The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-30 00:00:00

Bustle and clatter, and dissonant roar I

The mart of a mighty town,
From the cloudy height to the stony shore,
Wearily lengthening down.
And here and there, and everywhere,
Are gamesters at eager play—
The poor and the rich, none can guess which is which,
So motlily mixed are they.
Not a man but his part in the gaming takes,
Wherever the dice from the dice•box fall;
Beggar or prince in the lottery stakes—
The beggar his crust, and tho prince his all.
And the prizes the winners most loudly boast,
Even more than tho gems and gold,
Are the toys which an infant esteems the most,
Ere he come to be five years old.
A coral of bells, or a trumpet of tin,

Or a ribbon for dolls to wear—
The greybeard who treasures like these may win,
The crowd on their shoulders bear.

Jangle and wrangle, and babel and brawl,
As down from the loud box the dumb dies fell :
A hoot lor the looser,,a shout for the winner;
He who wins is the 'saint—he who looses, the sinner.
Scared away from my side, as they press round the dies,
Still my bride has her part in my life;
For it charms her to share in the gauds of the prize,
Though she shrinks from the rage of the strife.
Flish, splash, drop upon drop,
Never we hurry, and never we stop
With our eyes in the cast, and our souls in the game,
While the shores that slip by us seem always the same.
Jangle and wrangle, and tumult and brawl,
And hurrah for the victor who bubbles us all I
And the prize of the Victor I've wellnigh won,
When all of a sudden drops down the sun.
One throw, and the favours 0 Fortune I crown I
Hurrah for the victor start with a frown,
For all of a sudden the sun drops down.
" I see not the die—
Is it cloud fleeting by ?
Or is it—it cannot be—night already I"'
" Tha sun,' said a voice, as bleak shadows descend,
" Has sunk in the sea where the river shall end ;
Unheeded the lapse of the stream and the light;
Warns as vainly the sea heard distinct through the night ?
Hark I the whispers that creep
From the World of the deep,
Which I near with the oars, sounding solemn and steady."
" I hear but the winds that caressingly creep
Through the ever-green laurels remote from the deep ;
Though the sunlight is gone, soon the planets will rise."
From the boatman, then, turning, I game on the skies,
And watch for Orion—to light up the dies.
" What gleams from the shore ?
Hold but one moment more;
Hest under yon light, shining down from the height.
Hurrah for the victor I—but one throw more I"

" No rest on the river—that's past for thee ;
The beacon but shines as a guide to the sea.
One chime of the oar, ere it halt evermore,
Muffled and dirgelike, and sternly steady ;
And the beacon Warning the last of the shore
Shall flash on the sea to thy murmur-.J Alreadyl' "
Then seems there to float
Down the length of the way,—
From the sedges remote—
From the rose-garden bay—
From the town and the mart—
From the rivet's deep heart—
From the heart of the land—
From the lips of the bride.
Through the darkness again
Stealing close to my side,
With her hand in my hand—
From the gamesters in vain
Staking odds on the main
Of invisible dies,—
An echo that wails with my wailing and sighs,
As I murmur, " The ocean already I"—" ALREADY I"
- On glimmer of light
From the beacon's lone height,
One look at the shore, and one stroke of the oar,
And the river is lost in the ocean already I

It is the realisation at last of Coleridge's lovely
notion of some day selecting "A River" as the
theme of A Poem. Only—in Sir Bulwer Lytton's
allegorical poem of " The Boatman" the stream
itself appears but as an accessory, and therefore, so
to speak, gleams upon our attention bat inciden-
tally throughout.