A snatch, maybe, of ancient song; Some breathings of a deathless mind, Some love of truth, some hate of wrong. And to myself in games I said,      "What mean the books? Can I win fame? I would be like the faithful dead A fearless man, and pure of blame. I may have failed, my School may fail; I tremble, but thus much I dare; I love her. Let the critics rail, My brethren and my home are there. July 28th, 1863. 

  

       CLOVELLY BEACH     

      Oh, music! breathe me something old to-day,      Some fine air gliding in from far away, Through to the soul that lies behind the clay. This hour, if thou did'st ever speak before, Speak in the wave that sobs upon the shore, Speak in the rill that trickles from the moor. Known was this sea's slow chant when I was young; To me these rivulets sing as once they sung, No need this hour of human throat and tongue. The Dead who loved me heard this selfsame tide. Oh that the Dead were listening by my side, And I could give the fondness then denied. Once in the parlour of my mother's sire One sang, "And ye shall walk in silk attire."      Then my cold childhood woke to strange desire.       That was an unconfessed and idle spell, A drop of dew that on a blossom fell; And what it wrought I cannot surely tell. Far off that thought and changed, like lines that stay On withered canvas, pink and pearly grey, When rose and violet hues have passed away. Oh, had I dwelt with music since that night! What life but that is life, what other flight Escapes the plaguing doubts of wrong and right! Oh music! once I felt the touch of thee, Once when this soul was as the chainless sea. Oh, could'st thou bid me even now be free! April, 1865. 

  

       AN EPOCH IN A SWEET LIFE     

      This sun, whose javelins strike and gild the wheat, Who gives the nectarine half an orb of bloom, Burns on my life no less, and beat by beat Shapes that grave hour when boyhood hears her doom. Between this glow of pious eve and me, Lost moments, thick as clouds of summer flies, Specks of old time, which else one could not see, Made manifest in the windless calm, arise. Streaks fairy green are traced on backward ways, Through vacant regions lightly overleapt, With pauses, where in soft pathetic haze Are phantoms of the joys that died unwept.  

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