I.

There, there, poor dog, my faithful friend,
Pay you no heed unto my sorrow
But feast to-day while yet you may, —
Who knows but we shall starve to-morrow!

II.

" Give us a tune, " the foemen cried,
In one of their profane caprices;
I bade them " No " — they frowned, and, lo!
They dashed this innocent in pieces!

III.

This fiddle was the village pride —
The mirth of every fête enhancing;

ON READING HIS “SONGS OF FAIR WEATHER.”

Lyrist of woods and waters, loving best
 Pure Nature's alterant charms, thou art to me
 A new Theocritus, whose gaze can see
New joys in that wide Sicily of thy West!
Yet now no longer thou companionest
 Meek flocks on dewy lawns, but wieldest free
 The bow of dead Diana, fallen to thee
By some divine and beautiful bequest!

Thy words, that often are leafage to the sense,
 Have strength like bark and grain of sturdy boughs,
  And rhythm as of a wind that sweeps and veers,

It was a sad, mysterious joy,
The poet gave his buried friend,
That to his country's native flower
His mouldering corse should beauty lend.

Grief, to sublime of passion wrought,
A Guardian at thy tomb shall stand,
“And, from thine ashes may be made
The violet of thy native land.”

It were a thought of bitterness,
In height and flush of life, to know
That, from our forms exanimate
Some baneful poison plant should grow.

Thus, happier he to whose lone grave
Nor Love, nor Fame, its tribute gives,

What footstep but has wandered free and far
Amid that Castle of Sleep whose walls were planned
By no terrestrial craft, no human hand,
With towers that point to no recorded star?
Here sorrows, memories and remorses are,
Roaming the long dim rooms or galleries grand;
Here the lost friends our spirits yet demand
Gleam through mysterious doorways left ajar.

But of the uncounted throngs that ever win
The halls where slumber's dusky witcheries rule,
Who, after wakening, may reveal aright
By what phantasmal means he entered in? —

Strange that in your dark-dappled sanguine flower
The sculpturesque repose can still endure
Of that celestial lily, wrought so pure
It lives as chastity's white type this hour!
By what mysterious art, what baleful power,
Did you, Diana of all blooms, allure
From Nature's mood this Maenad vestiture,
And mock with gaudy tints your taintless dower?

Nay, long ago, I dream, through some warm dell
Of Asian lands a wearied tiger stole
Where you, in pale bud, felt your first dews cling;
And while he slept beneath you, it befell

Tradition's favoring verdict would express
In you all duteous thrift and toil extreme,
Against gray wintry dearth, while summers beam,
Hoarding with zeal your honeyed bounteousness.
And yet in drowsy reverie I confess
That booming now where flowery vistas gleam,
Among these jubilant garden-paths you seem
The murmurous incarnations of idlesse!

Nay, more, you are like those pages, clad of old
By pampering lords in velvet and in gold,
Who bore sweet amorous words, with cautious airs,
To delicate ladies in rich robes aglow,

I

I move through a land like a land of dream,
Where the things that are, and that shall be, seem
Wov'n into one by a hand of air,
And the Good looks piercingly down through the Fair!
No form material is here unmated;
Here blows no bud, no scent can rise,
No song ring forth, unconsecrated
To meaning or model in Paradise!
Fallen, like man, is elsewhere man's earth;
Human, at best, in her sadness and mirth;
Or if she aspires after something greater,

Mine eyes, dissolue your globes in brinie streames,
And with a cloud of sorrow dimme your sight;
The sunne's bright sunne is set, of late whose beames
Gaue luster to your day, day to your night.
My voyce, now deafen earth with anatheames,
Roare foorth a challenge in the world's despight,
Tell that disguised griefe is her delight,
That life a slumber is of fearfull dreames.
And, woefull minde, abhorre to thinke of ioy,
My senses all now comfortlesse you hide,
Accept no object but of black annoy,

O woefull life! life, no, but liuing death,
Fraile boat of christall in a rockie sea,
A sport expos'd to Fortune's stormie breath,
Which, kept with paine, with terrour doth decay:
The false delights, true woes thou dost bequeath,
Mine all-appalled minde doe so affraye,
That I those enuie who are laid in earth,
And pittie them that runne thy dreadfull waye.
When did mine eyes behold one chearefull morne?
When had my tossed soule one night of rest?
When did not hatefull starres my projects scorne?
O! now I finde for mortalls what is best;

O fate! conspir'd to powre your worst on mee,
O rigorous rigour, which doth all confound!
With cruell hands yee haue cut down the tree,
And fruit and flowre dispersed on the ground.
A litle space of earth my loue doth bound;
That beautie which did raise it to the skie,
Turn'd in neglected dust, now low doth lie,
Deafe to my plaints, and senslesse of my wound.
Ah! did I liue for this, ah! did I loue?
For this and was it shee did so excell?
That ere shee well life's sweet-sowre ioyes did proue,
Shee should, too deare a guest, with horrour dwell?