I found too late the price of loud delights

Honey in which the bees have left their stings.

MAX.

Ah! he was brightest at the noon of night.
His mind by day was like a common dell,

Through which the clown goes whistling with his cart;

You looked around, but could see nothing more,

Than in a thousand places that you

knew:

But with the night, there stole from every leaf,

Where they lay coiled in sleep, dim troops of sylphs,

Fays, and all frolic shapes, and 'neath the moon
Stood Queen Titania and her fairy court.

It is the proudest memory of my youth,

That I was his familiar, and beloved,

And knew his stream of life from fount to sea.
Hope flew before him like a setting sun;

And as he smiled on realms of rosy gold,

From out the heaven there fell a desolate night,

Filled with the welter of the lonely sea,

With wind and spray in his unsheltered hair.
I kept the key of his locked heart for years--
Could ope it when I chose. He loved not Song
With that most pure and undivided love

Which only wins her. Song fled on before ;

He followed. Pleasure, naked to the waist,

With high-flushed cheeks and loose dishevelled hair, Flung herself 'cross his path; she clasped his knees; He saw her beauty, and he was undone

His strong heart melted. It was never his,

That terriblest of virtues, Truthfulness;

That pure, high Constancy which flies right on,

As swerveless as a bullet to its mark;

Patience, that with a weary smile can bear

A load that crushes weak complaint to earth--
Patience, that eats the ripened ears, while Haste
Battens upon the green. Yet worth he had,

And strove as far as in him lay, to turn

This smoke of life to clear poetic flame;

To put a something of celestial light

Round the familiar face of every-day.

He plunged from off this crumbling shoal of Time,

Struck for the coast of Fame-with stiffened limbs Went down in sight of land.

JOHN.

I saw him once,

And, by my faith, he talked us all asleep.
The only things that struck me were his eyes,
That with their brightness held you from his face;
The thought stood in them ere 't was spoken; Wit
Laughed on you from the windows ere she danced
Out on you from the door.

HARRY.

I've heard men speak

Of Horton with such pity in their tones,

That I conceived he had been cruelly hurt

By fortune in his youth.

MAX.

As I have said,

I knew him as myself, and loved him more,
And so my knowledge is more intimate
Than yours, or yours, or any's in the world.
Love will dwell daily with Indifference,

Sleep in one room and at one table sit,

For

And never speak. Love is but known to Love. his heart was darkened like a grave By a sepulchral yew. While yet a child,

years

He had a playmate in his sunny sports;

Inseparable they were as sun and shade.

From childhood's tender sheath there burst at once

A lily-woman-sweetly grave with thoughts

Till now unknown; made silent by a heart

So full and strange, that at a passing tone,

The noiseless falling of an autumn leaf,
It trembled into tears. I often thought,

In the prophetic sorrow of her face,

Her wan pathetic smiles, more sad than tears,

I gazed upon the countenance which awed

The herdsman on the dark Judæan hills

When Jephtha's daughter passed. And so she walked

Vestured in silence; wheresoe'er she went

Loud voices drooped, her beauty carried peace

Into rude discord's heart--and had she bent

Above a soldier from the bloody trench,

The fleeting spirit would have left a smile

Behind it, on the face.

One summer day

He lay upon a tower in leafy Kent

Watching a lazy river; glorious leagues

Of woods yet gleaming with a falling shower,

O'er which a rainbow strode; a red-tiled town

Set in a tender film of azure smoke,

And here and there upon the little heights