POETRY.

AT LYME REGIS.

SEPTEMBER, 1870.

I.

CALM, azure, marble sea

As a fair palace pavement largely spread, Where the gray bastions of the eternal hills. Lean over languidly, Bosom'd with leafy trees, and garlanded 1 n.

Peace is on all I view ; Sunshine and peace ; earth clear as heaven one hour ; Save where the sailing cloud its dusky line Ruffles along the blue, Brush'd by the soft wing of the silent shower.

m.

In no profounder calm Did the great Spirit over ocean brood, Ere the first hill his yet unclouded crest Rear'd, or the first fair palm Doubled her maiden beauty in the flood.

Yet if the sapphire veil That rounds the verge were rent aside, what fast Fleshings of flame blood-red, and blood-red smoke, What crash of steel-tipp'd hail, Across this calm what horror would be cast

Here, in her ancient home Peace, sovran set since Commons warr'd with King :- There, the fair plains where none has lived his life Unvex'd by din of drum, Or clash of arms, or panic hurrying.

Here, Nature's gentlest hues :- There, on the dinted field a crimson stream, River of death, once life, corrupts the turf ; And the pure natural dews Rise rank and lurid mid the charnel steam.

vn.

Here, in God's acre, death Smooths a green couch of rest for the white head,— There, atack'd in piles of tortured flesh, the young, Gasping a quick, hot breath, Envy the gentler portion of the dead.

VIII.

I see the dark array As a long snake unroll itself, and thrust Against a wall of flame ; then decompose, Arrested in mid way ; Writhing at first ; now motionless in dust.

Unswerving files ! ye went Right on the gaping mouths of hail and fire, For God and Fatherland,—as they, whose lives, Through glorious error spent, At Balaklava made the world admire !

I.

Or a beleaguer'd town The floods of war out all around surveys, And holds on with stout heart, though the dread bomb In her mid streets rains down, And wolf-gaunt famine prowls through all her ways.

xI.

— Fair France! Great Germany ! What less than demon impulse, lust of ill, Could taint the natural love of man for man With hellish savagery, Its selfish aims through ruin to fulfil?

au.

Was it for this your hands Master'd each kindly trade, each art of life? The mind explored all knowledge, and the wit Flash'd wisdom through all lands ; And all to glut the cannon and the knife?

xm.

Not when earth soaks with gore, And man on man halloos the fiendish chase, Send forth your red-cross knights to nurse the dead!

But going forth before, Staunch the mad jealousy of race 'gainst race.

xtv.

The boast of brotherhood, The pride of science, progress, skill, and wealth, Shame us :—for each hard-conquer'd gain, the world Rolls back its weary road, And the kind makes no step to higher health.

xv.

He who against the slope

Heaved the returning rock, and heaved again, Was man's true ancestor :—ourselves to know, In hope to work 'gainst hope,—

This is the sole advance the Fates ordain.

XVL

Peace!—in the very word There seems a blessing : Peace ! From thoughts too deep Turn to fair Nature's teachings, and the calm, By fretful man unstirr'd, Her gentle laws in even current keep.

XV/L

No fruitless strife she holds ; No jealous war for bare supremacy ; But Order binds the elements, and Love By strong attraction folds All atoms in one golden unity.

xvm.

Nor fair Utopian plan Nor false horizons lure her from her road ; Where Fete says 'Yield,' she yields ; and what she would Changing for what she can, Transmutes all evil into final good.

God's way be beat divines Who tracks it, frankly bold, yet calm with awe : To whom, through strife, and seeming waste, and death,, The night of Nature, shines The central star of Reason and of Law. F. T. P.