2.

Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so earnestly then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding-whip
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,

And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.

3.

Why sits he here in his father's chair?
That old man never comes to his place:
Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?
For only once, in the village street,
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face,

A

gray old wolf and a lean.

Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat;

MAUD.

For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit,
She might by a true descent be untrue;
And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet:
Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due
To the sweeter blood by the other side;
Her mother has been a thing complete,
However she came to be so allied.

And fair without, faithful within,

Maud to him is nothing akin :

Some peculiar mystic grace

Made her only the child of her mother,

And heap'd the whole inherited sin

On that huge scapegoat of the race,

All,

all upon

the brother.

4.

Peace, angry spirit, and let him be!

Has not his sister smiled on me?

XIV.

1.

MAUD has a garden of roses

And lilies fair on a lawn;

There she walks in her state

And tends upon bed and bower;

And thither I climb'd at dawn

And stood by her garden-gate ;

A lion ramps at the top,

He is claspt by a passion-flower.

2.

Maud's own little oak-room

(Which Maud, like a precious stone

The bitter springs of anger and fear;

Down too, down at your own fireside,
With the evil tongue and the evil ear,

For each is at war with mankind.

4.

Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand,

Like some of the simple great ones gone

For ever and ever by,

One still strong man in a blatant land,
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat- one
Who can rule and dare not lie.

Then let come what come may,

What matter if I go mad,

I shall have had my day.

2.

Let the sweet heavens endure,

Not close and darken above me