STANZAS. Often rebuked, yet always back returning To those first feelings that were born with me, And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning For idle dreams of things which cannot be : To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region; Bring the unreal world too strangely near. I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces, And not in paths of high morality, I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding; REMEMBRANCE. Cold in the earth-and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave? Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover Over the mountains, on that northern shore, Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover Cold in the earth-and fifteen wild Decembers, Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong! No later light has lightened up my heaven, But, when the days of golden dreams had perished, Then did I check the tears of useless passion— And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, THE OLD STOIC. Riches I hold in light esteem, And if I pray, the only prayer Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear, Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore; In life and death, a chainless soul, A DEATH-SCENE. 'O Day! he cannot die When thou so fair art shining! He cannot leave thee now, While fresh west winds are blowing, Edward, awake, awake— The golden evening gleams Warm and bright on Arden's lake Arouse thee from thy dreams! Beside thee, on my knee, My dearest friend, I pray That thou, to cross the eternal sea, I hear its billows roar I see them foaming high; But no glimpse of a further shore Has blest my straining eye. Believe not what they urge Of Eden isles beyond; Turn back, froin that tempestuous surge, To thy own native land. It is not death, but pain That struggles in thy breast Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again; I cannot let thee rest!' One long look, that sore reproved me For the woe I could not bear One mute look of suffering moved me To repent my useless prayer : And, with sudden check, the heaving Not a sign of further grieving Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting; Then his eyes began to weary, But they wept not, but they changed not, So I knew that he was dying- ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. [BORN at Liverpool, Jan. 1, 1819; passed some years of his childhood at Charleston, in Virginia; was at school at Rugby from 1829 to 1837; was Scholar of Balliol and afterwards Fellow and Tutor of Oriel; resigned his offices in Oxford in 1848; was Principal of University Hall, London, for a short time afterwards; again went to America; returned in 1853 to take a post in the Education Office. He died at Florence, Nov. 13, 1861. His poems were chiefly written between 1840 and 1850, The Bothie being published in 1848, and many of the shorter poems appearing in a volume called Ambarvalia in the next year.] 'We have a foreboding,' says Mr. Lowell in one of his essays, 'that Clough, imperfect as he was in many respects, and dying before he had subdued his sensitive temperament to the sterner requirements of his art, will be thought a hundred years hence to have been the truest expression in verse of the moral and intellectual tendencies, the doubt and struggle towards settled convictions, of the period in which he lived.' If doubt and struggle were the ruling tendencies of Clough's time, this lofty estimate may well be true; for in no writer of that day are they more vividly reflected. They are the very substance of his verse, they give it strength, they impose upon it the limitations from which it suffers. Clough has never been a popular poet, and it may be doubted if he ever will be. His poetry has too much of the element of conflict, too much uncertainty, ever to become what the best of It ought to become, a household word. But from beginning to end it exhibits that devotion to truth which was in a special degree the characteristic of the finer minds of his epoch; a devotion which in his case was fostered by his early training under Arnold at Rugby, and by the atmosphere of theological controversy in which he found himself at Oxford. The warmth of his feelings, the width of his sympathies, the fineness of his physical sensibilities, made him a |