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Dear home in England, safe and fast
If but in thee my lot lie cast,

The past shall seem a nothing past
To thee, dear home, if won at last ;
Dear home in England, won at last.

Clough, 1852.

Home-Thoughts from Abroad

Oн, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

ΙΟΙ

The Soldier's Dream

Browning.

OUR bugles sang truce-for the night-cloud had lower'd, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd, The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roam'd on a desolate track :
'Twas autumn,—and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore, From my home and my weeping friends never to part; My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart.

'Stay, stay with us!-rest! thou art weary and worn ';
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay ;-
But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear—

-melted away.

Campbell.

102

Vailima

BLOWS the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,

Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,

Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,

My heart remembers how!

Blows] inversion of grammar=the wind blows.
whaups] curlews.

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places, Standing-stones on the vacant wine-red moor,

Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanish'd

races,

And winds, austere and pure :

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;

Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees

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In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

YORK. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;

For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

GAUNT. Oh, but they say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony :

Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must say is listen'd more

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets is sweetest, last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past :
Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

YORK. No; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds,

.

Direct not him whose way himself will choose: 'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose. GAUNT. Methinks I am a prophet new inspired

And thus expiring do foretell of him :

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,

For violent fires soon burn out themselves;

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm :

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

pelting] paltry, petty.

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,

How happy then were my ensuing death!..

Shakespeare.

104

London, 1802

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and
pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again ;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Wordsworth.

105

BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

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This is my own, my native land!'

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,

From wandering on a foreign strand ?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;

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