A beckoning spirit of gladness seemed afloat,
  That lightly danced in laughing air before us: 
The earth was all in tune, and you a note
    Of Nature’s happy chorus.

’Twas like a vernal morn, yet overhead
  The leafless boughs across the lane were knitting: 
The ghost of some forgotten Spring, we said,
    O’er Winter’s world comes flitting.

Or was it Spring herself, that, gone astray,
  Beyond the alien frontier chose to tarry? 
Or but some bold outrider of the May,
    Some April-emissary?

The apparition faded on the air,
  Capricious and incalculable comer.—­
Wilt thou too pass, and leave my chill days bare,
    And fall’n my phantom Summer?

AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES LAMB, IN EDMONTON

Not here, O teeming City, was it meet
  Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose,
  But where the multitudinous life-tide flows
Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet
Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat
  Of flocks in Spring-time, there should Earth enclose
  His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes,
There, ’neath the music of thy million feet. 
In love of thee this lover knew no peer. 
  Thine eastern or thy western fane had made
  Fit habitation for his noble shade. 
Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear,
Not here, in rustic exile, O not here,
  Thy Elia like an alien should be laid!

LINES IN A FLYLEAF OF “CHRISTABEL”

Inhospitably hast thou entertained,
O Poet, us the bidden to thy board,
Whom in mid-feast, and while our thousand mouths
Are one laudation of the festal cheer,
Thou from thy table dost dismiss, unfilled. 
Yet loudlier thee than many a lavish host
We praise, and oftener thy repast half-served
Than many a stintless banquet, prodigally
Through satiate hours prolonged; nor praise less well
Because with tongues thou hast not cloyed, and lips
That mourn the parsimony of affluent souls,
And mix the lamentation with the laud.

LINES TO OUR NEW CENSOR

[Mr. Oscar Wilde, having discovered that England is unworthy of him, has announced his resolve to become a naturalised Frenchman.]

And wilt thou, Oscar, from us flee,
  And must we, henceforth, wholly sever? 
Shall thy laborious jeux-d’esprit
  Sadden our lives no more for ever?

And all thy future wilt thou link
  With that brave land to which thou goest? 
Unhappy France! we used to think
  She touched, at Sedan, fortune’s lowest.

And you’re made French as easily
  As you might change the clothes you’re wearing? 
Fancy!—­and ’tis so hard to be
  A man of sense and modest bearing.

May fortitude beneath this blow
  Fail not the gallant Gallic nation! 
By past experience, well we know
  Her genius for recuperation.