The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed

h a whispered prayer and a murmured sigh. " Far from me is the gazing throng, The blazoned shield, and the nodding plume ; Nothing is mine but a worthless song, A joyless life, and a nameless tomb.' " Nay, dearest Wilfrid, lay like this, On such an eve, is much amiss: Our mirth beneath the new May moon Should echoed be by livelier tune. What need to thee of mail and crest, Of foot in stirrup, spear in rest 1 Over far mountains and deep seas, Earth hath no fairer fields than these ; And who, in Beauty's gaudiest bowers, Can love thee with more love than ours 1" The Minstrel turned with a moody look From that sweet scene of guiltless glee ; From the old who talked beside the brook, And the young who danced beneath the tree. Coldly he shrank from the gentle maid, From the chiding look and the pleading tone ; And he passed from the old elm's hoary shade, And followed the forest path alone. One little sigh, one pettish glance,? And the girl comes back to her playmates now, And takes her place in the merry dance, With a slower step, aud a sadder brow. " My soul is sick," saith the wayward boy, " Of the peasant's grief, and the peasant's joy. I cannot breathe on from day to day, Like the insects, which our wise men say In the crevice of the cold rock dwell, Till their shape is the shape of their dungeon's cell, In the dull repose of our changeless life, I long for passion, I long for strife, As ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.