And sweet shall your welcome be :

O hither, come hither, and be our lords

For merry brides are we:

We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words:
O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten

With pleasure and love and jubilee :

O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten

When the sharp clear twang of the golden cords
Runs up the ridged sea.

Who can light on as happy a shore

All the world o'er, all the world o'er?

Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner,
fly no more.

THE DESERTED HOUSE

First printed in 1830, omitted in all the editions till 1848 when it was restored. The poem is of course allegorical, and is very much in the vein of many poems in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

1

Life and Thought have gone away

Side by side,

Leaving door and windows wide:
Careless tenants they!

2

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.

3

Close the door, the shutters close,

Or thro'' the windows we shall see

The nakedness and vacancy

Of the dark deserted house.

11848 and 1851. Through.

Come away: no more of mirth

Is here or merry-making sound.
The house was builded of the earth,
And shall fall again to ground.

5

Come away for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell;

But in a city glorious—

A great and distant city—have bought
A mansion incorruptible.

Would they could have stayed with us!

THE DYING SWAN

First printed in 1830.

The superstition here assumed is so familiar from the Classics as well as from modern tradition that it scarcely needs illustration or commentary. But see Plato, Phadrus, xxxi., and Shakespeare, King John, v., 7.

1

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere

An under-roof of doleful gray.1
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,

And 2 loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,

And took the reed-tops as it went.

2

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the water3 wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;

11830. Grey.

21830 till 1848. Which.

3 1863. River.

Above in the wind was1 the swallow,

Chasing itself at its own wild will,

And far thro' 2 the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

3

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul

Of that waste place with joy

Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear

The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach 3 stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;

As when a mighty people rejoice

With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd

Thro' the open gates of the city afar,

To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,

And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.

11830. Sung.

21830. Through.

3 A coronach is a funeral song or lamentation, from the Gaelic Corranach. Cf. Scott's Waverley, ch. xv., "Their wives and daughters came clapping their hands and crying the coronack and shrieking".

41830 till 1851. Through.