Sailing towards wrecked mariners,
Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.
For each, as it came, brought soothing
tears,

And a loosening warmth, as each one lay

Sucking the sullen milk away.
About my frozen heart, did play,
And weaned it, oh how painfully!-
As they themselves were weaned each

one

From that sweet food,- even from the thirst

Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
Strange inmate of a living breast!
Which all that I had undergone
Of grief and shame, since she, who first
The gates of that dark refuge closed,
Came to my sight, and almost burst
The seal of that Lethean spring;
But these fair shadows interposed:
For all delights are shadows now!
And from my brain to my dull brow
The heavy tears gather and flow:
I cannot speak: Oh let me weep!

The tears which fell from her wan eyes
Glimmered among the moonlight dew:
Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs
Their echoes in the darkness threw.
When she grew calm, she thus did keep
The tenor of her tale:

He died:

I know not how: he was not old,
If age be numbered by its years:
But he was bowed and bent with fears,
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
Which, like fierce fever left him weak;
And his strait lip and bloated cheek
Were warped in spasms by hollow

sneers;

And selfish cares with barren plough,
Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
And foul and cruel thoughts, which
feed

Upon the withering life within,
Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
Whether his ill were death or sin
None knew, until he died indeed,

And then men owned they were the

same.

Seven days within my chamber lay That corse, and my babes made holiday : At last, I told them what is death: The eldest, with a kind of shame, Came to my knees with silent breath, And sate awe-stricken at my feet; And soon the others left their play, And sate there too. It is unmeet To shed on the brief flower of youth The withering knowledge of the grave; From me remorse then wrung that truth. I could not bear the joy which gave Too just a response to mine own. In vain. I dared not feign a groan; | And in their artless looks I saw, Between the mists of fear and awe, That my own thought was theirs; and they Expressed it not in words, but said, Each in its heart, how every day Will pass in happy work and play, Now he is dead and gone away.

After the funeral all our kin
Assembled, and the will was read.
My friend, I tell thee, even the dead
Have strength, their putrid shrouds
within,

To blast and torture. Those who live
Still fear the living, but a corse
Is merciless, and Power doth give
To such pale tyrants half the spoil
He rends from those who groan and toil,
Because they blush not with remorse
Among their crawling worms. Behold,
I have no child! my tale grows old
With grief, and staggers: let it reach
The limits of my feeble speech,
And languidly at length recline
On the brink of its own grave and mine.

Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty
Among the fallen on evil days:
'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,
And houseless Want in frozen ways
Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,
And, worse than all, that inward stain

sneers

tears

First like hot gall, then dry for ever!
And well thou knowest a mother never
Could doom her children to this ill,
And well he knew the same. The will
Imported, that if e'er again

I sought my children to behold,
Or in my birthplace did remain

told,

They should inherit nought: and he,
To whom next came their patrimony,
A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,
Aye watched me, as the will was read,
With eyes askance, which sought to see
The secrets of my agony;

And with close lips and anxious brow
Stood canvassing still to and fro
The chance of my resolve, and all
The dead man's caution just did call;
For in that killing lie 'twas said—
"She is adulterous, and doth hold
In secret that the Christian creed
Is false, and therefore is much need
That I should have a care to save
My children from eternal fire."
Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,
And therefore dared to be a liar!
In truth, the Indian on the pyre
Of her dead husband, half consumed,
As well might there be false, as I
To those abhorred embraces doomed,
Far worse than fire's brief agony.
As to the Christian creed, if true
Or false, I never questioned it:
I took it as the vulgar do:
Nor my vext soul had leisure yet
To doubt the things men say, or deem
That they are other than they seem.

All present who those crimes did hear,
In feigned or actual scorn and fear,
Men, women, children, slunk away,
Whispering with self-contented pride,
Which half suspects its own base lie.
I spoke to none, nor did abide,

To refuge her when weak and old.
With woe, which never sleeps or slept,
I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought-
But on yon alp, whose snowy head
'Mid the azure air is islanded,
(We see it o'er the flood of cloud,
Which sunrise from its eastern caves
Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,
Hung with its precipices proud,
From that gray stone where first we met)
There-now who knows the dead feel
nought?---

Should be my grave; for he who yet
Is my soul's soul, once said: ""Twere
sweet

'Mid stars and lightnings to abide, And winds and lulling snows, that beat With their soft flakes the mountain wide, When weary meteor lamps repose, And languid storms their pinions close: And all things strong and bright and pure,

And ever during, aye endure:

Who knows, if one were buried there,
But these things might our spirits make,
Amid the all-surrounding air,
Their own eternity partake?"
Then 'twas a wild and playful saying
At which I laughed, or seemed to laugh:
They were his words: now heed my
praying,

And let them be my epitaph.
Thy memory for a term may be
My monument. Wilt remember me?
I know thou wilt, and canst forgive
Whilst in this erring world to live
My soul disdained not, that I thought

Its lying forms were worthy aught And much less thee.

HELEN

O speak not so,
But come to me and pour thy woe
Into this heart, full though it be,
Aye overflowing with its own:

I thought that grief had severed me
From all beside who weep and groan;
Its likeness upon earth to be,
Its express image; but thou art
More wretched.

Sweet! we will not

part Henceforth, if death be not division; If so, the dead feel no contrition. But wilt thou hear, since last we parted All that has left me broken hearted?

Indignantly, but when he died
With him lay dead both hope and pride.

Alas! all hope is buried now.
But then men dreamed the agèd earth
Was labouring in that mighty birth,
Which many a poet and a sage
Has aye foreseen- the happy age

When truth and love shall dwell below
Among the works and ways of men;
Which on this world not power but will
Even now is wanting to fulfil.

Among mankind what thence befell
Of strife, how vain, is known too well;
When liberty's dear pæan fell
'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel,
Though of great wealth and lineage high,
Yet through those dungeon walls there

came

Thy thrilling light, O liberty!
And as the meteor's midnight flame
Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth
Flashed on his visionary youth,
And filled him, not with love, but faith,
And hope, and courage mute in death;
For love and life in him were twins,
Born at one birth: in every other
First life then love its course begins,
Though they be children of one mother;
And so through this dark world they
fleet

Divided, till in death they meet :
But he loved all things ever. Then
And stood at the throne of armed power
He past amid the strife of men,
Pleading for a world of woe:
Secure as one on a rock-built tower

they must make

to and fro,

'Mid the passions wild of human kind
He stood, like a spirit calming them;
For, it was said, his words could bind
Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
That torrent of unquiet dream,
Which mortals truth and reason deem,
But is revenge and fear and pride.
Joyous he was; and hope and peace
On all who heard him did abide,

Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
As where the evening star may walk
Along the brink of the gloomy seas,
Liquid mists of splendour quiver.
His very gestures touched to tears
The unpersuaded tyrant, never
So moved before: his presence stung
The torturers with their victim's pain,
And none knew how; and through
their ears,

The subtle witchcraft of his tongue
Unlocked the hearts of those who keep
Gold, the world's bond of slavery.
Men wondered, and some sneered to see
One sow what he could never reap :
For he is rich, they said, and young,
And might drink from the depths of
luxury.

If he seeks fame, fame never crowned
The champion of a trampled creed:
If he seeks power, power is enthroned
'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed
Which hungry wolves with praise and
spoil,

toil;

And such, there sitting, all may see.
What seeks he? All that others seek
He casts away, like a vile weed
Which the sea casts unreturningly.
That poor and hungry men should break
The laws which wreak them toil and

scorn,

We understand; but Lionel
We know is rich and nobly born.
So wondered they: yet all men loved
Young Lionel, though few approved ;
All but the priests, whose hatred fell
Like the unseen blight of a smiling day,
The withering honey dew, which clings
Under the bright green buds of May,
Whilst they unfold their emerald wings:
For he made verses wild and queer
On the strange creeds priests hold so
dear,

Because they bring them land and gold.
Of devils and saints and all such gear,
He made tales which whoso heard or
read

The wailing tribes of human kind
In scorn and famine. Fire and blood
Raged round the raging multitude,
To fields remote by tyrants sent
To be the scornèd instrument
With which they drag from mines of gore
The chains their slaves yet ever wore :
And in the streets men met each other,
And by old altars and in halls,
And smiled again at festivals.
But each man found in his heart's
brother

Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived,

The outworn creeds again believed,
And the same round anew began,
Which the weary world yet ever ran.

Many then wept, not tears, but gall Within their hearts, like drops which fall

Wasting the fountain-stone away.
And in that dark and evil day
Did all desires and thoughts, that claim

Men's care-ambition, friendship, fame, Love, hope, though hope was now despair

Indue the colours of this change,
As from the all-surrounding air

Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move.

I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire My liquid sleep: I woke, and did ap

prove

And so, my friend, it then befell
To many, most to Lionel,

Whose hope was like the life of youth
Within him, and when dead, became
A spirit of unresting flame,
Which goaded him in his distress
Over the world's vast wilderness.
Three years he left his native land,
And on the fourth, when he returned,

make

A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.

"I love, but I believe in love no more. I feel desire, but hope not. O, from sleep Most vainly must my weary brain implore

Its long lost flattery now: I wake to

weep,

And sit through the long day gnawing the core

With some disease of mind, and turned Into aught unlike Lionel.

On him, on whom, did he pause in

sleep,

Serenest smiles were wont to keep,
And, did he wake, a winged band
Of bright persuasions, which had fed
On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
Kept their swift pinions half outspread,
To do on men his least command;
On him, whom once 'twas paradise
Even to behold, now misery lay:
In his own heart 'twas merciless,
To all things else none may express
Its innocence and tenderness.

'Twas said that he had refuge sought
In love from his unquiet thought
In distant lands, and been deceived
By some strange show; for there were
found,

Blotted with tears as those relieved
By their own words are wont to do,
These mournful verses on the ground,
By all who read them blotted too.

"How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire:

I loved, and I believed that life was love.

How am I lost! on wings of swift desire

S

keep,

Since none in what I feel take pain or

pleasure,

To my own soul its self-consuming treasure."

He dwelt beside me near the sea:
And oft in evening did we meet,
When the waves, beneath the starlight,
flee

O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,
And talked our talk was sad and sweet,
Till slowly from his mien there passed
The desolation which it spoke;
And smiles, as when the lightning's
blast

Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,

The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,

But like flowers delicate and fair,
On its rent boughs,-again arrayed
His countenance in tender light:
His words grew subtile fire, which made
The air his hearers breathed delight:
His motions, like the winds, were free,
Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
Then fade away in circlets faint:
And winged hope, on which upborne
His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
Like some bright spirit newly born

Q