"Lo! God's likeness- the ground-planNeither modelled, glazed, or framed : Buss me, thou rough sketch of man,

Far too naked to be shamed!

"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath!

Drink to heavy Ignorance!

Hob-and-nob with brother Death!

"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near :
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.

"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,

When the locks are crisp and curled;

Unto me my maudlin gall,

And my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!

Mingle madness, mingle scorn!

Dregs of life, and lees of man:

Yet we will not die forlorn."

The voice grew faint: there came a further change;
Again arose the mystic mountain-range :

Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;

By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patched with moss.
Then some one spake: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time."
Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame."
“He had not wholly quenched his

And one:
A little grain of conscience made him sour."
At last I heard a voice upon the slope

power;

Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
To which an answer pealed from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand:
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made himself an awful rose of dawn.

THE SKIPPING-ROPE.

SURE never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.

Stand off, or else my skipping-rope

Will hit you in the eye.

How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!

How fairy-like you fly!

Go, get you gone, you muse and mope

I hate that silly sigh.

Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,

Or tell me how to die.

There, take it, take my skipping-rope,

And hang yourself thereby.

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow;

From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne, Dip forward under starry light, And move me to my marriage-morn, And round again to happy night.

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, oh Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play !

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To the haven under the hill;

But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still !

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, oh Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.