From the 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.

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,
So much the gathering darkness charm'd: we sat
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,

Perchance upon the future man: the walls

Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd,

And gradually the powers of the night,

That range above the region of the wind,

Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up

Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds,

Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

Last little Lilia, rising quietly,

Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph

From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.

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.'

II.

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.

III.

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.

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,

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.

V.

Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are

villains all.

Not 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.

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 trades

man'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;