IV.

She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours,

But in the tearful splendour of her

smiles

I

see the slowly-thickening chestnut towers

Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles. Now past her feet the swallow circling flies, A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand;

Her light makes rainbows in my closing

eyes,

I hear a charm of song thro' all the land. Come, Spring! She comes, and Earth is glad

To roll her North below thy deepening dome,

But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad, And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam,

Make all true hearths thy home.

V.

Across my garden! and the thicket stirs,

The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets, The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs, The starling claps his tiny castanets. Still round her forehead wheels the woodland dove,

And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew,

The kingcup fills her footprint, and above Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue.

Hail ample presence of a Queen,
Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay,
Whose mantle, every shade of glancing
green,

Flies back in fragrant breezes to display
A tunic white as May!

VI.

She whispers, 'From the South I bring you balm,

For on a tropic mountain was I born, While some dark dweller by the coco

palm

From under rose a muffled moan of floods;

Watch'd my far meadow zoned with airy morn;

I sat beneath a solitude of snow; There no one came, the turf was fresh, the woods

Plunged gulf on gulf thro' all their vales below.

I saw beyond their silent tops

The steaming marshes of the scarlet

cranes,

The slant seas leaning on the mangrove

copse,

And summer basking in the sultry plains

About a land of canes;

VII.

'Then from my vapour-girdle soaring forth

I scaled the buoyant highway of the birds,

And drank the dews and drizzle of the North,

That I might mix with men, and hear their words

On pathway'd plains; for while my hand exults Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers

To work old laws of Love to fresh results,

Thro' manifold effect of simple powersI too would teach the man

Beyond the darker hour to see the bright,

That his fresh life may close as it began, The still-fulfilling promise of a light Narrowing the bounds of night.'

VIII.

So wed thee with my soul, that I may

mark

The coming year's great good and varied ills,

And new developments, whatever spark Be struck from out the clash of warring wills;

Or whether, since our nature cannot rest, The smoke of war's volcano burst again

From hoary deeps that belt the changeful

West,

Of lowly labour, Slided The Gleam

VI.

Then, with a melody
Stronger and statelier,
Led me at length
To the city and palace
Of Arthur the king;
Touch'd at the golden
Cross of the churches,
Flash'd on the Tournament,
Flicker'd and bicker'd
From helmet to helmet,
And last on the forehead
Of Arthur the blameless
Rested The Gleam.

VII.

Clouds and darkness
Closed upon Camelot;
Arthur had vanish'd
I knew not whither,
The king who loved me,
And cannot die;

For out of the darkness

Silent and slowly

The Gleam, that had waned to a

wintry glimmer On icy fallow

And faded forest,
Drew to the valley
Named of the shadow,

And slowly brightening
Out of the glimmer,

And slowly moving again to a

melody Yearningly tender,

Fell on the shadow,

No longer a shadow,
But clothed with The Gleam.

VIII.

And broader and brighter
The Gleam flying onward,
Wed to the melody,
Sang thro' the world;
And slower and fainter,
Old and weary,

But eager to follow,
I saw, whenever

In passing it glanced upon

807

ROMNEY'S REMORSE.

'I read Hayley's Life of Romney the other day Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter; but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and because Sir Joshua and others had said that "marriage spoilt an artist" almost immediately left his wife in the North and scarce saw her till the end of his life; when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her and she received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures! even as a matter of Art, I am sure' (Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i.)

'BEAT, little heart I give you this and this,'

What! the Lady

Who are you?
Hamilton?