Might have been happy: but what lot is pure ?
We took them all, till she was left alone

Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,

And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.

John. They found you out ?
James.

Not they
John.

Well-after all

What know we of the secret of a man?

His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are

sound,

That we should mimic this raw fool the world,

Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,

As ruthless as a baby with a worm,
As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To Pity-more from ignorance than will.

But put your best foot forward, or I fear

That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes

With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand
As

you shall see--three pyebalds and a roan.

Of city life! I was a sketcher then:

See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge,

Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built

When men knew how to build, upon a rock

With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock:

And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,

New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,

Here lived the Hills-a Tudor-chimnied bulk

-a

Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.

O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake

With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull

The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names,

Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern, Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks,

Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim,
Who read me rhymes elaborately good,
His own- I call’d him Crichton, for he seem'd
All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail.

And once I ask'd him of his early life,

And his first passion; and he answer'd me;

And well his words became him : was he not

A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence

Stored from all flowers ? Poet-like he spoke.

“My love for Nature is as old as I; But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that, And three rich sennights more, my love for her. My love for Nature and my love for her, Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew, Twin-sisters differently beautiful.

To some full music rose and sank the sun,

And some full music seem'd to move and change
With all the varied changes of the dark,
And either twilight and the day between;

For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again
Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet

To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe.':

Or this or something like to this he spoke. Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull,

“I take it, God made the woman for the man,

Ard for the good and increase of the world.

A pretty face is well, and this is well,

To have a dame indoors, that trims us up,

And keeps us tight; but these unreal ways
Seem but the theme of writers, and indeed

Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff.

I say, God made the woman for the man,
And for the good and increase of the world.”

"Parson,” said I, “you pitch the pipe too low :

But I have sudden touches, and can run

My faith beyond my practice into his :

Tho' if, in dancing after Letty Hill,

I do not hear the bells upon my cap,

I scarce have other music : yet say on.