Profoundest Fear! who, closing thy wide eyes, And shriek'st. "The One! The sole Infallible!" Brave Trembler! Thou, who seek'st, and fear'st to find, The Cause Uncaused of mindless things and mind, If pain thou know'st, if weakness knows thee well, XLIX. What doth it cover? Mystery and Thee. Of age-long moments, to complete his Year! L. And to the Father of Eternal days, And fairest things, that fairer yet will be, Shall I no song of adoration raise, While Passion's world, and Life's great agony, And o'er the sadness of my slander'd lays there! After much theory, and some practice, venture to propose the measure of this sonnet as a pattern to English sonnetteers; for while, to me, the Petrarchan, in our language, is at once, immelodious and inharmonious, the music of this, in its linked unity, is both sweet and various, and when closed by an alexandrine, majestic. 304 BALLADS. ONE OF THE HOMES, A HEALTH OF TOWNS' BALLAD. THE small boy, in his home of sighs, As if he hated man, Died, with raised hand, and open eyes, Frowning at little Ann. Then, died his bird: she wept, she sigh'd: "Twas worn to skin and bone; But whether it of famine died, Or fever, is not known. She wept, but not for John-and yet She loved her brother well; She wept-wept for his little pet! But why she could not tell. Where frown'd its friend, his bird she put Within the coffin small; But then the lid refused to shut! She thought she heard him call! The dead hand propp'd the coffin-lid, It would keep up! it would, and did Both blighted in one hour. Farewell, thou old street-shunning lane, Flowers which by name he once could call! Had kept, at home, a funeral Of flowers, that weekly died. So, there were four in all; The blasted, black, once beauteous thorn. The rose, once sweet as dewy morn; VOL. II. And, happiest there of all, the bird Or growing flower; ne'er saw, or heard, The rats peep'd out behind the door, The rats jumped down beneath the floor, Into the sewer below. Men raised, in haste, the coffins three, He look'd on woe-worn toil and truth For he, a poor man's friendless son, And hard up-hill his way had won To honour'd usefulness. His gown'd back to the wind he turn'd, On corpses three, by one child mourn'd Before him gasp'd the bann'd and bad, |