not speak.
Another, if the boy were hers: but she
To all their queries answer'd not a word,
Which made the amazement more, till one of them
Said, shuddering, "Her spectre !" But his friend
Replied, in half a whisper, "Not at least
The spectre that will speak if spoken to.
Terrible pity, if one so beautiful

Prove, as I almost dread to find her, dumb!"

But Julian, sitting by her, answer'd all: "She is but dumb, because in her you see That faithful servant whom we spoke about, Obedient to her second master now;

And then rose up, and with him all his guests
Once more as by enchantment; all but he,
Lionel, who fain had risen, but fell again,
And sat as if in chains-to whom he said:

"Take my free gift, my cousin, for your wife; And were it only for the giver's sake, And tho' she seem so like the one you lost, Yet cast her not away so suddenly,

Lest there be none left here to bring her back: I leave this land forever." Here he ceased.

Then taking his dear lady by one hand, And bearing on one arm the noble babe, He slowly brought them both to Lionel.

So bound to me by common love and loss
What! shall I bind him more? in his behalf,
Shall I exceed the Persian, giving him

That which of all things is the dearest to me,
Not only showing? and he himself pronounced
That my rich gift is wholly mine to give.

"Now all be dumb, and promise all of you Not to break in on what I say by word Or whisper, while I show you all my heart." And then began the story of his love As here to-day, but not so wordilyThe passionate moment would not suffer thatPast thro' his visions to the burial; thence Down to this last strange hour in his own hall;

Rushed each at each with a cry, that rather seem'd
For some new death than for a life renew'd;
At this the very babe began to wail;

At once they turned, and caught and brought him in
To their charmed circle, and, half killing him
With kisses, round him closed and claspt again.
But Lionel, when at last he freed himself
From wife and child, and lifted up a face

All over glowing with the sun of life,

And love, and boundless thanks - the sight of this
So frighted our good friend, that turning to me
And saying, "It is over: let us go"-
There were our horses ready at the doors-
We bade them no farewell, but mounting these,
He past forever from his native land;

And I with him, my Julian, back to mine.

TIMBUCTOO.*

"Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies

A mystic city, goal of high emprise."-CHAPMAN,

I STOOD upon the Mountain which o'erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval

Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun
Had fall'n below th' Atlantic, and above

The silent heavens were blench'd with faery light,
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,

As those which starred the night o' the elder world? Or is the rumor of thy Timbuctoo

A dream as frail as those of ancient time?"

A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! the bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and looked into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs,

So that with hasty motion I did veil

My vision with both hands, and saw before me

blue

Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars

Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.
I gazed upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infix'd
The limits of his prowess, pillars high
Long time erased from earth: even as the Sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.
And much I mused on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on earth
Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;
But had their being in the heart of man

As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then

A center'd glory-circled memory,

Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves

Have buried deep, and thou of later name,

Imperial Eldorado, roof'd with gold:

Shadows to which, despite all shocks of change,

All on-set of capricious accident,

Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun.
Girt with a zone of flashing gold beneath
His breast, and compassed round about his brow
With triple arch of everchanging bows,
And circled with the glory of living light
And alternation of all hues, he stood.

"O child of man, why muse you here alone
Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old
Which filled the earth with passing loveliness,
Which flung strange music on the howling winds,
And odors rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogged with dull mortality:
Open thine eyes and see."

I looked, but not

Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With its exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great Angel Mind which looked from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes.

I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit
With supernatural excitation bound

As when in some great city where the walls

Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces thronged,
Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retired
At midnight, in the lone Acropolis,
Before the awful genius of the place

Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while
Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith
Her phantasy informs them.

Where are ye,
Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?
Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glocms,
The blossoming abysses of your hills?
Your flowering capes, and your gold-sanded bays
Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?
Where are the infinite ways, which, seraph-trod,
Wound through your great Elysian solitudes,
Whose lowest deeps were, as with visible love,
Filled with Divine effulgence, circumfused,
Flowing between the clear and polished stems,
And ever circling round their emerald cones
In coronals and glories, such as gird

The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?
For nothing visible, they say, had birth

In that blest ground, but it was played about
With its peculiar glory. Then I raised

My voice and cried, "Wide Afric, doth thy Sun

Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair

A Poem which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the Cambridge

With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seemed to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Each failing sense,

As with a momentary flash of light,
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagined depth
And harmony of planet-girded suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arched the wan sapphire. Nay-the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts,
Involving and embracing each with each,
Rapid as fire, inextricably linked,
Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riven rapt brain; as when in some large lake
From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse
Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope
At slender interval, the level calm

Is ridged with restless and increasing spheres

lege.

Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong

Than its precursor, till the eye in vain Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade Dappled with hollow and alternate rise of interpenetrated arc, would scan Definite round.

I know not if I shape These things with accurate similitude From visible objects, for but dimly now, Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream, The memory of that mental excellence Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine The indecision of my present mind With its past clearness, yet it seems to me As even then the torrent of quick thought Absorbed me from the nature of itself

With its own fleetness. Where is he, that borne
Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shalop to the fleeting edge,
And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws which regulate
The fierceness of the bounding element?

My thoughts which long had grovelled in the slime
Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house
Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of Spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of star-lit wings, which burn
Fan-like and fibred with intensest bloom;
Even so my thoughts erewhile so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength

To bear them upward through the trackless fields Of undefined existence far and free.

Then first within the South methought I saw

A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile

Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement

On battlement, and the Imperial height
Of canopy o'ercanopied.

Behind

In diamond light up spring the dazzling peaks
Of Pyramids, as far surpassing earth's

As heaven than earth is fairer. Each aloft

Upon his narrowed eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances

Of either, showering circular abyss

Of radiance. But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillared front of burnished gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were

Or metal more ethereal, and beneath

Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan,
Through length of porch and valve and boundless
hall,

Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitude of multitudes
That ministered around it-if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Staggered beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

With ministering hand he raised me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment filled

My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,

In accents of majestic melody,

Like a swoln river's gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:
"There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man; and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable;

And step by step to scale that mighty stair
Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds
Of glory of heaven. With earliest light of Spring,
And in the glow of sallow Summertide,

And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs
The headland with inviolate white snow,

I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood,
-Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
Betraying the close kisses of the wind-
And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: they with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel

My fullness: I have filled thy lips with power.

I have raised thee nigher to the spheres of heaven,
Man's first, last home: and thou with ravished sense
Listenest the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years. I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth;

So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms,

And cool impleachéd twilights. Child of man,
Seest thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
Forth issuing from the darkness, windeth through
The argent streets o' the city, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous domes,
Her gardens frequent with the stately palm,
Her pagods hung with music of sweet bells,
Her obelisks of rangéd chrysolite,

Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring

To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my city in their depths.

Oh city: oh latest throne! where I was raised
To be a mystery of loveliness

Unto all eyes, the time is well-nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery; soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-walled, barbarian settlements.
How changed from this fair city!"

Thus far the Spirit:
Then parted heaven-ward on the wing: and I
Was left alone on Calpe, and the moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

"Be ye perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect."

ELEGIACS.

The little bird pipeth-"why? why?" In the summer woods when the sun falls low,

dimmed in the gloming:

Thro' the blackstemmed pines only the far river shines.

Creeping through blossomy rushes and bowers of roseblowing bushes,

Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;

Decply the turtle coos; shrilly the owlet halloos; Winds creep: dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:

Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and

mourn.

Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth :

Twin peaks shadowed with pine slope to the dark hyaline.

Lowthroned Hesper is stayéd between the two peaks; but the Naiad

Throbbing in wild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.

The ancient poetess singeth that Hesperus all things bringeth,

Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.

Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.

False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?

THE "HOW" AND THE “WHY.”

I AM any man's suitor,

If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,

In eternity no past.

We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die, Who will riddle me the how and the why?

The bulrush nods unto its brother.
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? what do they there?

Why two and two make four? why round is not square?

Why the rock stands still, and the light clouds fly? Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows

sigh?

Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?

Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?

Whether we sleep, or whether we die?

How you are you? why I am I?

Who will riddle me the how aud the why?

The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow: But what is the meaning of then and now!

I feel there is something; but how and what?

I know there is somewhat: but what and why?

I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.

And stares in his face, and shouts "how? how?" And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight, And chants "how? how?" the whole of the night.

Why the life goes when the blood is spilt ?

What the life is? where the soul may lie? Why a church is with a steeple built: And a house with a chimney-pot? Who will riddle me the how and the what? Who will riddle me the what and the why?

SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS

OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND NOT IN
UNITY WITH ITSELF.

On God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt thy brow,
Wounding thy soul. That even now,
In this extremest misery

Of ignorance, I should require
A sign and if a bolt of fire

Would rive the slumbrous summer noon

While I do pray to thee alone,

Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my free will
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me, but thou,
And faith in thee? Men pass me by:
Christians with happy countenances--
And children all seem full of thee!
And women smile with saintlike glances
Like thine own mother's when she bowed
Above thee, on that happy morn
When angels spake to men aloud,
And thou and peace to earth were born.
Goodwill to me as well as all-
-I one of them: my brothers they:
Brothers in Christ-a world of peace
And confidence, day after day;
And trust and hope till things should cease,
And then one Heaven receive us all.

How sweet to have a common faith!
To hold a common scorn of death!
And at a burial to hear

The creaking cords which wound and eat Into my human heart, whene'er

Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear,

With hopeful grief, were passing sweet!

A grief not uninformed, and dull,
Hearted with hope, of hope as full
As is the blood with life, or night
And a dark cloud with rich moonlight.
To stand beside a grave, and sec
The red small atoms wherewith we