M ARY , Margaret, Anne, Eliza,
Silent maidens of the mill,
Hear a culprit's sad confession,
Whom your frowns would almost kill.

You were plying heads and elbows,
Puzzling all your cyphering wit,
Fidgeting in twenty postures,
Polls were scratch'd, and nails were bit.

I, meantime, ungrateful varlet,
Quite forgetting all my vows,
(If I could, I'd blush like scarlet,)
Was gone up to Craycombe house.

Now so sad the pangs of conscience,
I am wasted, bark and pith,
Like a wither'd branch of elder,
(So says Mrs Stafford Smith).

P RAISEST Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best;
'T is the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest;
On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be,
Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stone
That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known,
Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew;
If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

To keep a simple rule from day to day,
While days build up the uneventful year,
To think on God and hold God's mother dear,
To be discreet, to heed and to obey,

To do the work required without display,
To make the utmost of the duty near,
To covet only to excel by mere
Minute performance in a simple way;

Angel of purity, an angel's face,
A gracefulness by nature graced with grace
The brightness of the white soul pierces through;
A splendour of example fit to raise
Men's thoughts to God, and to excite to praise

Q UELQU'UNE des voix,
—Est-elle angélique!—
Il s'agit de moi,
Vertement s'explique:

Ces mille questions
Qui se ramifient
N'amènent, au fond,
Qu'ivresse et folie.

Reconnais ce tour
Si gai, si facile;
C'est tout onde et flore:
Et c'est ta famille!

Et puis une voix,
—Est-elle angélique!—
Il s'agit de moi,
Vertement s'explique;

Et chante à l'instant,
En sœur des haleines;
D'un ton allemand,
Mais ardente et pleine:

Le monde est vicieux,
Tu dis? tu t'étonnes?
Vis! et laisse au feu
L'obscure infortune...

Love setteth me a-burning,
When my new spouse had won me;
My piteous state discerning,
Had set his ring upon me:
The conqueror's prize returning,
Love's knife had all undone me,
All my heart broke with yearning.
Love setteth me a-burning.

My heart was broke asunder:
Earthward my body sprawling,
The arrow of Love's wonder
From out the crossbow falling,
Like to a shaft of thunder
Made war of peace, enthralling
My life for passion's plunder.
Love setteth me a-burning.

I die of very sweetness.
Yet be thou not astounded.

Hail! once again, dear natal Seats
Ye plodding Cits, & slipp'ry Streets,
Better, a gentle fall, from you,
Than live excluded of the View,
Retir'd amidst the dismal Shades,
And Cows—& Chicks, & chattering Maids,
Who criticise with publick wonder,
Their undesigning Neighbour's blunder,
Blunders, in Cities, pass along,
Unnotic'd, with the blundering Throng,
But here, each little Slip is thrown
In public View—except their own.
Ye criticising Dames adieu,
And fellow Cits—all hail to you!
The very Dust—on which you tread

Midst golden Streets of Commerce
Why shines the blaze of Arms?
The human hive is stirring,
What cause its peace alarms?

From desk and counter thronging,
From civic feasts and halls,
The Londoners come pouring,
For hark! their country calls.

The thunder of the battle
To them is new and strange;
They're used to the hurry of traffick
And buzz of the crowded 'Change.

They seek not pay or plunder,
They pray that wars may cease;
Their joy is not in slaughter,
For they are sons of peace.

Yet, Frenchmen, dread the onset

Whence is this awe, by stillness spread
O'er the world-fretted soul?
Wave rear'd on wave its godless head,
While my keen bark, by breezes sped,
Dash'd fiercely through the ocean bed,
And chafed towards its goal.

But now there reigns so deep a rest,
That I could almost weep.
Sinner! thou hast in this rare guest
Of Adam's peace a figure blest;
'Tis Eden seen, though not possess'd,
Which cherub-flames still keep.

When Watkin shifts the burden of his cares
And all that irked him in his bound employ,
Once more become a vagrom-hearted boy,
He moves to roundelays and jocund airs;
Loitering with dusty harvestmen, he shares
Old ale and sunshine; or, with maids half-coy,
Pays court to shadows; fools himself with joy,
Shaking a leg at junketings and fairs.
Sometimes, returning down his breezy miles,
A snatch of wayward April he will bring,
Piping the daffodilly that beguiles
Foolhardy lovers in the surge of spring
And then once more by lanes and field-path stiles

The panther leaped to the front of his lair,
And stood with a foot up, and snuffed the air;
He quivered his tongue from his panting mouth,
And looked with a yearning towards the south;
For he scented afar in the coming breeze,
News of the gums and their blossoming trees;
And out of Armenia that same day,
He and his race came bounding away.
Over the mountains and down to the plains
Like Bacchus's panthers with wine in their veins,
They came where the woods wept odorous rains;
And there, with a quivering, every beast
Fell to his old Pamphylian feast.