At last, because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets.

As the earth Plunges in fury, when the internal fires Have reach'd and prick'd her heart, and, throwing flat

The marts and temples, the triumphal gates

And towers of observation, clears herself
To elemental freedom - thus, my soul,
At poetry's divine first finger touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surpris'd,
Convicted of the great eternities
Before two worlds.

What's this, Aurora Leigh,
You write so of the poets, and not laugh?
Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark,
Exaggerators of the sun and moon,
And soothsayers in a tea-cup?

I write so
Of the only truth-tellers, now left to God, -
The only speakers of essential truth,
Oppos'd to relative, comparative,
And temporal truths; the only holders by
His sun-skirts, through conventional gray
glooms;

The only teachers who instruct mankind,
From just a shadow on a charnel wall,
To find man's veritable stature out,
Erect, sublime, the measure of a man,
And that's the measure of an angel, says
The apostle.

THE FERMENT OF NEW WINE

And so, like most young poets, in a flush
Of individual life, I pour'd myself
Along the veins of others, and achiev'd
Mere lifeless imitations of live verse,
And made the living answer for the dead,
Profaning nature. "Touch not, do not taste,
Nor handle," - we're too legal, who write
young:

We beat the phorminx till we hurt our thumbs,

As if still ignorant of counterpoint;
We call the Muse . . . "O Muse, benignant
Muse!"

As if we had seen her purple-braided head With the eyes in it start between the

boughs

As often as a stag's. What make-believe, With so much earnest! what effete results, From virile efforts! what cold wire-drawn

odes,

From such white heats! bucolics, where the cows

Would scare the writer if they splash'd the mud

In lashing off the flies, - didactics, driven
Against the heels of what the master said;
And counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumps
A babe might blow between two straining
cheeks

Of bubbled rose, to make his mother laugh;
And elegiac griefs, and songs of love,
Like cast-off nosegays pick'd up on the
road,

The worse for being warm: all these things, writ

On happy mornings, with a morning heart, That leaps for love, is active for resolve, Weak for art only. Oft, the ancient forms Will thrill, indeed, in carrying the young blood.

The wine-skins, now and then, a little warp'd,

Will crack even, as the new wine gurgles

in.

For ever ;) by that strong excepted soul,
I count it strange, and hard to understand,
That nearly all young poets should write
old;

That Pope was sexagenarian at sixteen,
And beardless Byron academical,

And so with others. It may be, perhaps,
Such have not settled long and deep enough
In trance, to attain to clairvoyance,— and
still

The memory mixes with the vision, spoils, And works it turbid.

Or perhaps, again In order to discover the Muse-Sphinx, The melancholy desert must sweep round, Behind you, as before.

For me, I wrote False poems, like the rest, and thought them true,

Because myself was true in writing them. I, peradventure, have writ true ones since With less complacence.

ENGLAND

Whoever lives true life, will love true love.
I learn'd to love that England. Very oft,
Before the day was born, or otherwise
Through secret windings of the afternoons,
I threw my hunters off and plunged myself
Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag
Will take the waters, shivering with the
fear

And passion of the course. And when, at last

Escap❜d, so many a green slope built on slope

Betwixt me and the enemy's house behind, I dar'd to rest, or wander,-like a rest Made sweeter for the step upon the grass, And view the ground's most gentle dimplement,

(As if God's finger touch'd but did not press In making England!) such an up and down Of verdure, nothing too much up or down, A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb;

Such nooks of valleys, lin'd with orchises, Fed full of noises by invisible streams; And open pastures, where you scarcely tell White daisies from white dew, at inter

vals The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing-out Self-pois'd upon their prodigy of shade, I thought my father's land was worthy too Of being my Shakespeare's.

.. Breaking into voluble ecstacy, I flatter'd all the beauteous country round, As poets use . . . the skies, the clouds, the fields,

The happy violets hiding from the roads The primroses run down to, carrying gold,

The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out

Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths

'Twixt dripping ash-boughs, - hedgerows all alive

With birds and gnats and large white but

terflies

Which look as if the May-flower had sought life

O my God, my God, O supreme Artist, who as sole return For all the cosmic wonder of Thy work, Demandest of us just a word. . . a name, "My Father!". thou hast knowledge, only thou,

How dreary 't is for women to sit still
On winter nights by solitary fires,
And hear the nations praising them far off,
Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of
love,

Our very heart of passionate womanhood,
Which could not beat so in the verse with-

Apprais'd by love, associated with love, While we sit loveless! is it hard, you think? At least 't is mournful. Fame, indeed, 't was said,

Means simply love. It was a man said that. And then there's love and love: the love of all

(To risk, in turn, a woman's paradox,)
Is but a small thing to the love of one.
You bid a hungry child be satisfied
With a heritage of many corn-fields: nay,
He says he's hungry, he would rather

have

Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls,
Which rul'st for evermore both day and
night!
I am happy."

I flung closer to his breast, As sword that, after battle, flings to sheathe;

And, in that hurtle of united souls,
The mystic motions, which in common moods
Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,
And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,
And all the starry turbulence of worlds
Swing round us in their audient circles, till
If that same golden moon were overhead
Or if beneath our feet, we did not know.

THE SLEEP

Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward into souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is

For gift or grace surpassing this
"He giveth His beloved, sleep"?

What would we give to our beloved?
The hero's heart to be unmoved,
The poet's star-tun'd harp to sweep,
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
The monarch's crown to light the brows?
He giveth His beloved, sleep.

What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith all undisproved,

A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake:
He giveth His beloved, sleep.

"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say
Who have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep:
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
He giveth His beloved, sleep.

O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices !
O delved gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth His beloved, sleep.

His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap:
More softly than the dew is shed,

Within that province far away

Went plodding home a weary boor : A streak of light before him lay, Fall'n through a half-shut stable door Across his path. He pass'd for nought Told what was going on within; How keen the stars! his only thought; The air how calm and cold and thin, In the solemn midnight Centuries ago!

O strange indifference! - low and high Drows'd over common joys and cares : The earth was still- but knew not why; The world was listening- unawares. How calm a moment may precede

One that shall thrill the world for ever!

To that still moment none would heed, Man's doom was link'd, no more to

FROM "A CHRISTMAS HYMN" (NEW STYLE: 1875)

To murder one so young!

To still that wonder-teeming tongue Ere half the fulness of its mellow'd glory

Had flash'd in mild sheet-lightnings forth! Who knows, had that majestic Life grown hoary,

Long vers'd in all man's weakness, woes and worth,

What beams had pierced the clouds that veil this voyage of care!

Not Zeus, nor Baal's throne,

Nor Osiris alone,

But Doubt, or worse assurance of Despair, Or Superstition's brood that blends the tiger with the hare.

Who knows but we had caught Some hint from pure impassion'd Thought,

How Matter's links and Spirit's, that still fly us,

Can break and still leave Spirit free; How Will can act o'ermaster'd by no bias; Why Good omnipotent lets Evil be; What balm heals beauteous Nature's universal flaw;

And how, below, above,

It is Love, and only Love

Bids keen Sensation glut Destruction's

maw

Love rolls this groaning Sea of Life on pitiless rocks of Law !

ABOUT Glenkindie and his man
A false ballant hath long been writ;
Some bootless loon had written it,

Upon a bootless plan :

But I have found the true at last,
And here it is, so hold it fast!
'T was made by a kind damosel
Who lov'd him and his man right well.

Glenkindie, best of harpers, came
Unbidden to our town;
And he was sad, and sad to see,

For love had worn him down.

It was love, as all men know,

The love that brought him down,

The hopeless love for the King's daughter,

The dove that heir'd a crown.

Now he wore not that collar of gold,
His dress was forest green;

His wondrous fair and rich mantel
Had lost its silvery sheen.

But still by his side walk'd Rafe, his boy,
In goodly cramoisie :

Of all the boys that ever I saw
The goodliest boy was he.