You could not light upon a sweeter thing: A body slight and round, and like a pear In growing, modest eyes, a hand, a foot Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin As clean and white as privet when it flowers.

James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and they that loved

At first like dove and dove were cat and dog.

She was the daughter of a cottager, Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride,

New things and old, himself and her, she sour'd

To what she is: a nature never kind! Like men, like manners: like breeds like,

And fear of change at home, that drove him hence.

James. That was the last drop in the cup of gall.

I once was near him, when his bailiff brought

A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince

As from a venomous thing: he thought himself

A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest a cry Should break his sleep by night, and his nice eyes

Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs

Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir, you know

That these two parties still divide the world

Of those that want, and those that have: and still

The same old sore breaks out from age to age

With much the same result.

myself,

Now I

And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.

Large range of prospect had the mother

SOW,

And but for daily loss of one she loved As one by one we took them - but for

this

As never sow was higher in this world — Might have been happy: but what lot is

pure?

O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake, My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year,

My one Oasis in the dust and drouth
Of city life! I was a sketcher then:
See here, my doing: curves of mountain,
bridge,

Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built
When men knew how to build, upon a
rock

With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock : And here, new-comers in an ancient hold, New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,

Here lived the Hills

bulk

-a Tudor-chimnied

Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers. O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull

The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the

names, G

I choked. Again they shriek'd the burthen-Him!'

Again with hands of wild rejection 'Go! Girl, get you in!' She went and in one month

They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds,
To lands in Kent and messuages in York,
And slight Sir Robert with his watery
smile

And educated whisker. But for me,
They set an ancient creditor to work:

It seems I broke a close with force and arms:

There came a mystic token from the king
To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy !
I read, and fled by night, and flying

turn'd:

Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below: I turn'd once more, close-button'd to the storm;

So left the place, left Edwin, nor have seen Him since, nor heard of her, nor cared to hear.

Nor cared to hear? perhaps: yet long

ago

I have pardon'd little Letty; not indeed, It may be, for her own dear sake but this, She seems a part of those fresh days to me; For in the dust and drouth of London life She moves among my visions of the lake, While the prime swallow dips his wing, or then

While the gold-lily blows, and overhead The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag.

ST. SIMEON STYLITES. ALTHO' I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,

Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce

meet

For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty

God,

This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,

Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold, In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes

and cramps,

A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud, Patient on this tall pillar I have borne Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and

sleet, and snow;

And I had hoped that ere this period closed Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy

rest,

Denying not these weather-beaten limbs The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.

O take the meaning, Lord: I do not

breathe,

Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still

Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear, Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd

My spirit flat before thee.

O Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,

For I was strong and hale of body then; And tho' my teeth, which now are dropt

away,