NM: pageant text.

At length, our mighty bard's victorious lays Fill the loud voice of universal praise; And baffled spite, with hopeless anguish dumb, Yields to renown the centuries to come; With ardent haste each candidate of fame, Ambitious, catches at his tow'ring name; He sees, and pitying sees, vain wealth bestow Those pageant honours, which he scorn'd below; While crowds aloft the laureate bust behold, Or trace his form on circulating gold.

In liquid dews descends the transient glare, And all the glittering pageant melts in air.

In midsummer, when the purple is on the broom, a strange pageant moves on the dim horizon, a shifting mirage of sea and shore, forest, lake, and islands lying high, with ships and castles and spires of distant churchesthe witchery of the heath that speaks in the tales and superstitions of its simple people.

"The days in splendid pageant pass, In lovely peace the nights go by, And day and night are sweet; but I I cannot say Lo, the bright day!

And so surely has the author established his foothold on the new ground that he can even bring in Edvarda, the "Iselin" figure from Pan, once more, thus linking up his brave and lusty comedies of middle age with the romantic tragedies of his youth, making a comprehensive pageant-play of large-hearted humanity.

Were she ambitious, she'd disdain to own The pageant pomp of such a servile throne; A throne, which thou by parricide dost gain, And by a base submission must retain.

Or thither, where, beneath the showery West, The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid: Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest; No slaves revere them, and no wars invade: Yet frequent now, at midnight's solemn hour, The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold, And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power, In pageant robes, and wreathed with sheeny gold,

So, when a stage invites to pageant shows, (If great and small are like) appear the beaux; In boxes some with spruce pretension sit, Some change from seat to seat within the pit, Some roam the scenes, or turning cease to roam; Preluding music fills the lofty dome.

But though bleak winter reigns around, Nor fruit, nor flower adorns the ground, We know that Spring will wake again All the pageant Summer train.

And so the long pageant troops by, not without its passages of dullness, its moments of pedestrian gait, for it must be borne in mind that the poems quoted above are for the most part the choice of what has survived in a few volumes, and that this in its turn represents the gleanings from a far larger body of verse that once existed.

Awe-struck we gaze, and hold our breath Till the fair pageant vanisheth, Leaving us in perplexity,

Come, come unto the window and watch the pageant gay!

There are blind ways provided, the foredone Heart-weary player in this pageant world Drops out by, letting the main masque defile By the conspicuous portal.