English

I.

Praise Beauty! So say I — although the seas
Of loss of being choke the effort down,
And universes armed against me frown,
I stand upright and speak the thing I please,
Not bending feeble supplication knees
To any petty bully of the town,
Be he philosopher or sage or clown,
Whether his glances petrify or freeze.

Praise Beauty! and if Beauty loves me not,
And never on my brow may cool be laid
Aught sweeter than the sorry cypress shade,
Nor pointed tips of bay-leaves touch the spot

If on my shoulders never shall be seen
The puissant purple fluttering of the wings
Wherewith the poet beateth as he sings
The high celestial atmospheric sheen,
If I may never say the thing I mean,
And only half an ear my audience brings,
And misdirected are my ambitious slings,
And no Goliath blazing eyes between
My stone hits full — at least she lets me die,
Queen Beauty, as my gentle brother died
Who lies on the Italian mountain-side,
In one long passion of an outpoured sigh
That seemeth tremblingly to wonder why

The loves of men as yet are icy floes,
Imperfect, shapeless, in tumultuous motion,
Rolled aimlessly about the mad mid-ocean:
With shocks that shatter and with blinding blows,
Heart-pangs of agony, convulsive throes,
Abandonment of being, death-devotion,
A death that strangles every previous notion,
Harmoniously the glittering ice-berg rose.

I stand beyond the future, and I see
Rise passion-pinnacled the crystal palace,
Awful with unimagined purity;
A frozen rainbow, an inverted chalice,

My love is waiting in the past,
And I, I cannot go to her:
My eyes are closed, my lips are fast;
Between us comes a shadow vast
And interposes arms of air.

Ah, love, if I could get to you,
If I could break the bands of life,
And bring by death your face in view,
And things that used to be renew,
How I would kiss the keen-edged knife!

How I would run to meet King Death,
And fall upon his icy breast,
And hug each single word he saith, —
If only we might mingle breath,

I .

This is the song she sang to me ,
Upon the grass, beneath the tree,
That summer cloudless diamond day
We were together when I lay
Content her peerless face to see.

" Sleep, love, and let the ages run their weary
Wild way as they have hastened heretofore,
But do not thou be busy any more
With social schemes, and systems dusty, dreary, —

Last night I dreamed a dream of a kiss
And awoke the better for fancied bliss.
I dreamed of a maiden dear to me
Whom alas! but seldom in fact I see;
I had said " good-bye " to the rest I know,
And, waiting alone in a room below,
I found my darling, my love, my queen,
She and I only, no soul between.
And we clasped hands as lovers should do,
And thrills of lovers the palms passed through,
And she leaned forward — I hardly dare
To talk to the paper of gifts so rare;
She leaned forward — again I repeat

Now the buttercups of May
Twinkle fainter day by day,
And the stalks of flowering clover
Make the June fields red all over, —

Now the cuckoo, like a bell,
Modulates a sad farewell,
And the nightingale, perceiving
Love's warm tokens, ends her grieving, —

Let us twain arise and go
Where the freshening breezes blow,
Where the granite giant moulders
In his circling cairn of boulders!

Just a year ago to-day,
Friend, we climbed the self-same way,
Through the village-green, and higher

During the ferment occasioned by the Popish Bill of Toleration

Removed, thank God! from fierce contentions;
Unknown to parties or C ONVENTIONS ;
Alike averse to rage and folly,
And foe to gloomy melancholy;
Amid confusion, war, and zeal,
Accept these lines from Bard M ACNEILL .

When morning comes, my breakfast down,
Composed and wrapped in flannel gown,
Till Andrew comes my brains to muddy,
I dedicate some hours to study,—
Behold me, then, in elbow chair,
Turn o'er a leaf with serious air;

If Love should faint, and half decline
Below the fit meridian sign,
And shorn of all his golden dress,
His royal state and loveliness,
Be no more worth a heart like thine,
Let not thy nobler passion pine,
But, with a charity divine,
Let Memory ply her soft address
If Love should faint;
And oh! this laggard heart of mine,
Like some halt pilgrim stirred with wine,
Shall ache in pity's dear distress,
Until the balms of thy caress
To work the finished cure combine,
If Love should faint.

Here, in cool grot and mossy cell,
We rural fays and fairies dwell;
Though rarely seen by mortal eye,
When the pale moon, ascending high,
Darts through yon lines her quivering beams,
We frisk it near these crystal streams.

Her beams, reflected from the wave,
Afford the light our revels crave;
The turf, with daisies broider'd o'er,
Exceeds, we wot, the Parian floor;
Nor yet for artful strains we call,
But listen to the water's fall.

Would you then taste our tranquil scene,
Be sure your bosoms be serene;