W

The Old Home.

E love the well beloved place

Where first we gazed upon the sky; The roofs that heard our earliest cry Will shelter one of stranger race.

We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.

One whispers, "Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird,

In native hazels, tassel hung."

The other answers, "Yea, but here

Thy feet have strayed in after hours, With thy best friend among the bowers, And this had made them trebly dear."

These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game,
That will not yield each other way.

I turn to go: my feet are set

To leave the pleasant fields and farms;

They mix in one another's arms

To one pure image of regret.

From "The Princess."

EARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean; Tears from the depths of some divine despair Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the under world
Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge!

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds.
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned.
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in life! the days that are no more!

Break, Break, Break.

REAK, break, break,

On thy cold, gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

Oh, well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play!

Oh, well for the sailor lad

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To the haven under the hill;

But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me!

Ring Out, Wild Bells.

ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night—
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new-
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times,

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand, Ring out the darkness of the land

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

The Water-Mill.

ISTEN to the water-mill,

Through the live long day,

How the clicking of the wheel

Wears the weary hours away—
Languidly the Autumn wind

Stirs the withered leaves;
On the field the reapers sing,
Binding up the sheaves.