List; not a sigh!-though fall'n on evil days,
With darkness compassed round *—those sightless eyes
Need not the sun; nightly he sees the rays,

Nightly he walks the bowers of Paradise.
High, pale, still, voiceless, motionless, alone,
Death-like in calm as monumental stone,
Lifting his looks into the farthest skies,
He sat and as when some tempestuous day
Dies in the hush of the majestic eve,

So on his brow-where grief has passed away-
Reigns that dread stillness grief alone can give.

[From "Milton," Part iv.-"We regard this poem as one of great beauty. Difficult as was the subject, the author's treatment of it has been eminently successful, while the melody and exquisite construction of the verse are in accordance with the sentiments it conveys."-(Blackwood's Magazine.) "Neither in the fancy nor the form of this 'graceful poem,'": says The Quarterly Review, "is there aught for the ripeness of age, with all its gathered cultivation, refinement, and experience, to blush at or disown. The central figure, one of the grandest in our literary annals, is sketched with a loving reverence; the thread of romance is justifiably amplified, but not strained beyond the limits of the probable, whilst the accessories are all in perfect keeping and subordination. The result of the whole is a noble picture of the bard of Comus, in his youth, manhood, and age."]

"THE GRAND DESIRE WHICH EVER FOR THE DISTANT SIGHS AND MUST PERFORCE ASPIRE."-LYTTON.

"THAT GRAND AMBITION, WHEN BOYHOOD'S HEART SWELLS UP TO THE SUBLIME."-LORD LYTTON.

"FOR IF THOU LOV'ST TRULY THOU CANST NOT DISSEVER THE GRAVE FROM THE

OH, STRONG AS THE EAGLE, OH, MILD AS THE DOVE,-(LORD LYTTON)

THE DESIRE OF FAME.

Do I lament that I have seen the bays

Denied my own, not worthier brows above,—
Foes quick to scoff, and friends afraid to praise, —
More active hate than love?

Do I lament that roseate youth had flown
In the hard labour grudged its niggard meed,
And cull from far and juster lands alone
Few flowers from many a seed?

No! for whoever with an earnest soul,
Strives for some end from this low world afar,
Still upward travels, though he miss the goal,
And strays-but towards a star.

Better than Fame is still the wish for Fame,
The constant training for a glorious strife:
The athlete nurtured for the Olympian game
Gains strength at least for life.

The wish for Fame is faith in holy things
That soothe the life, and shall outlive the tomb,-
A reverent listening for some angel wings
That cower above the gloom.

To gladden the earth with beauty, or men's lives
To serve with action, or their souls with truth,---
These are the ends for which the hope survives
The ignobler bursts of youth.

273

HOW LIKE AND HOW UNLIKE, O DEATH AND O LOVE!"-LORD LYTTON.

AND IF, NOTHING HOPING, THOU GAZEST ABOVE, IN DEATH THOU BEHOLDEST THE ASPECT OF LOVE."-LORD LYTTON.

"LOSE WHAT THOU LOVEST, AND THE LIFE OF OLD IS FROM THINE EYES, O SOUL, NO MORE CONCEALED ;-(LORD LYTTON)

"HAPPY THE MAN IN WHOM WITH EVERY YEAR-(LORD LYTTON)

If vain for others, not in vain for me,—

Who builds an altar, let him worship there;
What needs the crowd? though love the shrine may be,

Not hallowed less the prayer.
Enow if haply, in the after days,

When by the altar sleeps the funeral stone,
When gone the mists our human passions raise,

And Truth is seen alone:

When causeless Hate can wound its prey no more,

And fawns its late repentance o'er the dead,
If gentle footsteps from some kindlier shore
Pause by the narrow bed.

Or if you children, whose young sounds of glee
Float to mine ear the evening gales along,
Recall some echo, in their years to be,
Of not all-perished song!

Taking some spark to glad the earth, or light
The student lamp, from now neglected fires,-

And one sad memory in the sons requite
What-I forgive the sires.

[These lines may be compared with Byron's verses, written on the occasion of his thirty-sixth birth-day. They resemble them in tone and metri

cal form.]

THE POPE AND THE BEGGAR.

"The desires the chains, the deeds the wings."
SAW a soul beside the clay it wore,

When reigned that clay the Hierarch Sire of Rome;
A hundred priests stood ranged the bier before,
Within St. Peter's dome.

NEW LIFE IS BORN, RE-BAPTIZED IN THE PAST."-LORD LYTTON.

LOOK BEYOND DEATH, AND THROUGH THY TEARS BEHOLD THERE, WHERE LOVE GOES, THINE ANCIENT HOME."-LYTTON.

"LIKE LIGHT, CONNECTING STAR AND STAR, DOES THOUGHT, TRANSMITTED, RUN-(LYTTON)

HOW SWEET THE DAYS WE YEARN FOR, TILL FULFILLED!"- -LYTTON.

THE POPE AND THE BEGGAR.

And all was incense, solemn dirge, and prayer,
And still the soul stood sullen in the clay:
"O soul, why to thy heavenly native air

Dost thou not soar away?"

And the soul answered, with a ghastly frown,
"In what life loved, death finds its weal or woe;
Slave to the clay's desires, they drag me down
To the clay's rot below!"

275

It spoke, and where Rome's purple ones reposed
They lowered the corpse; and downwards from the sun
Both soul and body sunk―and darkness closed

Over that two-fold one!

Without the church, unburied on the ground,

There lay in rags a beggar newly dead;
Above the dust no holy priest was found,
No pious prayer was said!

But round the corpse unnumbered lovely things,
Hovering unseen by the proud passers-by,

Formed, upward, upward, upward, with bright wings,
A ladder to the sky!

"And what are ye, O beautiful?"

"We are,"

Answered the cherubim, "his deeds!"
Then his soul, sparkling sudden as a star,
Flashed from his mortal weeds,

And lightly passing, tier on tier, along
The gradual pinions, vanished like a smile!
Just then, swept by the solemn-visaged throng
From the apostle's pile.

IN THE ETERNAL SHALL WE SEIZE THE FLEETING NOW?"-LYTTON.

RAYS THAT TO EARTH THE NEAREST ARE, HAVE LONGEST LEFT THE SUN."-LORD LYTTON.

"MAPPED ARE THE KNOWN DOMINIONS OF THE THOUGHT,-(LYTTON)

"Knew ye this beggar?" "Knew! a wretch who died
Under the curse of our good Pope, now gone!"
“Loved ye that Pope?" "He was our Church's pride,
And Rome's most holy son!"

Then did I muse, such are men's judgments; blind
In scorn or love! In what unguessed-of things,
Desires or deeds—do rags and purple find
The fetters or the wings!

[From "Corn-Flowers," book ii.]

"AS IN CREATION LIVES THE FATHER SOUL, SO LIVES THE SOUL HE BREATHED AMIDST THE CLAY;

THE HOLLOW OAK.

OLLOW is the oak beside the sunny waters drooping;
Hither came, when I was young, happy children
trooping;

Dream I now, or hear I now—far, their mellow whooping!

Gay below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances,
There I lay beguiling time-when I lived romances;
Dropping pebbles in the wave, fancies into fancies;—
Farther, where the river glides by the wooded cover,
Where the merlin singeth low, with the hawk above her,
Came a foot and shone a smile-woe is me, the lover!
Leaflets on the hollow oak still as greenly quiver,
Musical amid the reeds murmurs on the river;
But the footsteps and the smile?-woe is me for ever!

[From "Corn-Flowers," book ii., in "Collected Poetical Works."]

BUT WHO SHALL FIND THE PALACE OF THE SOUL?"-LORD LYTTON.

ROUND IT

THE THOUGHTS ON STARRY AXLES roll, lifE FLOWS AND EBBS AWAY."-LORD LYTTON.