With a loyal people shouting a battle cry,

Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly

Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death.

4.

Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;

And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd!
Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims,
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire ;

For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

5.

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind, We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble

still,

And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind; It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill; I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd

THE BROOK;

ΑΝ IDYL.

HERE, by this brook, we parted; I to the East

And he for Italy - too late too late :

One whom the strong sons of the world despise ;
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent for cent;
Nor could he understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.

O had he lived! In our school-books we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourish'd then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd
On such a time as goes before the leaf,

When all the wood stands in a mist of green,
And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved,
For which, in branding summers of Bengal,
Or ev'n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air,
I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,

To me that loved him; for "O brook," he says,

66

"O babbling brook," says Edmund in his rhyme,

"Whence come you?" and the brook, why not? replies.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

'Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out, Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge, It has more ivy; there the river; and there Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

'But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird; Old Philip; all about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

'O darling Katie Willows, his one child!
A maiden of our century, yet most meek;
A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse;
Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.

'Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn, Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed, James Willows, of one name and heart with her. For here I came, twenty years back, the week Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry — crost,

66

run

Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon,
And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate,
Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge,
Stuck; and he clamor'd from a casement,
To Katie somewhere in the walks below,
"Run, Katie !" Katie never ran: she moved
To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers,
A little flutter'd, with her eyelids down,
Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.

'What was it? less of sentiment than sense
Had Katie; not illiterate; neither one
Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,
And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philanthropies,
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

"

'She told me. She and James had quarrell'd. Why? What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause ; James had no cause: but when I prest the cause, I learnt that James had flickering jealousies Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said. But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine, And sketching with her slender pointed foot Some figure like a wizard's pentagram On garden gravel, let my query pass Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask’d If James were coming. "Coming every day," She answer'd, "ever longing to explain,

But evermore her father came across

With some long-winded tale, and broke him short; And James departed vext with him and her.”

How could I help her?

"Would I

was it wrong?"

(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace

Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)