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"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: Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,

Empty scarecrows, I and you!
"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn;
Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.
"We are men of ruin'd blood;
Therefore comes it we are wise.
Fish are we that love the mud,
Rising to no fancy-flies.

"Name and fame! to fly sublime
Thro' the courts, the camps, the
schools,

Is to be the ball of Time,

Bandied by the hands of fools.
"Friendship!-to be two in one-
Let the canting liar pack!
Well I know, when I am gone,

How she mouths behind my back.
"Virtue!-to be good and just-
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,

Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
"Oh! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book

"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn
Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.
"Drink, and let the parties rave:
They are fill'd with idle spleen;
Rising, falling, like a wave,

For they know not what they mean "He that roars for liberty

Faster binds a tyrant's power;
And the tyrant's cruel glee
Forces on the freer hour.
"Fill the can, and fill the cup;
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
"Greet her with applausive breath,
Freedom, gaily doth she tread;
In her right a civic wreath,
In her left a human head.

"No, I love not what is new;

She is of an ancient house: And I think we know the huo

Of that cap upon her brows. "Let her go! her thirst she slakes Where the bloody conduit runs: Then her sweetest meal she makes On the first-born of her sons. "Drink to lofty hopes that coolVisions of a perfect State : Drink we, last, the public fool, Frantic love and frantic hate. "Chant me now some wicked stave, Till thy drooping courage rise, And the glow-worm of the grave Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes. "Fear not thou to loose thy tongue; Set thy hoary fancies free; What is loathsome to the young Savors well to thee and me. "Change, reverting to the years, When thy nerves could understand What there is in loving tears,

And the warmth of hand in hand. "Tell me tales of thy first love

April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,

And the dead begin to dance.
"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
"Trooping from their mouldy dens
The chap-fallen circle spreads:
Welcome, fellow-citizens,

Hollow hearts and empty heads!
"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!

1 On the stoned.

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 admiro

Joints of cunning workmanship. "Lo! God's likeness- the groundplan

Neither modell'd, 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, tọ 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 lecs of man:

Yet we will not die forlorn!"

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Move eastward, happy earth, and leave Yon orange sunset waning slow: From fringes of the faded eve,

O, happy planet, castward 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, smoothly borne, Dip forward under starry light, And move me to my marriage-morn, And round again to happy night.

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. UPLIFT a thousand voices full and sweet, In this wide hall with earth's invention stored,

And praise th' invisible universal Lord, Who lets once more in peace the nationa meet,

Where Science, Art, and Labor have outpour'd

Their myriad horns of plenty at our feet,

O silent father of our Kings to be
Mourn'd in this golden hour of jubilee,
For this, for all, we weep our thanks to
thee!

The world-compelling pian was thine,
And lo! the long laborious miles,
Of Palace; lo! the giant aisles,
Rich in model and design;
Harvest-tool and husbandry,
Loom and wheel and engin'ry,
Secrets of the sullen mine,

Steel and gold, and corn and wine,
Fabric rough, or Fairy fine,
Sunny tokens of the Line,

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And let the fair white-winged peacemak fly

To happy havens under all the sky,

And mix the seasons and the golden hour
Till each man finds his own in all men

And all men work in noble brotherhood, Breaking their mailed fleets and arme towers,

And ruling by obeying Nature's powers, And gathering all the fruits of peace and crown'd with all her flowers,

XI.

And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villanous centre-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights,
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits
To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights.

XII.

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones,
Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.
XIII.

For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home,—

XIV.

What am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood?
Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die
Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood
On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie?

XV.

Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek,
Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave-
Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak
And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave.

XVI.

I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main.
Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me here?
O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of pain,
Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear?

XVII.

Workmen up at the Hall!-they are coming back from abroad;
The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a millionnaire:
I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud;
1 play'd with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair.

XVIII.

Mand with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes,
Mand the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall,
Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes,
Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all,-

XIX.

What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse.
No, there is fatter game on the moor; she will let me alone.
Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse.
I will bury myself in myself, and the Devil may pipe to his own.

II.

LONG have I sigh'd for a calm: God grant I may find it at last!
It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savor nor salt,
But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past,
Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,

Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been
For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour's defect of the rose,

Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full,

Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose,

From what I escaped heart free, with the least little touch of spleen.
III.

COLD and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek,
Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd,
Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek,
Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound;
Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong
Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before
Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound,
Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long
Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more,

But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground,
Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar.
Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave,
Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found
The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave.

IV.
I.

A MILLION emeralds break from the ruby-budded limo
In the little grove where I sit-ah, wherefore cannot I bo
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland.
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,
Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?

II.

Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small!
And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite;
And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar;
And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall;
And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light;
But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star!

III.

When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race?
I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd:
I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor;
But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face.
O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud;
Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor.

IV.

I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal;
I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like

A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way :

For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;

The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.

V.

We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower;
Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game.
That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed?
Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;
We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.

VI.

A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth,
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran,
And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race.
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth,
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man:
He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base?

VII.

The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly and vice.
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.

VIII.

For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil.
Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about?
Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide.

Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail?

Or an infant civilization be ruled with rod or with knout?

I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide,

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