Long time I lay there, while a breeze would blow
    From the south softly, and, hard by, a slender
    Poplar swayed to and fro to it.  Surrender
  Was made of all myself to quiet.  No
  Least thought was in my mind of the least woe: 
    Yet the void silence slowly seemed to render
    My calmness not less calm, but yet more tender,
  And I was nigh to weeping.—­’Ere I go,’
  I thought, ’I must make all this stillness mine;
    The sky’s blue almost purple, and these three
  Hills carved against it, and the pine on pine
    The wood in their shade has.  All this I see
    So inwardly I fancy it may be
  Seen thus of parted souls by their sunshine.’

IV.  Sea-Freshness

  Look at that crab there.  See if you can’t haul
    His backward progress to this spar of a ship
    Thrown up and sunk into the sand here.  Clip
  His clipping feelers hard, and give him all
  Your hand to gripe at:  he’ll take care not fall: 
    So,—­but with heed, for you are like to slip
    In stepping on the plank’s sea-slime.  Your lip—­
  No wonder—­curves in mirth at the slow drawl
  Of the squat creature’s legs.  We’ve quite a shine
    Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind
      So fresh it must bode us good luck.  How long
  Boatman, for one and sixpence?  Line by line
    The sea comes toward us sun-ridged.  Oh! we sinned
      Taking the crab out:  let’s redress his wrong.

V. The Fire Smouldering

  I look into the burning coals, and see
    Faces and forms of things; but they soon pass,
    Melting one into other:  the firm mass
  Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually,
  Shape into shape as in a dream may be,
    Into an image other than it was: 
    And so on till the whole falls in, and has
  Not any likeness,—­face, and hand, and tree,
  All gone.  So with the mind:  thought follows thought,
    This hastening, and that pressing upon this,
      A mighty crowd within so narrow room: 
      And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come,
    The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss
  Their way, and what was so alive is nought.

Papers of “The M.S.  Society” {12}

{12} The Editor is requested to state that “M.  S.” does not here mean Manuscript.

No.  I. An Incident in the Siege of Troy, seen from a modern Observatory

  Sixteen Specials in Priam’s Keep
    Sat down to their mahogany: 
  The League, just then, had made busters cheap,
    And Hesiod writ his “Theogony,”
  A work written to prove “that, if men would be men,
  And demand their rights again and again,
  They might live like gods, have infinite smokes,
  Drink infinite rum, drive infinite mokes,
  Which would come from every part of the known
  And civilized globe, twice as good as their own,
  And, finally, Ilion, the work-shop should be
  Of the world—­one vast manufactory!”