Worthy to bear

Half the Crown's crushing burden in the State
Where monarchy but cometh forth more fair
From fires of revolution, where to fate

The king may yield; but still the throne is there,
As drops that make the rainbow on the river
Perish-the rainbow never!

But lo! with spring

(I will not say our grief hath fled for good,
But it is time-touch'd to a gentler thing),
The Princess comes whose noble womanhood
Is better than the circlet of a king:

Surely young grass and flowers are clothing now
The furrows of God's plough.

Ah! Princess, come !

Come, Princess! in the war-ship, o'er the wave;
Come, Princess! o'er the favourable foam;
With blazing streets, with banners of the brave,
With arches they will hail thee to thy home;

With these, and the long thunders of the cheers
Falling in rain of tears.

In tears in tears!

Remembering who, with pageantry as grand,
Pass'd through the acclaim of people and of peers,
When, with her princely spouse at her right hand,
She went in state among the endless cheers,

And "let her people see her" as she rolled
On, in a cloud of gold.

Sweet lady! pass

On to St. George's Chapel. Wear as free
The royal jewels, in a starry mass

Clustered, as doth some bride of low degree
Her wreath from orchard or from meadow-grass.
Surely when joy so trembles to a tear
The dead are strangely near.

From where his true

Heart-love of beauty feeds on the uncreated
And ancient Beauty that is ever new;
Where his deep thirst for purity is sated,
And his high soul hath found a work to do
Sublimer than the work on earth he wrought,
And full of nobler thought;

Surely one spirit,

Full of a tender care that is not dread,

Full of sweet love that doth no touch inherit

Of fear or woe—one of the living dead,

Stoled in the robe made white by Christ's dear merit, With benediction for the princely pair,

Stands on the altar stair.

Here, missing sore

Old England, and her streets ablaze with lights,
The illumination, when the day is o'er,
Shall be the splendours that on starry nights
From silver snows stream to heaven's silver floor;
And for a nation's cheers, the silent prayer
Breath'd on the mountain air.

BAGNÈRES DE Bigorre, 1861.

A CONTRAST.*

OUTSIDE, over the lea, Thunderous sky of a May-day morn, Soft sad green of the growing corn,

The blackbird under the red-leaf'd tree, A host of cowslips where shadows pass From sailing clouds above the grass. Things of the spring and summer born, Nothing faded, nothing forlorn,

But all looks tenderly for me
Outside, over the lea.

II.

Far away a room I see.

An old man lying in mortal pain,

With thin hands clasp'd again and again. One chant only cometh to me—

Miserere Domine!

All is vanity!

Far away a room I see.

* Written on a railway journey to attend a death-bed.

III.

Yet over sorrow and over death

Cometh at last a song that saith—
This, this is the victory,
Even our faith.

Love maketh all the crooked straight,
And love bringeth love to all that wait,
And laughter and light and dewy tear
To the hard blind eyes of Fate.
All shall look tenderly yet and free
Outside over the lea,

And deep within the heart of me.

THE ICEBOUND SHIP.

A LYRICAL FRAGMENT.

THREE things are stately foundYea, four, one saith, be comely in their going, The lion, and the he-goat, and the hound, And, with his flying flags and bugles blowing, The king in harness marching, mail'd and crown'd. Stately is each of these;

But statelier still the battle ship,

When o'er the white line of the heavy seas,

Like stars o'er snow-crown'd trees,

Storm-sway'd and swung, its bright lights roll and dip. And statelier yet again

The spirits of our sailor Englishmen.

Well-pleased with forward ocean's manly roar,'
They only fear the shore.

These things are stately found;

But when the lion slowly, slowly dies,

Never waxing well of his deep wound; When the he-goat on the golden altar lies, Fasten'd to it for a sacrifice;

When the baying of the hound

*KTÚτOS аρonν Tóvтov. Sophoc., Phil., 1455.

*