The prodigal soul from want and sorrow | Thou knowest how much a gentle soul home, Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too; Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand, Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue: When that day comes, O, may this hand grow cold, Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right; O, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight! This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier; Let worthier hands than these thy wreath intwine; Upon thy hearse 1 shed no useless tear,For us weep rather thou in calm di 1842. vine! TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD. ANOTHER star 'neath Time's horizon dropped, To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas; Another heart that beat for freedom stopped, What mournful words are these! is worth Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs, Let anthems peal for other dead, Rustling the bannered depth of minsterglooms With their exulting spread. His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone, No lichen shall its lines efface, He needs these few and simple lines alone To mark his resting-place : "Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to thee His claim to memory be obscure, O Love Divine, that claspest our tired If thou wouldst learn how truly great earth, And lullest it upon thy heart, was he, Go, ask it of the poor." lowing, And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, Warmed with the new wine of the year, Tells all in his lusty crowing! Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; Everything is happy now, Everything is upward striving; "T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, "T is the natural way of living: Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes the season's youth, And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping of his vow? PART FIRST. I. "My golden spurs now bring to me, And bring to me my richest mail, For to-morrow I go over land and sea 'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, And never its gates might opened be, She could not scale the chilly wall, Though around it for leagues her pa vilions tall Stretched left and right, Green and broad was every tent, The leper raised not the gold from the dust: "Better to me the poor man's crust, Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives only the worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; But he who gives but a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That_thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite, The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in dark. ness before." PRELUDE TO PART SECOND. Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak It carried a shiver everywhere The little brook heard it and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars: Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, Lest the happy model should be lost, Had been mimicked in fairy masonry By the elfin builders of the frost. Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; A single crow on the tree-top bleak From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, As if her veins were sapless and old, For a last dim look at earth and sea. II. Through the deep gulf of the chimney Sir Launfal turned from his own hard wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer. But the wind without was eager and sharp, Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, And he sat in the gateway and saw all night The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, Through the window-slits of the castle old, Build out its piers of ruddy light PART SECOND. I. THERE was never a leaf on bush or tree, The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; The river was dumb and could not speak, For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun; |