"A prologue!" I made answer; "if you need one, In every street and square your Grace may read one."
"Cruel Papa! don't talk about Sir Harry!". So Araminta lisped; - "I'll never marry;
I loathe all men; such unromantic creatures! The coarsest tastes, and ah! the coarsest features! Betty! the salts! I'm sick with mere vexa
To hear them called the Lords of the Creation:
They swear fierce oaths, they seldom say their
And then, they shed no tears,
I, and the friend I share my sorrows with,
Medora Gertrude Wilhelmina Smith,
Will weep together through the world's disasters,
In some green vale, unplagued by Lords and
And hand in hand repose at last in death,
As chaste and cold as Queen Elizabeth."
She spoke in May, and people found in June,
This was her Prologue to the Honeymoon!
"Frederic is poor, I own it." Fanny sighs, "But then he loves me, and has deep blue
But lo! where Laura, with a frenzied air,
Seeks her kind cousin in her pony chair,
And, in a mournful voice, by thick sobs broke
Cries, "Yes, dear Anne! the favours are bespoke,
I am to have him;
so my friends decided;
The stars knew quite as much of it as I did!
You know him, love; he is so like a mummy:
I wonder whether diamonds will become me!
He talks of nothing but the price of stocks;
However, I'm to have my opera box.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And, if I had the spell
To call the buried well,
Which one would I?
If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,
Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy
To lead me to his joy.
There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.
Know'st thou not ghosts to sue,
No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
And breathe thy last.
So out of Life's fresh crown
Fall like a rose-leaf down.
Thus are the ghosts to woo;
Thus are all dreams made true,
Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leaked the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
"He giveth His beloved sleep."
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose,
Who "giveth His beloved sleep!"
And, friends, dear friends,
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one, most loving of you all,
Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall
'He giveth His beloved sleep.'"
It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying.
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying:
Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.
O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace and died
And now, what time ye all may read through
wandering lights departed,
How discord on the music fell, and darkness on
And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds and
He wore no less a loving face because so brokenhearted;
PERPLEXED MUSIC
Experience, like a pale musician holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand
Whence harmonies we cannot understand,
Of God's will in His worlds, the strain unfolds
In sad perplexèd minors. Deathly colds
Fall on us while we hear and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancy-land
With nightingales in visionary wolds.
We murmur, "Where is any certain tune
Of measured music, in such notes as these?"
But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
Are not so minded: their fine ear hath won
The issue of completed cadences;
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper-
What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,
For all the heat o' the day, till it declines,
And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with His odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines,
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labour, to their heart and hand 10
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God's grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand
And share its dew-drop with another near.
True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn,
And break away the gauds and armlets worn
By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn:
Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man's name: and while before
The world thou burnest in a poet fire,
We see thy woman's heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and
higher,
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore,
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!
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