II. IN A MOUNTAIN PASS.

(In Scotland.)

To what wild blasts of tyrannous harmony

Uprose these rocky walls, mass threatening mass, Dusk, shapeless shapes, around a desolate pass?

What deep hearts of the ancient hills set free

The passion, the desire, the destiny

Of this lost stream? Yon clouds that break and

form,

Light vanward squadrons of the joyous storm,

They gather hither from what untrack'd sea ?
Primeval kindred! here the mind regains

Its vantage ground against the world; here thought
Wings up the silent waste of air on broad
Undaunted pinion; man's imperial pains

Are ours, and visiting fears, and joy unsought,
Native resolve, and partnership with God.

III. THE CASTLE.

(In Scotland.)

The tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore; The tenderest light was in the western sky;

Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly,

The sea articulated o'er and o'er

To comfort all tired things; and one might pore, Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye,

On that slow-fading, amber radiancy

Past the long levels of the ocean-floor.

A turn, the castle fronted me, four-square,
Holding its seaward crag, abrupt, intense
Against the west, an apparition bold

Of naked human will; I stood aware,

With sea and sky, of powers unowned of sense,

Presences awful, vast, and uncontrolled.

IV. ̓Αισθητικὴ φαντασία.

(In Ireland.)

The sound is in my ears of mountain streams!
I cannot close my lids but some grey rent
Of wildered rock, some water's clear descent
In shattering crystal, pine-trees soft as dreams
Waving perpetually, the sudden gleams

Of remote sea, a dear surprise of flowers,

Some grace or wonder of to-day's long hours

Straightway possesses the moved sense, which

teems

With fantasy unbid. O fair, large day!

The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea
Of life too broad, and yet the billows range,
The elusive footing glides. Come, Sleep, allay
The trouble with thy heaviest balms, and change
These pulsing visions to still Memory.

V. ON THE SEA-CLIFF.

(In Ireland.)

Ruins of a church with its miraculous well,

O'er which the Christ, a squat-limbed dwarf of

stone,

Great-eyed, and huddled on his cross, has known

The sea-mists and the sunshine, stars that fell

And stars that rose, fierce winter's chronicle,

And centuries of dead summers. From his throne Fronting the dawn the elf has ruled alone,

And saved this region fair from pagan hell.

Turn! June's great joy abroad; each bird, flower,

stream

Loves life, loves love; wide ocean amorously

Spreads to the sun's embrace; the dulse-weeds

sway,

The glad gulls are afloat. Grey Christ to-day

Our ban on thee! Rise, let the white breasts

gleam,

Unvanquished Venus of the northern sea!

VI. ASCETIC NATURE.

(In Ireland.)

Passion and song, and the adorned hours
Of floral loveliness, hopes grown most sweet,
And generous patience in the ripening heat,
A mother's bosom, a bride's face of flowers

-Knows Nature aught so fair?

Powers

Witness ye

Which rule the virgin heart of this retreat

To rarer issues, ye who render meet

Earth, purged and pure, for gracious heavenly

dowers!

The luminous pale lake, the pearl-grey sky,
The wave that gravely murmurs meek desires,
The abashed yet lit expectance of the whole,
-These and their beauty speak of earthly fires
Long quenched, clear aims, deliberate sanctity,—
O'er the white forehead lo! the aureole.

G