chariot agitated,

Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineäments, Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January, Roar'd as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,

Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory. So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries

Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand, Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,

Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously, Then her pulses at the clamoring of her eneiny fainted away.

Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.

Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies. Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary. Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodúne.

IN QUANTITY.

MILTON.
Alcaies.

O MIGHTY-MOUTH'D inventor of harmonies,

O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England,

Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,

Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean

Kings to the roar of an angel onset-Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring. And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India' Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods

Whisper in odorous heights of even.
Hendeeasyllabics.

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All iu quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears
him.

Lost I fall unawares before the people, Waking laughter in indolent reviewers. Should I founder awhile without a

tumble

Thro' this metrification of Catullus, They should speak to me not without a welcome,

All that chorus of indolent reviewers. Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,

So fantastical is the dainty metre. Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me

Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers. Oblatant Magazines, regard me rather-Since I blush to belaud myself a mo

1865.-1866.

I STOOD on a tower in the wet,
And new Year and old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing;
And I said, "O years,that meet in tears,
Have ye aught that is worth the know-
ing?

Science enough and exploring,
Wanderers coming and going,
Matter enough for deploring,

But aught that is worth the knowing?"

Seas at my feet were flowing,
Waves on the shingle pouring,
Old Year roaring and blowing,

And New Year blowing and roaring.

THE OLD SEAT.

DEAR Lady ('lara Vere de Vere,
How strange with you once more to
meet,

To hold your hand, to hear your voice,
To sit beside you on this seat!
You mind the time we sa: here last?-
Two little children-lovers we,
Each loving each with simple faith,
I all to you-you all to nie.

Ah! Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

We sit together now as then;

I press your hand, you meet my glance,
We seem as if we loved again.
But in my heart I feel the truth,

The dear old times have passed away: The love that once possessed our souls We do but simulate to-day.

Since last we met my Lady Vere,

You've grown in years and culture too,

And, putting childish things away,

Have ceased to be sincere and true, Naught caring for a single soul,

You spare no trouble, reck no pain, To add another name unto

The bead-roll of the hearts you've slain.

To you, my Lady Vere de Vere,

What is it that a heart may break? You had no hazard in the game

He should have played with equal stake.

You did but seek to while away

The slow hours of an idle night; The fault lay with the fool who failed To read your character aright. But, Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You make your wares by far too cheap;

Your net claims all as fish that comes
Within the limit of its sweeps.
You sit beside me here to-day,

You try to make me love again
But I am safe the while I think

You've sat thus with a score of men.

Still, Lady Clara, Clara, dear,

Beneath your finished mask I see The gentle heart, the honest mind, That made you once so dear to me. Your voice is still as sweet as then, Your face is still as pure and good: I see the graces of my love

All ripened in her womanhood. If some day, Clara Vere de Vere, You weary of the counterfeit, And look with yearning back upon The old times linked with this seatIf you would change your fleeting loves For one true love for evermore, Then we will come and see this place And sit together, as of yore. But meanwhile, Lady Vere de Vere, Of me win all renown you may; A plaything fresh my heart for you, A new world for your sovereign sway Bring all your practised charms in play,

Shoot all your darts, they cannot hurt;

For when we meet I clothe me in
The proved chain-armor of a flirt.

THE VICTIM.

I.

A PLAGUE upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low,
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe,
So thick they died the people cried
"The Gods are moved against the
land."

The Priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand :

"Help us from famine
And plague and strife!
What would you have of us?
Human life?

Were it our nearest,
Were it our dearest,
(Answer, O answer)
We give you his life."

The King bent low, with hand on brow, He stay'd his arms upon his knee: "O wife, what use to answer now?

For now the Priest has judged for me."

The King was shaken with holy fear: "The Gods," he said, "would have chosen well;

Yet both are near, and both are dear, And which the dearest I cannot tell!"

But the Priest was happy,
His victim won :

"We have his dearest,
His only son!"

VI

The rites prepared, the victim bared, The knife uprising toward the blow, To the altar-stone she sprang alone,

Me, not my darling, no!
He caught her away with a sudden cry;
Suddenly from him brake his wife,
And shrieking "I am his dearest, I —
I am his dearest !" rush'd on the
knife.

And the Priest was happy,
"O, Father Odin,

We give you a life.

Which was his nearest ?
Who was his dearest?
The Gods have answer'd ;
We give them the wife!'

LUCRETIUS.

LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found Her master cold; for when the morning flush

Of passion and the first embrace had died

a witch

Who brew'd the philtre which had power, they said,

To lead an errant passion home again. And this, at times, she mingled with his drink,

And this destroy'd him for the wicked broth

Confused the chemie labor of the blood, And tickling the brute brain within the man's

Made havoc among those tender cells, and check'd

His power to shape: he loathed him self; and once

After a tempest woke upon a morn That mock'd him with returning calm, and cried;

"Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain

:

Rushing and once the flash of a thunderbolt

Methought I never saw so fiercea forkStruck out the streaming mountainside, and show'd

A riotous confluence of watercourses Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it.

Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.

"Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods, what dreams!

For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Perchance

We do but recollect the dreams that

come

Just ere the waking: terrible! for it seem'd

A void was made in Nature; all her bonds

Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom

streams

And torrents of her myriad universe, Ruining along the illimitable inane, Fly on to clash together again, and make

Another and another frame of things

Was it the first beam of my latest day?

"Then, then, from utter gloom stood out the breasts,

The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword

Now over and now under, now direct, Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down shamed

At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire,

The fire that left a roofless Ilion,
Shot out of them, and scorch'd me that
I woke.

"Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus, thine,

Because I would not one of thine own doves,

Not ev'n a rose, were offer'd to thee?

thine,

Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tempt

The Trojan, while his neat-herds were abroad;

Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept

Her Deity false in human-amorous tears;

Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter
Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods,
Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called
Calliope to grace his golden verse-
Ay, and this Kypris also-did I take
That popular name of thine to shadow
forth

The all-generating powers and genial heat

Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood

Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs are glad

Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird

Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of flowers:

Which things appear the work of mighty Gods.

"The Gods! and if I go my work is left

Unfinish'd if I go. The Gods, who haunt

The lucid interspace of world and world,

Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind,

Nor ever falls the least white star of

snow,

Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to

mar

Their sacred everlasting calm and such,

Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm, Not such, nor all unlike it, man may gain

Letting his own life go. The Gods, the Gods!

If all be atoms, how then should the Gods

Being atomic not be dissoluble, Not follow the great law? My master held

That Gods there are, for all men so believe.

I prest my footsteps into his, and meant Surely to lead my Memmius in a train

And me, altho' his fire is on my face blinding, he sees not, nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post

Allotted by the Gods but he that holds

The Gods are careless, wherefore need he care

Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at once,

Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and sink

Past earthquake-ay, and gout and stone, that break

Body toward death, and palsy, deathin-life,

And wretched age-and worst disease

of all,

For look! what is it? there? yon arbutus

Totters; a noiseless riot underneath Strikes through the wood, sets all the tops quivering

The mountain quickens into Nymph and Faun

And here an Oread-how the sun delights

To glance and shift about her slippery sides,

And rosy knees and supple roundedness,

And budded bosom-peaks- who this way runs

Before the rest-A satyr, a satyr, see, Follows; but him I proved impossible; Two-natured is no nature: yet he draws Nearer and nearer, and I sean him now Beastlier than any phantom of his kind That ever butted his rough brotherbrute

For lust or lusty blood or provender : I hate, abhor, spit, sicken at him; and she

Loathes him as well; such a precipi tate heel,