We watched her breathing through the night,

Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,

So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers

To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,

Our fears our hopes belied

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,

Her quiet eyelids closed-she had
Another morn than ours.

The Haunted House.

Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural and full of contradictions;

Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.

It might be only on enchanted ground;
It might be merely by a thought's expansion;
But in the spirit or the flesh I found
An old deserted Mansion. . . .

Unhinged the iron gates half-open hung,
Jarred by the gusty gales of many winters
That from its crumbled pedestal had flung
One marble globe in splinters. . .

With shattered panes the grassy court was starred,
The time-worn coping-stone had lumbered after;
And through the ragged roof the sky shone barred
With naked beam and rafte:. . . .

...

The fountain was adry-neglect and time
Had marred the work of artisan and mason,
And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime,
Sprawled in the sacred bason.

...

How widely its agencies vary

To save-to ruin-to curse-to bless

As even its minted coins express,

Now stamped with the image of good Queen Bess,

And now of a Bloody Mary.

Miss Kilmansegg, Her Moral.

I remember, I remember,
The fir-trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky.

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.

Poems.

238. D. M. Moir (Delta), 1798-1851. (Handbook, par. 235.)

Casa Wappy.

Thou wert a vision of delight,

To bless us given;

Beauty embodied to our sight,

A type of heaven;

So dear to us thou wert, thou art
Even less thine own self than a part

Of mine and of thy mother's heart-Casa Wappy! ...

We mourn for thee when blind blank night

The chamber fills;

We grieve for thee when morn's first light

Reddens the hills:

The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea,

All, to the wallflower and wild pea,

Are changed-we saw the world through thee-Casa Wappy.

And though, perchance, a smile may gleam

Of casual mirth,

It doth not own, whate'er it seem,

An inward birth:

We miss thy small step on the stair;

We miss thee at thine evening prayer!

All day we miss thee, everywhere-Casa Wappy!

Snows muffled earth when thou didst go,

In life's spring bloom,

Down to the appointed house below

The silent tomb.

But now the green leaves of the tree,

The cuckoo and 'the busy bee'

Return-but with them bring not thee-Casa Wappy!

The pet-name given to a beloved child of the author's.

"Tis so; but can it be (wild flowers
Revive again)

Man's doom, in death that we and ours
For aye remain?

Oh, can it be, that o'er the grave

The grass renewed should yearly wave,

Yet God forget our child to save?-Casa Wappy!

It cannot be; for were it so

Thus man could die,

Life were a mockery, Thought were woe,

And Truth a lie:

Heaven were a coinage of the brain,

Religion frenzy, Virtue vain

And all our hopes to meet again-Casa Wappy!...

Farewell, then-for a while, farewell—

Pride of my heart!

It cannot be that long we dwell

Thus torn apart:

Time's shadows like the shuttle flee:

And, dark howe'er life's night may be,

Beyond the grave I'll meet with thee-Casa Wappy!

Out of seventeen stanzas.

239. Robert Pollok, 1799-1827. (Handbook, par. 236.)

The Genius of Byron.

He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced.
As some vast river of unfailing source,

Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed,
And oped new fountains in the human heart.
Where Fancy halted, weary in her flight,
In other men, his, fresh as morning, rose,
And soared untrodden heights, and seemed at home,
Where angels bashful looked. Others, though great,
Beneath their argument seemed struggling whiles;
He from above descending, stooped to touch
The loftiest thought; and proudly stooped, as though
It scarce deserved his verse. With Nature's self

• Byron appeared as Scott's poetical reputation declined

He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest
At will with all her glorious majesty.

He laid his hand upon the Ocean's mane,'
And played familiar with his hoary locks:
Stood on the Alps, stood on the Apennines;
And with the thunder talked as friend to friend;
And wove his garland of the lightning's wing,
In sportive twist, the lightning's fiery wing,
Which, as the footsteps of the dreadful God,
Marching upon the storm in vengeance, seemed;
Then turned, and with the grasshopper, who sung
His evening song beneath his feet, conversed.
Suns, moons, and stars, and clouds, his sisters were ;
Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds, and storms,
His brothers, younger brothers, whom he scarce
As equals deemed. All passions of all men,
The wild and tame, the gentle and severe;
All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane;
All creeds, all seasons, Time, Eternity;
All that was hated, and all that was dear;
All that was hoped, all that was feared, by man,
He tossed about, as tempest-withered leaves;
Then, smiling, looked upon the wreck he made.
With terror now he froze the cowering blood,
And now dissolved the heart in tenderness;
Yet would not tremble, would not weep himself;
But back into his soul retired, alone,
Dark, sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously
On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet.
So Ocean, from the plains his waves had late
To desolation swept, retired in pride,
Exulting in the glory of his might,

And seemed to mock the ruin he had wrought.
As some fierce comet of tremendous size,
To which the stars did reverence as it passed,

So he, through learning and through fancy, took

His flight sublime, and on the loftiest top

Of Fame's dread mountain sat; not soiled and worn,

As if he from the earth had laboured up;

Childe Harold, c. iv. st. 184; The Foscari, i. sc. I. b Manfred; Childe Harold.