Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/106

And Nature oft, the cry of faith
In bitter need will borrow.
Eyes, which the preacher could not school,
By wayside graves are raised;
And lips say "God be pitiful,"
Who ne'er said "God be praised!"—

"A Lay of the Early Rose," despite its obtrusive moral, "Bertha in the Lane," "A Rhapsody of Life's Progress," that "most musical, most melancholy" "Catarina to Camoëns," "The Romance of the Swan's Nest," and others of various kinds of excellence, and all possessed of power and beauty sufficient for each one separately to make the reputation of any lesser poet. The peculiar pathos of "The Romance of the Swan's Nest" dowers it with some indefinable fascination, and causes it to have for us a pre-eminence of charm we have never been able to explain. It is as sweet as the aroma from new-mown hay, yet as sad as the ceaseless moan on the sea-bruised beach. It is short, and all worthy of quotation in full:—

Little Ellie sits alone
Mid the beeches of a meadow,
By a stream-side, on the grass:
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
On her shining hair and face.

She has thrown her bonnet by;
And her feet she has been dipping
In the shallow water's flow—
Now she holds them nakedly
In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
While she rocketh to and fro.

Little Ellie sits alone,—
And the smile, she softly useth,
Fills the silence like a speech;
While she thinks what shall be done,—
And the sweetest pleasure chooseth,
For her future within reach!