XLVI.

Face to face with the true mountains

I stood silently and still,

Drawing strength from fancy's dauntings,
From the air about the bill

And from Nature's open mercies and most debonair goodwill.

XLVII.

Oh, the golden-hearted daisies
Witnessed there, before my youth,

To the truth of things, with praises

Of the beauty of the truth;

And I woke to Nature's real, laughing joyfully for both.

XLVIII.

And I said within me, laughing,

I have found a bower to-day,

A green lusus, fashioned half in

Chance and half in Nature's play,

And a little bird sings nigh it, I will nevermore missay.

XLIX.

Henceforth, I will be the fairy

Of this bower not built by one;
I will go there, sad or merry,

With each morning's benison,

And the bird shall be my harper in the dream-hall I have won.

L.

So I said. But the next morning,
(-Child, look up into my face-

'Ware, oh sceptic, of your scorning!
This is truth in its pure grace!)

The next morning, all had vanished, or my wandering missed the place.

LI.

Bring an oath most sylvan-holy,
And upon it swear me true-

By the wind-bells swinging slowly

Their mute curfews in the dew,

By the advent of the snow-drop, by the rosemary and

rue,

LII.

I affirm by all or any,

Let the cause be charm or chance,
That my wandering searches many

Missed the bower of my romance—

That I nevermore upon it turned my mortal counten

ance.

LIII.

I affirm that, since I lost it,
Never bower has seemed so fair;

Never garden-creeper crossed it

With so deft and brave an air,

Never bird sung in the summer, as I saw and heard them there.

LIV.

Day by day, with new desire,

Toward my wood I ran in faith,

Under leaf and over brier,

Through the thickets, out of breath;

Like the prince who rescued Beauty from the sleep as long as death.

LV.

But his sword of mettle clashëd,
And his arm smote strong, I ween,

And her dreaming spirit flashëd

Through her body's fair white screen,

And the light thereof might guide him up the cedar alleys green:

LVI.

But for me, I saw no splendour-
All my sword was my child-heart;
And the wood refused surrender

Of that bower it held apart,

Safe as Edipus's grave-place 'mid Colone's olives swart.

LVII.

As Aladdin sought the basements
His fair palace rose upon,

And the four-and-twenty casements

Which gave answers to the sun;

So, in wilderment of gazing, I looked up and I looked

down.

LVIII.

Years have vanished since, as wholly

As the little bower did then;

And you call it tender folly

That such thoughts should come again f Ah, I cannot change this sighing for your smiling, brother men!

LIX.

For this loss it did prefigure

Other loss of better good,

When my soul, in spirit-vigour

And in ripened womanhood,

Fell from visions of more beauty than an arbour in a wood.

LX.

I have lost-oh, many a pleasure,
Many a hope and many a power-
Studious health and merry leisure,

The first dew on the first flower!

But the first of all my losses was the losing of the bower.

LXI.

I have lost the dream of Doing,
And the other dream of Done,
The first spring in the pursuing,

The first pride in the Begun,

First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is

won

LXII.

Exaltations in the far light
Where some cottage only is;
Mild dejections in the starlight,

Which the sadder-hearted miss

;

And the child-cheek blushing scarlet for the very shame

of bliss.

LXIII.

I have lost the sound child-sleeping
Which the thunder could not break;
Something too of the strong leaping
Of the staglike heart awake,

Which the pale is low for keeping in the road it ought to take.

LXIV.

Some respect to social fictions
Has been also lost by me;
And some generous genuflexions,
Which my spirit offered free

To the pleasant old conventions of our false humanity.

Ye perchance would look away;-

Ye would answer me, 'Farewell! you
Make sad company to-day,

And your tears are falling faster than the bitter words

VOL. III.

you say.'

C