THIS labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon,

Riding at anchor off the orient sun,

Had broken its cable, and stood out to space

Down some frore Arctic of the aerial ways:

And now, back warping from the inclement main,

Its vapourous shroudage drenched with icy rain,

It swung into its azure roads again;

When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you

Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid our frozen crew.

To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong,

Giver of golden days and golden song;

Nor is it by an all-unhappy plan

You bear the name of me, his constant Magian.

Yet ah! from any other that it came,

Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name.

When at the first those tidings did they bring,

My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing:

Though well may such a title him endower,

For whom a poet's prayer implores a poet's power.

The Assisian, who kept plighted faith to three,

To Song, to Sanctitude, and Poverty,

(In two alone of whom most singers prove

A fatal faithfulness of during love!);

He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken

How God he could love more, he so loved men;

The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy;

Poems on Children

And Fletcher's fellow-from these, and not from me,

Take you your name, and take your legacy!

Or, if a right successive you declare

When worms', for ivies, intertwine my hair,

Take but this Poesy that now followeth

My clayey hest with sullen servile breath,

Made then your happy freedman by testating death.

My song I do but hold for you in trust,

I ask you but to blossom from my dust.

When you have compassed all weak I began,

Diviner poet, and ah! diviner man;

The man at feud with the per during child

In you before song's altar nobly reconciled;

From the wise heavens I half shall smile to see

How little a world, which owned you, needed me.

If while you keep the vigils of the night

For your wild tears make darkness all too bright,

Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps

As it played lover over your sweet sleeps,

Think it a golden crevice in the sky,

Which I have pierced but to behold you by!

And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,

And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;

Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance

The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,

Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod

Among the bearded counsellors of God;

For, if in Eden as on earth are we.

I,sure shall keep a younger company:

Pass where beneath their ranged gonfalons

The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns.

Francis M. W. M.