392 Prose by a Versifier, and Verse by a Proser t f Oct. 



material with the intellectual world, like the realization of a grand 

 architectural di-eam. Talk not to me of the Eternal City — in her 

 proudest days of imperial magnificence she could not furnish such a 

 view — thrice be that Champagne lauded ! 



But, ever and anon, of grief subdued 

 There comes a token like a scorpion's sting. 

 Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness embued ; 

 And slight withal may be the things which bring 

 Back on the heart the weight which it would fling 

 Aside for ever ; it may be a sound, — 

 A tone of music, — summer's eve, — or spring, — 

 A flower, — the wind, — the ocean, which shall wound, 

 Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound. 



A strange and tyrannous oligarchy is the mysterious " Association of 

 Ideas." There it sits in its unseen chamber, like the " Council of Ten," 

 wielding its sad inevitable power, ruling our wayward thoughts by its 

 invisible familiars, and visiting the mind with the unbidden spectral 

 presence of by-gone pleasure and pain. Even while I write — here in 

 London, alone, and at a distance from the home of my youth, and the 

 more obvious springs of early recollections, I am summoned back to the 

 scenes of happy childhood, by a voice as irresistible as if it carried on 

 its accents the spell of a magician, or the sentence of a tribunal of final 

 doom. A wandering Italian is sin^ng a little plaintive national song, 

 the favourite of the light-hearted days when I " whistled as I went for 

 want of thought" — singing so far off, that as the faint sounds reach me, 

 as they wing their delicate way through the rough and varied noises of 

 the crowded streets, they seem more like a recollection echoing within 

 my own mind than an external reality ; yet never was Runic rhyme, or 

 song of power, more omnipotent over the sleeping past than the simple 

 lay of that houseless mendicant. Forth from the dark treasury of my 

 memory, as if a burial vault sprang open at the sound, forth pace the 

 once happy playmates of the days of that song — the same — but, oh, how 

 changed ! 



The spectres whom no exorcism can bind. 

 The cold, — the changed, — perchance the dead, — anew 

 The mourned, the loved, the lost — too many ! yet how few. 



* * All antiquarians should buy my book. First, because 



it shall be imperfect — a great recommendation ; secondly, a limited 

 impression shall be printed, on execrable paper, with an illegible type, 

 so as to be nearly as ugly as a Pynson, or a Wynkyn de Worde ; 

 thirdly, although its present youth may be objected against it, or, to 

 speak metaphorically, cast in its teeth, yet that is a fault it will mend of 

 every day ; indeed, correctly speaking, there is nothing new under the 



sun. 



" • " Hiatus valde deflendus, * * Olie / * * 



SLEEP. THE SECOND PART. 



Darkness is on my mind ; a winged One, 



Gloomy and strong, hath snatched me in his strength. 



And bears me in his solitaiy fliglit 



Onward, and upward, through the realm of Thought : 



A voice long silent, but rememberi'd well. 



Bids me awake my melancholy song. 



And I obey, — let me not sing in vain. 



