Our freedom for a little bread we sell, 5
And drudge under some foolish deg. master’s ken. deg. deg.6
Who rates deg. us if we peer outside our pen—­ deg.7
Match’d with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere, Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came; 10 And when my ill-school’d spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I’ll stop, and say:  “There were no succour here! 
The aids to noble life are all within.”

EAST LONDON

’Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, deg. deg.2
And the pale weaver, through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, deg. look’d thrice dispirited. deg.4

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:  5
“Ill and o’erwork’d, how fare you in this scene?”—­
“Bravely!” said he; “for I of late have been,
Much cheer’d with thoughts of Christ, the living bread."

O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light, 10
Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam—­
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night! 
Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home.

WEST LONDON

Crouch’d on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square, deg. deg.1
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied. 
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, 5
Pass’d opposite; she touch’d her girl, who hied
Across and begg’d, and came back satisfied. 
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I:  “Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens but of friends, 10
Of sharers in a common human fate.

“She turns from that cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.”

ELEGIAC POEMS

MEMORIAL VERSES deg.

April, 1850

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, deg. and Greece, deg.1
Long since, saw Byron’s deg. struggle cease. deg.2
But one such death remain’d to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb—­
We stand to-day by Wordsworth’s tomb. 5

When Byron’s eyes were shut in death,
We bow’d our head and held our breath. 
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder’s roll. 
With shivering heart the strife we saw 10
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch’d the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.