throughout So I and some went out to these. we climb'd The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, The slope to Vivian-place, and turn With which we banter'd little Lilia ing saw The happy valleys, half in light, and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; Gray halls alone among their massive groves; Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. "Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member's elder son, "and there! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year To follow a shout rose again, and made The long line of the approaching rookery swerve From the broad elms, and shook the branches of the deer From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs Give up their parks some dozen times a year To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried, I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away. I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, II. For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground: III. Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail’d, And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, IV. 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, . Villany somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all. VI. 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? VII. 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. VIII. Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age-why not? I have neither hope nor trust; Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust. IX. Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine, X. And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, XI. And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villanous centre-bits XII. When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, XIII. For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, XIV. What! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood? XV. Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek, Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the graveWrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave. XVI. I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main. XVII. Workmen up at the Hall!. they are coming back from abroad; XVIII. Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes, XIX. What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse. II. Long have I sigh'd for a calm: God grant I may find it at last! Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose, From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen. III. Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek, |