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;

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;

Yet now I could even weep to think of it;

For what will the old man say

When he comes to the second corpse in the pit?

X.

Friend, to be struck by the public foe,

She comes from another stiller world of Then to strike him and lay him low,

the dead,

Stiller, not fairer than mine.

VIII.

But I know where a garden grows,
Fairer than aught in the world beside,
All made up of the lily and rose

That blow by night, when the season is
good,

To the sound of dancing music and flutes:
It is only flowers, they had no fruits,
And I almost fear they are not roses, but
blood;

For the keeper was one, so full of pride,
He linkt a dead man there to a spectral
bride;

For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes,

Would he have that hole in his side?

That were a public merit, far,
Whatever the Quaker holds, from sin;
But the red life spilt for a private blow—
I swear to you, lawful and lawless war
Are scarcely even akin.

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
And somebody, surely, some kind heart
will come

To bury me, bury me
Deeper, ever so little deeper.

PART III.

VI.

I.

My life has crept so long on a broken wing
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 Charioteer
And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion's grave low down in the west,

That like a silent lightning under the stars

She seem'd to divide in a dream from a band of the blest,

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 millionaire :
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her 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 rumour 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
With a loyal people shouting a battle cry,

Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly

Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death.

IV.

Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd!
Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims,
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freër under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire ;

For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

V.

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;

It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;
I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.

IDYLLS OF THE KING.

DEDICATION.

THESE to His Memory-since he held | Before a thousand peering littlenesses,

them dear,

Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself—I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears-
These Idylls.

And indeed He seems to me Scarce other than my king's ideal knight, 'Who reverenced his conscience as his king;

Whose glory was, redressing human wrong; Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it;

Hope more for these than some inheritance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine, Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poor― Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day— Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace— Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art, Commingled with the gloom of imminent Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,

Who loved one only and who clave to her—'
Her-over all whose realms to their last

isle,

THE COMING OF ARTHUR.