SONG. (From "The Princess.'') S through the land at eve we went, We fell out, my wife and I, For when we came where lies the child BUT ALFRED TENNYSON. ENOCH'S RETURN. (From "Enoch Arden.") UT Enoch yearned to see her face again; If I might look on her sweet face again And know that she is happy!" So the thought Haunted and harass'd him, and drove him forth, At evening when the dull November day The ruddy square of comfortable light, For Philip's dwelling fronted on the street, The latest house to landward; but behind, With one small gate that open'd on the waste, Flourish'd a little garden square and wall'd; And in it throve an ancient evergreen, A yew-tree, and all round it ran a walk Of shingle, and a walk divided it; But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole Up by the wall, behind the yew; and thence That which he better might have shunned, if griefs Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw. For cups and silver on the burnish'd board Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth: And on the right hand of the hearth he saw Philip, the slighted suitor of old times, Stont, rosy, with his babe across his knees; And o'er her second father stoopt a girl, A later but a loftier Annie Lee, Fair-haired and tall, and from her lifted hand Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring Now when the dead man come to life beheld His wife his wife no more, and saw the babe Hers, yet not his, upou the father's knee, And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness, And his own children tall and beautiful, And him, that other, reigning in his place, Lord of his rights and of his children's loveThen he, tho' Miriam Lane had told him all, Because things seen are mightier than things heard, Stagger'd and shook, holding the branch, and fear'd To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry, He, therefore, turning softly like a thief, Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot, And feeling all along the garden-wall, Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found, Crept to the gate, and open'd it, and closed, As lightly as a sick man's chamber door, Behind him, and came out upon the waste. And there he would have knelt, but that his knees Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug O God Almighty, blessed Savior, Thou There speech and thought and nature failed a ALFRED TENNYSON. TO THE "EVE" OF POWERS. H, thine is not the woe of love forlorn That Niobe's maternal anguish wears, Nor yet the grief of sin, remorseful born, Canova's Magdalen so gently bears; But the sad consciousness that through a wrong Conceived in self, and for a selfish end, Immeasurable pain will now belong To unborn millions, with their life to blend; A heritage whereby sweet nature's face, So radiant with hope, and love's dear spell, And all on earth that breathes of joy or grace, |