Forever! What abysms of woe The word reveals, what frenzy, what Despair! For ever (printed so) Did not. It looks, ah me! how trite and tame! It fails to sadden or appal Or solace—it is not the same At all. O thou to whom it first occurr’d To solder the disjoin’d, and dower Thy native language with a word Of power: We bless thee! Whether far or near Thy dwelling, whether dark or fair Thy kingly brow, is neither here Nor there. But in men’s hearts shall be thy throne, While the great pulse of England beats: Thou coiner of a word unknown To Keats! And nevermore must printer do As men did long ago; but run “For” into “ever,” bidding two Be one. Forever! passion-fraught, it throws O’er the dim page a gloom, a glamour: It’s sweet, it’s strange; and I suppose It’s grammar. Forever! ’Tis a single word! And yet our fathers deem’d it two: Nor am I confident they err’d; Are you? UNDER THE TREES. “UNDER the trees!” Who but agrees That there is magic in words such as these? Promptly one sees shake in the breeze Stately lime-avenues haunted of bees: Where, looking far over buttercupp’d leas, Lads and “fair shes” (that is Byron, and he’s An authority) lie very much at their ease; Taking their teas, or their duck and green peas, Or, if they prefer it, their plain bread and cheese: Not objecting at all though it’s rather a squeeze And the glass is, I daresay, at 80 degrees. Some get up glees, and are mad about Ries And Sainton, and Tamberlik’s thrilling high Cs; Or if painters, hold forth upon Hunt and Maclise, And the tone and the breadth of that landscape of Lee’s; Or if learned, on nodes and the moon’s apogees, Or, if serious, on something of AKHB’s, Or the latest attempt to convert the Chaldees; Or in short about all things, from earthquakes to fleas. Some sit in twos or (less frequently) threes, With their innocent lambswool or book on their knees, And talk, and enact, any nonsense you please, As they gaze into eyes that are blue as the seas; And you hear an occasional “Harry, don’t tease” From the sweetest of lips in the softest of keys, And other remarks, which to me are Chinese. And fast the time flees; till a ladylike sneeze, Or a portly papa’s more elaborate wheeze, Makes Miss Tabitha seize on her brown muffatees, And announce as a fact that it’s going to freeze, And that young people ought to attend to their Ps And their Qs, and not court every form of disease: Then Tommy eats up the three last ratafias, And pretty Louise wraps her _robe de cerise_ Round a bosom as tender as Widow Machree’s, And (in spite of the pleas of her lorn vis-a-vis) Goes to wrap up her uncle—a patient of Skey’s, Who is prone to catch chills, like all old Bengalese:—