Would darken, as he cursed his credu lousness.

And that one unctious mouth which lured him, rogue,

To buy strange shares in some Peruvian mine,

Now seaward-bound for health they gain'd a coast,

All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning

cave,

At close of day; slept, woke, and went the next,

The Sabbath, pious variers from the church,

To chapel where a heated pulpiteer, Not preaching simple Christ to simple men,

Announced the coming doom, and fulminated

Against the scarlet woman and her creed:

For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd

"Thus, thus with violence," ev'n as if he held

The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself

Were that great Angel; "Thus with violence

Shall Babylon be cast into the sea ; Then comes the close." The gentlehearted wife

Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world; He at his own; but when the wordy

And that the woman walk'd upon the brink:

I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it:

'It came,' she said, by working in the mines: '

O then to ask her of my shares, I thought:

And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head.

And then the motion of the current ceased,

And there was rolling thunder; and we reach'd

A mountain, like a wall of burrs and thorns;

But she with her strong feet up the steep hill

Trod out a path: I follow'd; and at top

She pointed seaward; there a fleet of glass,

That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me, Sailing along before a gloomy cloud That not one moment ceased to thun

them off;

An idle signal, for the brittle fleet (I thought I could have died to save it) near'd,

Touch'd, clink'd, and clash'd, and vanish'd, and I woke,

I heard the clash so clearly. Now I see My dream was Life; the woman honest Work;

And my poor venture but a fleet of glass

Wreck'd on a reef of visionary gold."

"Nay," said the kindly wife to comfort him,

"You raised your arm, you tumbled down and broke

The glass with little Margaret's medi

cine in it;

And, breaking that, you made and broke your dream:

A trifle makes a dream, a trifle breaks."

"No trifle," groan'd the husband; 66 yesterday

I met him suddenly in the street, and ask'd

That which I ask'd the woman in my

dream.

Among the honest shoulders of the crowd,

Read rascal in the motions of his back, And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee."

"Was he so bound, poor soul?" sai.l the good wife;

"So are we all: but do not call him, love,

Before you prove him, rogue, and proved, forgive.

His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend

Wrongs himself more, and ever bears

about

To spread the Word by which himself had thriven.'

How like you this old satire ?"

"Nay," she said, "I loathe it: he had never kindly heart, Nor ever cared to better his own kind, Who first wrote satire, with no pity in it. But will you hear my dream, for I had

one

That altogether went to music? Still It awed me."

Then she told it, having dream'd Of that same coast.