She, moldering with the dull earth's moldering sod,
Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame,

Lay there exiled from eternal God,
Lost to her place and name;

And death and life she hated equally,
And nothing saw, for her despair,
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity,
No comfort anywhere;

Remaining utterly confused with fears,
And ever worse with growing time,
And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,
And all alone in crime.

Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round
With blackness as a solid wall,

Far off she seemed to hear the dully sound
Of human footsteps fall;

As in strange lands a traveler walking slow,
In doubt and great perplexity,

A little before moonrise hears the low
Moan of an unknown sea;

And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound
Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry

Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, "I have found
A new land, but I die."

She howled aloud, “I am on fire within.
There comes no murmur of reply.

What is it that will take away my sin,
And save me lest I die?"

So when four years were wholly finished,
She threw her royal robes away.

"Make me a cottage in the vale,” she said,
"Where I may mourn and pray.

"Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are

So lightly, beautifully built;

Perchance I may return with others there

When I have purged my guilt."

Alfred Tennyson

5

NATURE AND THE POET

GGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM, PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT

I

WAS thy neighbor once, thou rugged Pile!

Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:

I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!

So like, so very like, was day to day! Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration, and the Poet's dream,-

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile,
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

A picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,

Such picture would I at that time have made; And seen the soul of truth in every part,

A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been,-'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:

A

power is gone, which nothing can restore; A deep distress hath humanized my soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold

A smiling sea, and be what I have been: The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;

This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend
If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O'tis a passionate work!-yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That hulk which labors in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,

I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time,

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,

Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,

And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:-
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

56

William Wordsworth

THE JUST MAN1

Hoth not before the fury quake

E that is just and firm of will

Of mobs that instigate to ill,

Nor hath the tyrant's menace skill

His fixed resolve to shake;

Nor Auster, at whose wild command

The Adriatic billows dash,

Nor Jove's dread thunder-launching hand:
Yea, if the globe should fall, he'll stand

Serene amidst the crash.

Horace

1 The beginning of the third ode of the third book. Translated by Sir heodore Martin.

267

CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE

[OW happy is he born or taught

HOW

That serveth not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought,

And silly truth his highest skill!

Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death;
Untied unto the world with care
Of princely love or vulgar breath;

Who hath his life from rumors freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great;

Who envieth none whom chance doth raise

Or vice; who never understood

How deepest wounds are given with praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who God doth late and early pray

More of his grace than gifts to lend;

Who entertains the harmless day

With a well-chosen book or friend;

-This man is free from servile bands

Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, he hath all.

Sir Henry Wotton