Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams
Are but the needful preludes of the truth :
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd,
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith.
This fine old world of ours is but a child

Yet in the go-cart. Patience! give it time
To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides.'

In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks, Among six boys, head under head, and look'd No little lily-handed Baronet he,

A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman,

A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep,

A raiser of huge melons and of pine,

A patron of some thirty charities,

A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none;
Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn;

Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those
That stood the nearest-now address'd to speech-

Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed
Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year
To follow a shout rose again, and made

The long line of the approaching rookery swerve
From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer
From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang
Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout

More joyful than the city-roar that hails

Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs their parks some dozen times a year

Give up

To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried, I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away.

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, So much the gathering darkness charm'd: we sat

But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,

Perchance upon the future man: the walls

Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd,

And gradually the powers of the night,

That range above the region of the wind,

Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up
Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds,

Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

Last little Lilia, rising quietly,

Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph

From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.

THE END.

N

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

In one Volume, Price 98., cloth,

POEMS. BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

SIXTH EDITION.