Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, The rhythms so rathe and delicate, And broke, beneath the sombre weight VII. What warm protection dost thou bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane! Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted upon her natal morn By him with fire, by her with dreams, Than all the grape's bewildering juice, Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech That close against rude day's offences, VII. Thou holdest not the master key gates Of Past and Future: not for common fates Do they wide open fling, And, with a far-heard ring, Even as I sing, it turns to pain, And with vain tears my eyelids throb and swell: Enough; I come not of the race That hawk their sorrows in the marketplace. Earth stops the ears I best had loved to please; Then break, ye untuned chords, or rust in peace! As if a white-haired actor should come back Some midnight to the theatre void and black, And there rehearse his youth's great part Mid thin applauses of the ghosts, So seems it now: ye crowd upon my heart, And I bow down in silence, shadowy hosts! FANCY'S CASUISTRY. How struggles with the tempest's swells Swing back their willing valves melo- As tower to tower confusedly tells diously; News of disaster. And when the storm o'erwhelms the WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND shore, I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er, The light revolves amid the roar So still and saintly, TROUT. FIT for an Abbot of Theleme, Now large and near, now more and The Pope himself to see in dream more Withdrawing faintly. This, too, despairing sailors see While through the dark the shuddering sea Gropes for the ships. And is it right, this mood of mind Before his lenten vision gleam, He lies there, the sogdologer! His precious flanks with stars besprent, His health! be Luck his fast ally! I see him trace the wayward brook To The events in line of battle go; I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend, (0, stew him, Ann, as 't were your friend, In death's dark arches, And through the sod hears throbbing slow The muffled marches. O Duty, am I dead to thee That drifts tow'rd Silence? And are those visioned shores I see My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, With amorous solicitude!) I see him step with caution due, Grave as in church, for who plies you, From all our common stock o' sins. The unerring fly I see him cast, That as a rose-leaf falls as soft, Looks on our tragi-comedies, |