Arsenic, arsenic, sure, would do it, Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls! It is all used up for that. VII. Tell him now: she is standing here at my head; Not beautiful now, not even kind; He may take her now; for she never speaks her mind, But is ever the one thing silent here. She is not of us, as I divine; She comes from another stiller world of the dead, Stiller, not fairer than mine. VIII. But I know where a garden grows, Fairer than aught in the world beside, That blow by night, when the season is good, For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes, Would he have that hole in his side? IX. But what will the old man say ? He laid a cruel snare in a pit To catch a friend of mine one stormy day; When he comes to the second corpse in the pit? X. Friend, to be struck by the public foe, XI. O me, why have they not buried me deep enough? Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough, Me, that was never a quiet sleeper? Maybe still I am but half-dead; Then I cannot be wholly dumb; I will cry to the steps above my head, Thro' cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing: My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs, And the shining daffodil dies, and the Char ioteer And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars “And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest, Knowing I tarry for thee," and pointed to Mars As he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast. II. And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight To have look'd, tho' but in a dream, upon eyes so fair, That had been in a weary world my one thing bright; And it was but a dream, yet it lighten'd my despair When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right, That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, Nor Britain's one sole God be the million naire : No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note, And watch her harvest ripen, ber herd increase, Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore, And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more. III. And as months ran on and rumor of battle grew, "It is time, it is time, O passionate heart," said I (For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true), "It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye, That old hysterical mock-disease should die." And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath |