Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

e' Singing most joyfully.

Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun!"

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the spindle drops from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window and looks at the sand,

And over the sand at the sea;

And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh;

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away, children;
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.

She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;

She will hear the winds howling,

Will hear the waves roar.

We shall see, while above us

The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,

A pavement of pearl.

Singing "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she;

And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."
But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow;
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starred with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanched sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie;
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side-
And then come back down.

Singing, "There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea."

G

MEMORIAL VERSES

(1850)

OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb-
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;

And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said,Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head. Physician of the iron age,

Goethe had done his pilgrimage,

He took the suffering human race,

He read each wound, each weakness clear And struck his finger on the place,

And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life-

He said, The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happinesss.

And Wordsworth!-Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice

Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us—and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime

Had fallen-on this iron time

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. He found us when the age had bound Our souls in its benumbing round;

He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.

He laid us as we lay at birth,
On the cool, flowery lap of earth.

Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.

Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,

And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly-
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.

A FINAL WORD ON AMERICA
(From an essay in the Nineteenth Century)

IR HENRY MAINE, in an admirable essay which, though not signed, betrays him for its author by its rare and characteristic qualities of mind and style-Sir Henry Maine in the Quarterly Review adopts and often reiterates a phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that "democracy is only a form

of government." He holds up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft's "History," in which the American democracy is told that its ascent to power "proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of being, and was as certain as the degrees of eternity." Let us be willing to give Sir Henry Maine his way and to allow no magnificent claim of this kind on behalf of the American democracy. Let us treat as not more solid the assertion in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Let us concede that these natural rights are a figment; that chance and circumstance, as much as deliberate foresight and design, have brought the United States into their present condition, that moreover the British rule which they threw off was not the rule of oppressors and tyrants which declaimers suppose; and that the merit of the Americans was not that of oppressed men rising against tyrants, but rather of sensible young people getting rid of stupid and overweening guardians who misunderstood and mismanaged them.

All this let us concede, if we will; but in conceding it let us not lose sight of the really important point, which is this: that their institutions do in fact suit the people of the United States sc well, and that from this suitableness they do derive so much actual benefit. As one watches the play of their institutions, the image suggests itself to one's mind of a man in a suit of clothes which fits him to perfection, leaving all his movements unimpeded and easy. It is loose where it ought to be loose, and it sits close where its sitting close is an advantage. The central government of the United States keeps in its own hands those functions which, if the nation is to have real unity, ought to be kept there; those functions it takes to itself and no others.