Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

At the white sleeping town,

At the church on the hill-side;

And then come back down,—

Singing, ‘There dwells a loved one,

But cruel is she,

She left lonely for ever

The Kings of the sea.’

It is a beautiful poem, certainly; and deserves to have been given at full length. ‘The Strayed Reveller’ itself is more ambitious, perhaps a little strained. It is a pleasing and significant imagination, however, to present to us Circe and Ulysses in colloquy with a stray youth from the train of Bacchus, who drinks eagerly the cup of the enchantress, not as did the sailors of the Ithacan king, for gross pleasure, but for the sake of the glorious and superhuman vision and knowledge it imparts:—

But I, Ulysses,

Sitting on the warm steps,