Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

"Men who march away"

IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions,

Dolorous and dear,
Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters

Stretching around,
Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape

Yonder and near,

Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland

Foliage-crowned,
Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat

Stroked by the light,
Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial

Meadow or mound.

What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost

Under my sight,
Hindering me to discern my paced advancement

Lengthening to miles;
What were the re-creations killing the daytime

As by the night?

O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent,

Some as with smiles,
Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled

Over the wrecked
Cheeks