Crest-rearing kings with whistling The princess laboured at her loom, spears; But if these shivered in the shock They wrenched up hundred-rooted trees, Or hurled the effacing rock. Then hand to hand, then foot to foot, Stern to the death-grip grappling Who ever thought of gunpowder Mistress and handmaiden alike; Beneath their needles grew the field With warriors armed to strike. 'Or, look again, dim Dian's face Gleamed perfect through the attendant night; Were such not better than those holes Amid that waste of white? 'A shame it is, our aimless life; 'They knew whose hand struck home From silver dish in gilded stall the death, They knew who broke but would not bend, Could venerate an equal foe And scorn a laggard friend. 'Calm in the utmost stress of doom, Devout toward adverse powers above, They hated with intenser hate And loved with fuller love. 'Then heavenly beauty could allay As heavenly beauty stirred the strife: By them a slave was worshipped more Than is by us a wife.' She laughed again, my sister laughed; Made answer o'er the laboured cloth, I rather would be one of us Than wife, or slave, or both.' Oh better then be slave or wife Than fritter now blank life away: Then night had holiness of night, And day was sacred day. R With wheat and wine the steed, Yet had those days a spark of Discomfited all Greece with rest, Honoured all heroes whose high And rough-hewn men: but what are 6 For mild she was, of few soft Uncertain all their lot save this 'Beneath the sun there's nothing Marked how she made her choice of Just then her busy fingers ceased, came : Her song just mellowed by regret I knew whose step was on the walk, | Then all-forgetful as she heard One step upon the walk. While I ? I sat alone and watched ; Not to be first: how hard to learn But, thank God, learned at So now in patience I possess My soul year after tedious year, Content to take the lowest place, The place assigned me here. Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength Most weak, and life most burden some, I lift mine eyes up to the hills From whence my help shall come : Yea, sometimes still I lift my heart 30 September 1856. FROM HOUSE TO HOME THE first was like a dream through summer heat, The second like a tedious numbing Swoon 'But,' says my friend, what was this thing and where?' My trees were full of songs and flowers and fruit ; Their branches spread a city to the air And mice lodged in their root. It was a pleasure-place within my My heath lay farther off, where soul; An earthly paradise supremely fair That lured me from the goal. The first part was a tissue of hugged lies; The second was its ruin fraught with pain: Why raise the fair delusion to the skies But to be dashed again? My castle stood of white transparent glass Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire, But when the summer sunset came to pass It kindled into fire. lizards lived In strange metallic mail, just spied and gone; Like darted lightnings here and there perceived But nowhere dwelt upon. Frogs and fat toads were there to hop or plod And propagate in peace, an uncouth crew, Where velvet-headed rushes rustling nod And spill the morning dew. All caterpillars throve beneath my rule, With snails and slugs in corners out of sight; My pleasaunce was an undulating I never marred the curious sudden green, Stately with trees whose shadows slept below, stool That perfects in a night. With glimpses of smooth garden- Safe in his excavated gallery beds between Like flame or sky or snow. Swift squirrels on the pastures took their ease, With leaping lambs safe from the unfeared knife; All singing-birds rejoicing in those trees Fulfilled their careless life. Woodpigeons cooed there, stockdoves nestled there; The burrowing mole groped on from year to year; No harmless hedgehog curled because of me His prickly back for fear. Oft-times one like an angel walked with me, With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire But deep as the unfathomed endless sea, Fulfilling my desire: |