And talk'd old matters over; who was dead,

Who married, who was like to be, and how
The races went, and who would rent the hall :
Then touch'd upon the game, how scarce it was
This season; glancing thence, discuss'd the farm,
The fourfield system, and the price of grain;
And struck upon the corn-laws, where we split,
And came again together on the king

With heated faces; till he laugh'd aloud;
And, while the blackbird on the pippin hung

To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang"Oh! who would fight and march and counter

march,

Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field,

And shovell'd up into a bloody trench

Where no one knows? but let me live my life.

"Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk, Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd stool,

Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints

Are full of chalk? but let me live my life.

"Who'd serve the state? for if I carved my name Upon the cliffs that guard my native land,

I might as well have traced it in the sands;

The sea wastes all: but let me live my life. "Oh! who would love? I woo'd a woman once,

But she was sharper than an eastern wind,

And all my heart turn'd from her, as a thorn

Turns from the sea; but let me live my life."

He sang his song, and I replied with mine: I found it in a volume, all of songs,

Knock'd down to me, when old Sir Robert's pride, His books-the more the pity, so I said— .

Came to the hammer here in March--and this

I set the words, and added names I knew.

66

'Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me:

Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister's arm,

And sleeping, haply dream her arm is mine.

"Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia's arm;

Emilia, fairer than all else but thou,

For thou art fairer than all else that is.

Sleep, breathing love and trust against her lip:

I go to-night: I come to-morrow morn.

"I go, but I return: I would I were

The pilot of the darkness and the dream.
Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of me."
So sang we each to either, Francis Hale,
The farmer's son, who lived across the bay,
My friend; and I, that having wherewithal,
And in the fallow leisure of my life

A rolling stone of here and everywhere,
Did what I would; but ere the night we rose
And saunter'd home beneath a moon, that, just

In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf
Twilights of airy silver, till we reach'd

The limit of the hills; and as we sank

From rock to rock upon the glooming quay, The town was hush'd beneath us : lower dowr

The bay was oily calm; the harbour-buoy,

Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm,
With one green sparkle ever and anon

Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart,

Above the river, and, but a month ago,

The whole hill-side was redder than a fox.