CVII.

With evening came the banquet and the wine;
The conversazione-the duet

Attuned by voices more or less divine

(My heart or head aches with the memory yet). The four Miss Rawbolds in a glee would shine; But the two youngest loved more to be set Down to the harp-because to Music's charms They added graceful necks, white hands and arms.

CVIII.

Sometimes a dance (though rarely on field days,
For then the gentlemen were rather tired)
Displayed some sylph-like figures in its maze;
Then there was small-talk ready when required;
Flirtation-but decorous; the mere praise

Of charms that should or should not be admired.
The hunters fought their fox-hunt o'er again,
And then retreated soberly-at ten.

CIX.

The politicians, in a nook apart,

Discussed the World, and settled all the spheres:
The wits watched every loophole for their art,
To introduce a bon-mot head and ears;
Small is the rest of those who would be smart,

A moment's good thing may have cost them years
Before they find an hour to introduce it;

And then, even then, some bore may make them lose it.

angler merely thinks of his dish of fish; he has no leisure to take his eyes from off the streams, and a single bite is worth to him more than all the scenery around. Besides, some fish bite best on a rainy day. The whale, the shark, and the tunny fishery have somewhat of noble and perilous in them; even net fishing, trawling, etc., are more humane and useful. But angling!-no angler can be a good man.

"One of the best men I ever knew, -as humane, delicate-minded, generous, and excellent a creature as any in the world,-was an angler: true, he angled with painted flies, and would have been incapable of the extravagancies of I. Walton."

The above addition was made by a friend in reading over the MS."Audi alteram partem."-I leave it to counter-balance my own observation.

CX.

But all was gentle and aristocratic

In this our party; polished, smooth, and cold, As Phidian forms cut out of marble Attic.

There now are no Squire Westerns, as of old; And our Sophias are not so emphatic,

But fair as then, or fairer to behold:

We have no accomplished blackguards, like Tom Jones, But gentlemen in stays, as stiff as stones.

CXI.

They separated at an early hour;

That is, ere midnight—which is London's noon:
But in the country ladies seek their bower
A little earlier than the waning moon.

Peace to the slumbers of each folded flower

May the rose call back its true colour soon!
Good hours of fair cheeks are the fairest tinters,
And lower the price of rouge—at least some winters.1

1. B. Fy. 19th 1823.-[MS.]

CANTO THE FOURTEENTH.

I.

1

IF from great Nature's or our own abyss 1

Of Thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps Mankind might find the path they miss-
But then 't would spoil much good philosophy.
One system eats another up, and this

Much as old Saturn ate his progeny ;
For when his pious consort gave him stones
In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones.

II.

But System doth reverse the Titan's breakfast,
And eats her parents, albeit the digestion
Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast,
After due search, your faith to any question?
Look back o'er ages, ere unto the stake fast

You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one.
Nothing more true than not to trust your senses;
And yet what are your other evidences?

III.

For me, I know nought; nothing I deny,
Admit-reject-contemn: and what know you,
Except perhaps that you were born to die?
And both may after all turn out untrue.

"Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be."
Tennyson's In Memoriam.]

An age may come, Font of Eternity,

When nothing shall be either old or new.

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of Life is passed in sleep.

IV.

A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay !
The very Suicide that pays his debt
At once without instalments (an old way
Of paying debts, which creditors regret),
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,
Less from disgust of Life than dread of Death.

V.

"T is round him-near him-here-there-everywhereAnd there's a courage which grows out of fear, Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare

The worst to know it :-when the mountains rear
Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there
You look down o'er the precipice, and drear
The gulf of rock yawns,-you can't gaze a minute,
Without an awful wish to plunge within it.

VI.

'T is true, you don't-but, pale and struck with terror,
Retire: but look into your past impression !
And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror
Of your own thoughts, in all their self-confession,
The lurking bias,' be it truth or error,

To the unknown; a secret prepossession,

To plunge with all your fears-but where? You know

not,

And that's the reason why you do—or do not.

VII.

But what's this to the purpose? you will say.
Gent. reader, nothing; a mere speculation,

1. [With this open mind with regard to the future, compare Charles Kingsley's “reverent curiosity" (Letters and Memoirs, etc., 1883, p. 349).]

For which my sole excuse is 't is my way;
Sometimes with and sometimes without occasion,
I write what's uppermost, without delay;

This narrative is not meant for narration,

But a mere airy and fantastic basis,

To build up common things with common places.

VIII.

You know, or don't know, that great Bacon saith, "Fling up a straw, 't will show the way the wind blows;" 1

And such a straw, borne on by human breath,

Is Poesy, according as the Mind glows;

A paper kite which flies 'twixt Life and Death,

A shadow which the onward Soul behind throws:
And mine 's a bubble, not blown up for praise,
But just to play with, as an infant plays.

IX.

The World is all before me 2-or behind;
For I have seen a portion of that same,
And quite enough for me to keep in mind ;-
Of passions, too, I have proved enough to blame,
To the great pleasure of our friends, Mankind,
Who like to mix some slight alloy with fame;
For I was rather famous in my time,

Until I fairly knocked it up with rhyme.

X.

I have brought this world about my ears, and eke
The other; that 's to say, the Clergy-who
Upon my head have bid their thunders break
In pious libels by no means a few.
And yet I can't help scribbling once a week,
Tiring old readers, nor discovering new.
In Youth I wrote because my mind was full,
And now because I feel it growing dull.

1. ["We usually try which way the wind bloweth, by casting up grass or chaff, or such light things into the air."-Bacon's Natural History, No. 820, Works, 1740, iii. 168.]

2.

["The World was all before them."

Paradise Lost, bk. xii. line 646.]