She comes: The loosen'd rivulets ru The frost-bead melts upon her ga hair; Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sz Now wraps her close, now archi leaves her bare To breaths of balmier air; II. Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welco her, About her glance the tits, and str the jays, Before her skims the jubilant woodpec The linnet's bosom blushes at her g While round her brows a woodland cu flits. Watching her large light eyes gracious looks, And in her open palm a halcyon sits Patient-the secret splendour of brooks. Come, Spring! She comes on waste a wood, On farm and field: but enter also be: Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blox And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere Lodge with me all the year! III. Once more a downy drift against brakes, Self-darken'd in the sky, descendi slow! But gladly see I thro' the wavering flaks Yon blanching apricot like snow i snow. These will thine eyes not brook in fores paths, On their perpetual pine, nor rout the beech; They fuse themselves to little spicy baths Solved in the tender blushes of th peach; They lose themselves and die On that new life that gems the haw thorn line; Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put them b And out once more in varnish'd glery shine Thy stars of celandine. MERLIN AND THE GLEAM- ROMNEY's remorse. Of lowly labour, Slided The Gleam VI. Then, with a melody VII. Clouds and darkness 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 And slowly moving again to a melody Yearningly tender, No longer a shadow, But clothed with The Gleam. VIII. And broader and brighter But eager to follow, I saw, whenever In passing it glanced upon Hamlet or city, That under the Crosses The mortal hillock, Would break into blossom Of boundless Ocean, IX. Not of the sunlight, Over the margin, After it, follow it, Follow The Gleam. ROMNEY'S REMORSE. 807 '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.) Good, I am never weary painting you. Or spinning at your wheel beside the vine Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail Why should I so disrelish that short word? Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot, So fever'd! never colt would more delight To roll himself in meadow grass than I To wallow in that winter of the hills. Nurse, were you hired? or came of your own will To wait on one so broken, so forlorn? Have I not met you somewhere long ago? I am all but sure I have-in Kendal church |