XXVI

     Save me! save me! for now I know
     The powers that Nature gave me,
     And the value of honest love I know:-
     My village lily! save me!

     XXVII

     Come ’twixt me and the sisterhood,
     While the passion-born phantoms are fleeing! 
     Oh, he that is true to flesh and blood
     Is true to his own being!

     XXVIII

     And he that is false to flesh and blood
     Is false to the star within him: 
     And the mad and hungry sisterhood
     All under the tides shall win him!

     XXIX

     My village lily! save me! save! 
     For strength is with the holy:-
     Already I shuddered to feel the wave,
     As I kept sinking slowly:-

     XXX

     I felt the cold wave and the under-tug
     Of the Brides, when—­starting and shrinking —
     Lo, Adrian tilts the water-jug! 
     And Bruges with morn is blinking.

     XXXI

     Merrily sparkles sunny prime
     On gabled peak and arbour: 
     Merrily rattles belfry-chime
     The song of Sevilla’s Barber.

     The old chartist

     Whate’er I be, old England is my dam! 
     So there’s my answer to the judges, clear. 
     I’m nothing of a fox, nor of a lamb;
     I don’t know how to bleat nor how to leer: 
     I’m for the nation! 
     That’s why you see me by the wayside here,
     Returning home from transportation.

     II

     It’s Summer in her bath this morn, I think. 
     I’m fresh as dew, and chirpy as the birds: 
     And just for joy to see old England wink
     Thro’ leaves again, I could harangue the herds: 
     Isn’t it something
     To speak out like a man when you’ve got words,
     And prove you’re not a stupid dumb thing?

     III

     They shipp’d me of for it; I’m here again. 
     Old England is my dam, whate’er I be! 
     Says I, I’ll tramp it home, and see the grain: 
     If you see well, you’re king of what you see: 
     Eyesight is having,
     If you’re not given, I said, to gluttony. 
     Such talk to ignorance sounds as raving.

     IV

     You dear old brook, that from his Grace’s park
     Come bounding! on you run near my old town: 
     My lord can’t lock the water; nor the lark,
     Unless he kills him, can my lord keep down. 
     Up, is the song-note! 
     I’ve tried it, too:- for comfort and renown,
     I rather pitch’d upon the wrong note.

     V

     I’m not ashamed:  Not beaten’s still my boast: 
     Again I’ll rouse the people up to strike. 
     But home’s where different politics jar most. 
     Respectability the women like. 
     This form, or that form, —
     The Government may be hungry pike,
     But don’t you mount a Chartist platform!