For surest of sure things is helpe in love.

But now your eyes shall learne, and grieve not.-See
Beholde, for sample, one faire household dove,
One of our England's angels, not yet called above.'

XXXIX

While thus he spoke, lo! Wisdom's stage became
A plot of grass within a bowery nook,

In which, as though she round her felt the same
There walked a youthfull ladie with a book,

Loving now that, now bird, now bud, now brook,

The more for what in the sweete page she red,

As you might guesse by her referring look. "Tis Sidney's sister,' Wisdom softly sed :

'With brother's love begins the love that well shall spred.

XL

'With brother's love, and love of parents good, And love of all that with celestiall aire

Fills home, begins the love that is endued

With gifts to make another's home as faire.

There seeke your Sirens; finde your first loves there, And earne them soone, and love them first and last. There only, or with grief-taught sweetnesse rare, Shapes will ye finde, in whose one mould are cast Fair Seeming and True Being, bound in substance fast.

XLI

'See, in her bower waiteth a spinning-wheele, And, 'tis a herbal nigheth the guitar.

She studieth to clothe the poor, and heale,
And blithely then singeth, as though her star

Shone on a worlde of peace without a jar;
Grave looks in her are sweete as gay in others,
And gay in her true as their gravest are:

Hence flowereth she, pride of the flower of brothers,

Hence will be pride and flower of dearest wives and mothers.'

XLII

Here the sweet ladie, turning as he spoke,

Her gentle steps in walking to retrace,

Oh! what a transport in the youthes awoke,
Simply at witnessing no second face!

They waited not to note the shape and grace;
They loved the very falling of her haire;

Nay, deemed its ribbon of celestiall race.

Her coming had been all that was most faire; Her going beat all comings, angells' though they were. 356 seeke] seek ye 1860.

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360

370

XLIII

No shout ensued; no noise; nought save a murmur
Of their entranced souls, each unto each;

None needed more their faith in love made firmer;
Here fairest faire was found without impeach;

Here an earth-heaven, which if they might not reach
(So high a star in place was Sidney's sister),
Nathless of heaven the like they might beseech :

Therefore, in thought, each with deare worship kissed her,
When, as in cruell dreame, lo! suddenlie they missed her.

XLIV

Missed her; for now as suddenlie there rose

The deepe church-organ's gently-gathering might,
With which the sage was duly wont to close
Teachings, harmonious with good and right.

Rose then his schoole, and parted for the night

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And as they went, the great heaven-opening sight

Each to his thoughts, sweete as those notes, and strong;

Of th' order-keeping stars, never yet wrong,

Shewed to what great sweete ends all firme good thoughts belong.

POLITICAL AND CRITICAL POEMS

POLITICS AND POETICS

OR, THE DESPERATE SITUATION OF A JOURNALIST UNHAPPILY SMITTEN WITH THE LOVE OF RHYME

[First published in The Reflector, No. II, 1811; reprinted in the second edition of The Feast of the Poets, 1815, with the note: These lines were omitted in the first edition, on account of the general indifference of the versification; but, as they have been thought to resemble that mixture of fancy and familiarity, which the public have approved in the Feast of the Poets', and as they involve also the anticipation of an event in the writer's life, which afterwards took place, and which he can look back upon, thank Heaven, without blushing for the manner in which he anticipated it, they are here for the greater part reprinted.' Reprinted 1857, 1860. Text 1815.]

AGAIN I stop-again the toil refuse!
Away, for pity's sake, distracting Muse,
Nor thus come smiling with thy bridal tricks
Between my studious face and politics.

Is it for thee to mock the frowns of fate?

Look round, look round, and mark my desperate state,
Cannot thy gifted eyes a sight behold,

That might have quelled the Lesbian bard of old,

And made the blood of Dante's self run cold?

Lo, first the table spread with fearful books,
In which, whoe'er can help it, never looks;
Letters to Lords, Remarks, Reflections, Hints,
Lives, snatched a moment from the public prints;
Pamphlets to prove, on pain of our undoing,
That rags are wealth, and reformation ruin,
Journals, and briefs, and bills, and laws of libel,

And, bloated and blood-red, the placeman's annual Bible."

Scarce from the load, as from a heap of dead,
My poor old Homer shows his living head;
Milton, in sullen darkness, yields to fate,
And Tasso groans beneath the courtly weight;
Horace alone (the rogue!) his doom has missed,
And lies at ease upon the Pension List.

Round these, in tall imaginary chairs,
Imps ever grinning, sit my daily cares;
Distaste, delays, dislikings to begin,
Gnawings of pen, and kneadings of the chin.
Here the Blue Daemon keeps his constant stir,
Who makes a man his own barometer;

There Nightmare, horrid mass! unfeatured heap!
Prepares to seize me if I fall asleep;

And there, with hands that grasp one's very soul,
Frowns Head-ache, scalper of the studious poll;
Head-ache, who lurks at noon about the courts,
And whets his tomahawk on East's Reports.

Chief of this social game, behind me stands,
Pale, peevish, periwigged, with itching hands,
A goblin double-tailed, and cloaked in black,
Who, while I'm gravely thinking, bites my back."
Around his head flits many a harpy shape,
With jaws of parchment, and long hairs of tape,
Threatening to pounce, and turn whate'er I write,
With their own venom, into foul despite.

Let me but name the court, they swear and curse
And din me with hard names; and what is worse
'Tis now three times that I have missed my purse."..

No wonder poor Torquato went distracted,
On whose galled senses just such pranks were acted;
When the small tyrant, God knows on what ground,
With dungeons and with doctors hemmed him round.

Last, but not least, (methinks I see him now!)
With stare expectant, and a ragged brow,
Comes the foul fiend, who-let it rain or shine,
Let it be clear or cloudy, foul or fine,

Or freezing, thawing, drizzling, hailing, snowing,
Or mild, or warm, or hot, or bleak and blowing,
Or damp, or dry, or dull, or sharp, or sloppy,

Is sure to come,-the Devil, who comes for copy,1

*

But see! e'en now the Muse's charm prevails ;
The shapes are moved, the stricken circle fails;
With backward grins of malice they retire,
Scared by her seraph looks and smiles of fire.
That instant, as the hindmost shuts the door,
The bursting sunshine smites the windowed floor;
Bursts too on every side the sparkling sound
Of birds abroad; th' elastic spirits bound;
And the fresh mirth of morning breathes around:
Away, ye clouds; dull politics, give place;

Off, cares, and wants, and threats, and all the race
Of foes to freedom and to laurelled leisure —

To-day is for the Muse, and dancing Pleasure.

1 For seventeen lines printed in Reflector between ll. 58 and 59 see notes. 59 But... the Muse's] Yet... thy wondrous 1860 (=1857 throughout). 62 by her] at thy 1860. 70 laurelled] graceful 1860.

Oh for a seat in some poetic nook,

Just hid with trees, and sparkling with a brook,

Where through the quivering boughs the sunbeams shoot
Their arrowy diamonds upon flower and fruit,

While stealing airs come fuming o'er the stream,

And lull the fancy to a waking dream!

There shouldst thou come, O first of my desires,

What time the noon had spent its fiercer fires,

And all the bow'r, with chequered shadows strewn,

Glowed with a mellow twilight of its own.

There shouldst thou come, and there sometimes with thee

Might deign repair the staid Philosophy,

To taste thy fresh'ning brook, and trim thy groves,
And tell us what good task true glory loves.

I see it now!-I pierce the fairy glade,
And feel th' enclosing influence of the shade.
A thousand forms, that sport on summer eves,
Glance through the light, and whisper in the leaves,
While every bough seems nodding with a sprite,
And every air seems hushing the delight,
And the calm bliss, fixed on itself awhile,
Dimples the unconscious lips into a smile.

Anon strange music breathes ;-the fairies show
Their pranksome crowd; and in grave order go
Beside the water, singing, small and clear,

New harmonies unknown to mortal ear,

Caught upon moonlight nights from some nigh-wandering sphere.
I turn to them, and listen with fixed eyes,

And feel my spirits mount on winged ecstacies.

In vain. For now, with looks that doubly burn,
Shamed of their late defeat, my foes return;
They know their foil is short;-and shorter still,
The bliss that waits upon the Muse's will.
Back to their seats they rush, and reassume
Their ghastly rites, and sadden all the room.

O'er ears and brain the bursting wrath descends,
Cabals, misstatements, noise of private ends,
Doubts, hazards, crosses, cloud-compelling vapours,
With dire necessity to read the papers,

Judicial slaps that would have stung Saint Paul,

Costs, pityings, warnings, wits; and worse than all,
(Oh for a dose of Thelwall or of poppy!)

The fiend, the punctual fiend, that bawls for copy!
Full in the midst, like that Gorgonian spell,

Whose ravening features glared collected hell,

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90

100

76 fuming] whispering 1860.

94-100 om. 1860.

102 defeat] defect 1860.