Narrowing in to where they sat assembled Low voluptuous music winding trembled, Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sigh'd, Panted hand-in-hand with faces pale, Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;

Till the fountain spouted, showering wide Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail; Then the music touch'd the gates and died; Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,

As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;

Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round:
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew:
Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter'd headlong from the sky.

And warn'd that madman ere it grew too late:

But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine was broken,

When that cold vapour touch'd the palace gate,

| And link'd again. I saw within my head A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death,

Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath, And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said:

IV.

'Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!

Here is custom come your way; Take my brute, and lead him in, Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.

'Bitter barmaid, waning fast!

See that sheets are on my bed; What! the flower of life is past : It is long before you wed. 'Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour, At the Dragon on the heath!. Let us have a quiet hour,

Let us hob-and-nob with Death.

'I am old, but let me drink; Bring me spices, bring me wine; I remember, when I think,

That my youth was half divine.

Wine is good for shrivell❜d lips,

When a blanket wraps the day, When the rotten woodland drips,

And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.

'Sit thee down, and have no shame, Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee: What care I for any name?

What for order or degree?

'Let me screw thee up a peg:

Let me loose thy tongue with wine: Callest thou that thing a leg?

Which is thinnest? thine or mine?

'Thou shalt not be saved by works: Thou hast been a sinner too:

spoken,

Empty scarecrows, I and you!

'You are bones, and what of that?

Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat, Is but modell'd on a skull.

'Death is king, and Vivat Rex ! Tread a measure on the stones, Madam-if I know your sex,

From the fashion of your bones.

'No, I cannot praise the fire

In your eye-nor yet your lip: All the more do I admire

Joints of cunning workmanship.

'Lo! God's likeness-the ground-plan-Neither modell'd, glazed, nor 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 curl'd; 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.'

V.

The voice grew faint: there came a further change:

Once more uprose 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 patch'd 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.' And one: He had not wholly quench'd his power;

A little grain of conscience made him sour.'

At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, 'Is there any hope?' To which an answer peal'd 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.

ENOCH ARDEN.

LONG lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; And in the chasm

sands;

Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf

In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and

higher

this

The little wife would weep for company, And pray them not to quarrel for her sake,

mill;

And high in heaven behind it a gray down With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood, By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.

Here on this beach a hundred years ago, Three children of three houses, Annie Lee, The prettiest little damsel in the port, And Philip Ray the miller's only son, And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd Among the waste and lumber of the shore, Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets, Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats updrawn ;

And built their castles of dissolving sand To watch them overflow'd, or following up And flying the white breaker, daily left The little footprint daily wash'd away.

But when the dawn of rosy childhood

past,

And the new warmth of life's ascending

sun

Was felt by either, either fixt his heart On that one girl; and Enoch spoke his

love,

But Philip loved in silence; and the girl
Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him;
But she loved Enoch; tho' she knew it
not,

And would if ask'd deny it. Enoch set
A purpose evermore before his eyes,
To hoard all savings to the uttermost,
To purchase his own boat, and make a
home

For Annie and so prosper'd that at last
A luckier or a bolder fisherman,
A carefuller in peril, did not breathe
For leagues along that breaker-beaten

coast

house.

year

On board a merchantman, and made himself

Full sailor; and he thrice had pluck'd a life

From the dread sweep of the down-streaming seas:

And all men look'd upon him favourably: And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth

May