Pomegranates from an English Garden

The contrasts are very powerful between the one (paltry) gift he gained, and all the others (love, loyalty, life, &c.) they were privileged to devote (far richer than mere possession); and again, between the niggardliness of his new patrons with their dole of silver, contrasted with the enthusiastic devotion of his own followers, who having nothing but “copper,” would yet put it all at his service – having nothing but “rags,” were yet so liberal with what they had, that had they been purple, he would have been proud indeed, seeing that “a riband to stick in his coat” had proved so great an attraction.

In the second stanza the fountains of the great deep of human feeling are broken up. “Life’s night begins” suggests at once the strength of the previous attachment, and the hopelessness of the broken tie being ever knit again on earth. The best thing is to be counted enemies now, and fight against each other as gallantly as they would have fought together. At the same time there is absolute confidence in the ultimate triumph of the party of freedom – he may “menace our hearts,” but we shall “master his” – and in the ultimate recovery of the lost leader himself, whom he hopes to find “pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne.”

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

I

Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles,
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop —
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country’s very capital, its prince,
Ages since,
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

II

Now, – the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed
Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone —
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.

IV

Now, – the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks —
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.

V

And I know – while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away —
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.

VI

But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, – and then,
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

VII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,