man,

Steadily from the outside ring,
Then notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sate by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,

(Laughed while he sate by the river!) "The only way since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed."

Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,

Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and the
pain,

For the reed that grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.

COWPER'S GRAVE.

Ir is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying.

It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying: Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence languish ! Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.

O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing! O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging! O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace,

and died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory,

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration;

Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken;

Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken.

With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him,

With meekness that is gratefulness to
God whose heaven hath won him,--
Who suffered once the madness-cloud to
His own love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along where
breath and bird could find him;

And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses

As hills have language for, and stars harmonious influences!

The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number; And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.

Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses, Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses:

The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing, Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving.

But though in blindness he remained unconscious of that guiding, And things provided came without the He testified this solemn truth, while sweet sense of providing, Nor man nor nature satisfy whom only frenzy desolated,

God created!

Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses; That turns his fevered eyes around, "My mother! where's my mother?". As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other!

The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him; Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, which closed in death to save him!

Thus? O, not thus! no type of earth can image that awaking,

Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking,

Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted;

But felt those eyes alone, and knew "My Saviour! not deserted!"

Deserted! who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested

Upon the Victim's hidden face, no love was manifested?

What frantic hands outstretched have

e'er the atoning drops averted, What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate from his own essence rather:

And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father; Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath shaken,

It went up single, echoless, "My God, I am forsaken!"

It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation,

That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation; That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition, And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision!

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE

THACKERAY.

[1811-1863.]

AT THE CHURCH GATE. ALTHOUGH I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover;

ALFRED TENNYSON.

And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait,

Expectant of her.

The minster bell tolls out
Above the city's rout,

And noise and humming;
They've hushed the minster bell:
The organ 'gins to swell;
She's coming, she's coming!

My lady comes at last, Timid and stepping fast, And hastening hither, With modest eyes downcast, She comes,

195

she's here, she's past, May Heaven go with her!

Kneel undisturbed, fair saint!
Pour out your praise or plaint,
Meekly and duly;

I will not enter there,
To sully your pure prayer
With thoughts unruly.

But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute
Like outcast spirits who wait
And see through heaven's gate
Angels within it.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

MARIANA.

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all,
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the peach to the garden-wall.
The broken sheds looked sad and strange,
Unlifted was the clinking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary;
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow; The cock sung out an hour ere light;

From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change,

In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
And I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall

A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small,

The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All silver-green with gnarléd bark,
For leagues no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding gray,

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,

And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,

The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, "I am very dreary,

He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were dead!"

"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK!” BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!