But suffer me to pace
Round the forbidden place,
Lingering a minute!

Like outcast spirits who wait
And see through heaven's gate
Angels within it.

THE AGE OF WISDOM.

Ho, pretty Page with the dimpled chin

That never has known the barber's shear!

All your wish is woman to win :
This is the way that boys begin :

Wait till you come to Forty Year!

Curly gold locks cover foolish brains;
Billing and cooing is all your cheer,
Sighing, and singing of midnight strains
Under Bonnybell's window panes :
Wait till you come to Forty Year!

Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear:
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to Forty Year.

Pledge me round! I bid ye declare,
All good fellows whose beards are grey!
Did not the fairest of the fair
Common grow and wearisome ere

Ever a month was pass'd away?

The reddest lips that ever were kiss'd,
The brightest eyes that ever have shone,
May pray and whisper, and we not list,
Or look away; and never be miss'd

Ere yet ever a month is gone.

Gillian's dead: God rest her bier!

How I loved her twenty years syne! Marian's married: but I sit here, Alone and merry at Forty Year,

Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine.

SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE. 1810-1883.

THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS.

Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaff'd, and swore,—
A drunken Private of the Buffs,
Who never look'd before :
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,

And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewilder'd, and alone,

A heart with English instinct fraught
He yet can call his own.
Ay! tear his body limb from limb!
Bring cord, or axe, or flame!
He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seem'd
Like dreams to come and go ;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam'd,
One sheet of living snow;

The smoke above his father's door
In grey soft eddyings hung,—
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doom'd by himself, so young?

Yes! honour calls: with strength like steel

He put the vision by.

Let dusky Indians whine and kneel!

An English lad must die.

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,

With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed,
Vain those all-shattering guns,
Unless proud England keep untamed
The strong heart of her sons!
So let his name through Europe ring!
A man of mean estate

Who died as firm as Sparta's king,
Because his soul was great.

ALFRED DOMETT.

1811

WHAT MATTER?

I

What matter, what matter, O friend! though the sea In lines of silvery fire may slide

O'er the sands so tawny and tender and wide,

Murmuring soft as a bee?

No matter! no matter! in sooth, said he :
But the sunlit sands and the silvery play

Are a truthful smile long pass'd away:

No more to me.

II

What matter, what matter, dear friend! can it be
If a long blue stripe, dim-swelling and dark
Beneath the lighter blue headland, may mark
All of the town we can see?

No matter! no matter! in truth, said he :
But the streak, that fades and fades as we part,
Is a broken voice and a breaking heart:
No more to me.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

1809-1861.

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.

What was he doing, the great God Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great God Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river :
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great God Pan,
While turbidly flow'd the river;

And hack'd and hew'd, as a great God can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great God Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring,

And notch'd the poor dry empty thing

In holes, as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laugh'd the great God Pan, Laugh'd while he sat by the river,—

"The only way, since Gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power, by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great God Pan !
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great God Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man!

The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

A FALSE STEP.

Sweet! thou hast trod on a heart :
Pass! there's a world full of men ;

And women as fair as thou art

Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepp'd unaware,
(Malice not one can impute);

And why should a heart have been there
In the way of a fair woman's foot?

It was not a stone that could trip,

Nor was it a thorn that could rend:

Put up thy proud under-lip!

'Twas merely the heart of a friend.