Grass of Parnassus | Page 7

the end
thereof.
VERSES
MARTIAL IN TOWN.
Last night, within the stifling train,
Lit by the foggy lamp o'erhead,

Sick of the sad Last News, I read
Verse of that joyous child of Spain,
Who dwelt when Rome was waxing cold,
Within the Roman din and
smoke.
And like my heart to me they spoke,
These accents of his
heart of old:-
"Brother, had we but time to live,
And fleet the careless hours
together,
With all that leisure has to give
Of perfect life and

peaceful weather,
"The Rich Man's halls, the anxious faces,
The weary Forum, courts,
and cases
Should know us not; but quiet nooks,
But summer shade
by field and well,
But county rides, and talk of books,
At home,
with these, we fain would dwell!
"Now neither lives, but day by day
Sees the suns wasting in the west,

And feels their flight, and doth delay
To lead the life he loveth
best."
So from thy city prison broke,
Martial, thy wail for life misspent,

And so, through London's noise and smoke
My heart replies to the
lament.
For dear as Tagus with his gold,
And swifter Salo, were to thee,
So
dear to me the woods that fold
The streams that circle Fernielea!
APRIL ON TWEED.
As birds are fain to build their nest
The first soft sunny day,
So
longing wakens in my breast
A month before the May,
When now
the wind is from the West,
And Winter melts away.
The snow lies yet on Eildon Hill,
But soft the breezes blow.
If
melting snows the waters fill,
We nothing heed the snow,
But we
must up and take our will,--
A fishing will we go!
Below the branches brown and bare,
Beneath the primrose lea,
The
trout lies waiting for his fare,
A hungry trout is he;
He's hooked,
and springs and splashes there
Like salmon from the sea!
Oh, April tide's a pleasant tide,
However times may fall,
And sweet
to welcome Spring, the Bride,
You hear the mavis call;
But all
adown the water-side
The Spring's most fair of all.

TIRED OF TOWNS.
'When we spoke to her of the New Jerusalem, she said she would rather
go to a country place in Heaven.'
Letters from the Black Country.
I'm weary of towns, it seems a'most a pity
We didn't stop down i' the
country and clem,
And you say that I'm bound for another city,
For
the streets o' the New Jerusalem.
And the streets are never like Sheffield, here,
Nor the smoke don't
cling like a smut to THEM;
But the water o' life flows cool and clear

Through the streets o' the New Jerusalem.
And the houses, you say, are of jasper cut,
And the gates are gaudy
wi' gold and gem;
But there's times I could wish as the gates was
shut--
The gates o' the New Jerusalem.
For I come from a country that's over-built
Wi' streets that stifle, and
walls that hem,
And the gorse on a common's worth all the gilt
And
the gold of your New Jerusalem.
And I hope that they'll bring me, in Paradise,
To green lanes leafy wi'
bough and stem--
To a country place in the land o' the skies,
And
not to the New Jerusalem.
SCYTHE SONG.
Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe,
What is the word methinks ye
know,
Endless over-word that the Scythe
Sings to the blades of the
grass below?
Scythes that swing in the grass and clover,
Something,
still, they say as they pass;
What is the word that, over and over,

Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?
Hush, ah hush, the Scythes are saying,
Hush, and heed not, and fall

asleep;
Hush, they say to the grasses swaying,
Hush, they sing to
the clover deep!
Hush--'tis the lullaby Time is singing--
Hush, and
heed not, for all things pass,
Hush, ah hush! and the Scythes are
swinging
Over the clover, over the grass!
PEN AND INK.
Ye wanderers that were my sires,
Who read men's fortunes in the
hand,
Who voyaged with your smithy fires
From waste to waste
across the land,
Why did you leave for garth and town
Your life by
heath and river's brink,
Why lay your gipsy freedom down
And
doom your child to Pen and Ink?
You wearied of the wild-wood meal
That crowned, or failed to crown,
the day;
Too honest or too tame to steal
You broke into the beaten
way;
Plied loom or awl like other men,
And learned to love the
guineas' chink--
Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then
To earn so
few--with Pen and Ink!
Where it hath fallen the tree must lie.
'Tis over late for ME to roam,

Yet the caged bird who hears the cry
Of his wild fellows fleeting
home,
May feel no sharper pang than mine,
Who seem to hear,
whene'er I think,
Spate in the stream, and wind in pine,
Call me to
quit dull Pen and Ink.
For then the spirit wandering,
That slept within the blood, awakes;

For then the summer and the spring
I fain would meet by streams and
lakes;
But ah, my Birthright long is sold,
But custom chains me,
link on link,
And I must get me, as of old,
Back to my tools, to Pen
and Ink.
A DREAM.
Why will you haunt my sleep?
You know it may