POETRY.
AN EXPOSTULATION.
WHY sad, beside that western water fair P
The waves chime welcomes free, The hills that charmed your maiden years stand there, By the sail. haunted sea.
And you may watch the rolling channel sweep Round the blue coast away To the far foreland, brooding o'er the deep, A giant warder grey.
lEolian airs of mighty poets dead Make life strong, radiant, wide, Where heather flushes, thy my scents are shed, They blow from Quantock-side.
And blent with those, floats past a cosmic strain From Clevedon's grassy slope, Tuning the murmur of a personal pain To man's immortal hope.
Is it the shadow of a sadness born Of notes less firm than these,— The wistful echo of a lyre forlorn That lacked their health, their ease P The troubled music of the voice of him Who in Carthusian gloom, And where the Valais pines climb close and dim, Sighed deep by faith's bleak tomb P The fear that when we both on light, and hill, And stream, have looked our last, We find no dawn a nobler ether fill, No love to hold by fast P Let us not think the quenchless inward cry Equivocates or fails, That the large wonder of the world and sky No vaster vision veils ; That mind, emotion, mortal smiles and team A boundless lot sublime Possess not, when imperishable years Complete the tale of time.
Even our minstrel, stately, clear, and sweet, From his misgivings free, Looked the lost sister of his soul to "greet Across infinity." JOSEPH TRUMAN.
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