Rev'rently and kindly; and we then install
His son, or set a new one in his place;
For all good honest customs, from all lands,
Find welcome here,-seats built up in old elms
From France; and evening dances on the green;
And servants (home's inhabiting strangers) turn'd
To zealous friends; and gipsy meals, whose smoke
Warms houseless glades; and the good bout
At pen and ink, in rhyming summer bow'rs,
Temper'd with pleasant penalties of wine.
The villagers love us; and on Sabbath-days,
(Such luck is ours, and round harmonious life)
In an old, ivied church (which God preserve,
And make a mark for ever of the love
That by mild acquiescence bears all change
And keeps all better'd good!) no priest like ours
Utters such Christian lore, so final sweet,
So fit for audience in those flowery dells.
Not a young heart feels strange, nor old misgives:
You scarcely can help thinking, that the sound
Must pierce with sweetness to the very graves.
But mark-not the whole week do we pass thus,-
No, nor whole day. Heav'n, for ease' sake, forbid !
Half of the day (and half of that might serve,
Were all the world active and just as we)
Is mix'd with the great throng, playing its part
Of toil and pain; we could not relish else
Our absolute comfort; nay, should almost fear
Heav'n counted us not worthy to partake
The common load with its great hopes for all,
But held us flimsy trifiers--gnats i' the sun-
Made but for play, and so to die, unheav'n'd.
Oh, hard we work, and carefully we think,
And much we suffer! but the line being drawn
'Twixt work and our earth's heav'n, well do we
draw it,
Sudden, and sharp, and sweet; and in an instant
Are borne away, like knights to fairy isles,
And close our gates behind us on the world.
"And where (cries some one) is this blessed spot? May I behold it? May I gain admittance ?”
Yes, with a thought;—as we do.
Then no such place exists!"
Except in thought; but that
Aye, true as tears or smiles that fiction makes,
Waking the ready heaven in men's eyes ;-
True as effect to cause ;-true as the hours
You spend in joy while sitting at a play.
Is there no truth in those? Or was your heart
Happier before you went there? Oh, if rich
In what you deem life's only solid goods,
Think what unjoyous blanks evʼn those would be,
Were fancy's light smitten from out your world,
With all its colourings of your prides, your gains,
Your very toys and tea-cups, nothing left
But what you touch, and not what touches you.
The wise are often rich in little else,
The rich, if wise, count it their gold of gold.
Say, is it not so, thou who art both rich
In the world's eye, and wise in solitude's,-
Stoneleigh's poetic lord, whose gentle name
No echo granted at the font to mine,
I trust, shall have made ruder. What would'st care,
O Leigh, for all the wooden matter-o'-fact
Of all thine oaks, depriv'd of what thy muse
Can do to wake their old oracular breath,
Or whisper, with their patriarch locks, of heaven ?
Lo! Southwood Smith, physician of mankind,
Bringer of light and air to the rich poor
Of the next age :-he, when in real woods
He rests the mildest energy alive,
Scorns not these fancied ones, but hails and loves
A vision of the dawn of his own world.
Horace Smith lo! rare compound, skill'd alike
In worldly gain and its unworldliest use:
He prospers in the throng, makes fact his slave,
Then leads a life with fiction and good deeds.
Lo! Bulwer, genius in the thick of fame,
With smiles of thrones, and echoes from the Rhine,
He too extends his grounds to Fairy-land,
And while his neighbours think they see him looking
Hard at themselves, is in Armorica,
Feasting with lovers in enchanted bowers.
Lo! Jeffrey the fine wit, the judge revered,
The man belov'd, what spirit invokes he
To make his hasty moments of repose
Richest and farthest off ?-The Muse of Keats,
One of the inmost dwellers in the core
Of the old woods, when Nymphs and Graces liv'd,-
Where still they live, to eyes, like their's, divine.
Fancy 's the wealth of wealth, the toiler's hope, The poor man's piecer-out; the art of Nature, Painting her landscapes twice; the spirit of fact, As matter is the body; the pure gift
Of heav'n to poet and to child; which he
Who retains most in manhood, being a man
In all things fitting else, is most a man ;
Because he wants no human faculty,
Nor ioses one sweet taste of the sweet world.
FRAGMENT OF AN UNPUBLISHED PLAY. A HUSBAND IS CONVERSING WITH HIS WIFE.
FOR there are two heavens, sweet,
Both made of love,―one, inconceivable
Ev'n by the other, so divine it is;
The other, far on this side of the stars,
By men call'd home, when some blest pair are met As we are now; sometimes in happy talk, Sometimes in silence (also a sort of talk,
Where friends are match'd) each at its gentle task
Of book, or household need, or meditation,
By summer-moon, or curtain'd fire in frost
And by degrees there come,—not always come,
Yet mostly, other, smaller inmates there,
Cherubic-fac'd, yet growing like those two,
Their pride and playmates, not without meek fear,
Since God sometimes to his own cherubim
Takes those sweet cheeks of earth. And so 'twixt joy,
And love, and tears, and whatsoever pain
Man fitly shares with man, these two grow old; And if indeed blest thoroughly, they die
In the same spot, and nigh the same good hour, And setting suns look heavenly on their grave.-
REFLECTIONS OF A DEAD BODY.
SCENE. A female sitting by a bed-side, anxiously looking at the face of her husband, just dead. The soul within the dead body soliloquizes.
WHAT change is this! What joy! What depth of What suddenness of withdrawal from all pain [rest! Into all bliss into a balm so perfect
I do not even smile! I tried but now,
With that breath's end, to speak to the dear face That watches me-and lo! all in an instant, Instead of toil, and a weak, weltering tear,
I am ali peace, all happiness, all power,
Laid on some throne in space.--Great God! I am dead.
[A pause.] Dear God! thy love is perfect; thy truth known.
[Another.] And He,—and they!-How simple and strange! How beautiful!
But I may whisper it not,-even to thought;
Lest strong imagination, hearing it,
Speak, and the world be shatter'd.
[Soul again pauses.] O balm! O bliss! O saturating smile
Unsmiling! O doubt ended! certainty
Begun! O will, faultless, yet all indulged,
Encourag'd to be wilful ;-to delay
Even its wings for heav'n; and thus to rest
Here, here, ev'n here,-'twixt heav'n and earth
A-bed in the morn of endless happiness.
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