"Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn, Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half-shown, are broken and withdrawn. "Ah! sure within him and without, Could his dark wisdom find it out, There must be answer to his doubt. "But thou canst answer not again. With thine own weapon art thou slain, Or thou wilt answer but in vain. "The doubt would rest, I dare not solve. As when a billow, blown against, "Where wert thou when thy father play'd "A merry boy they called him then. He sat upon the knees of men "Before the little ducts began To feed thy bones with lime, and ran "A life of nothings, nothing-worth. "These words," I said, "are like the rest, No certain clearness, but at best A vague suspicion of the breast: "But if I grant, thou might'st defend "Yet how should I for certain hold, "As old mythologies relate, "So might we, if our state were such For those two likes might meet and touch. "But, if I lapsed from nobler place, Some legend of a fallen race "Some vague emotion of delight Some yearning toward the lamps of night. "Or if thro' lower lives I cameTho' all experience past became Consolidate in mind and frame "I might forget my weaker lot; For is not our first year forgot? The haunts of memory echo not. "And men, whose reason long was blind, From cells of madness unconfined, Oft lose whole years of darker mind. "Much more, if first I floated free, As naked essence, must I be Incompetent of memory: "For memory dealing but with time, And he with matter, could she climb Beyond her own material prime? "Moreover, something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams "Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare.' The still voice laugh'd. "I talk," said he, "Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee Thy pain is a reality." "But thou," said I, "hast miss'd thy mark. Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark, By making all the horizon dark. "Why not set forth, if I should do This rashness, that which might ensue With this old soul in organs new? "Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath "T is life, whereof our nerves are scant, I ceased, and sat as one forlorn. And I arose, and 1 released Like soften'd airs that blowing steal, One walk'd between his wife and child, I blest them, and they wander'd on: I spoke, but answer came there none: A second voice was at mine ear, A little whisper silver-clear, As from some blissful neighborhood, A notice faintly understood, "I see the end, and know the good." A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breathing low, Like an Eolian harp that wakes Far thought with music that it makes: Such seem'd the whisper at my side: "What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?" I cried. "A hidden hope," the voice replied: So heavenly-toned, that in that hour To feel, altho' no tongue can prove, And forth into the fields I went, I wonder'd at the bounteous hours, You scarce could see the grass for flowers. I wonder'd, while I paced along: So variously seem'd all things wrought, THE DAY-DREAM. PROLOGUE. O LADY FLORA, let me speak: A pleasant hour has past away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay. As by the lattice you reclined, I went thro' many wayward moods To see you dreaming-and, behind, A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dream'd, until at last Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had, And see the vision that I saw, Then take the broidery-frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw, And I will tell it. Turn your face, Nor look with that too-earnest eyeThe rhymes are dazzled from their place, And order'd words asunder fly. THE SLEEPING PALACE. 1. The varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains: Here rests the sap within the leaf, Here stays the blood along the veins. Faint shadows, vapors lightly curl'd, Faint murmurs from the meadows come, Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb. 2. Soft lustre bathes the range of urns Deep in the garden lake withdrawn. 3. Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs: More like a picture seemeth all 4. Here sits the butler with a flask Between his knees half-drained; and there The wrinkled steward at his task, The maid-of-honor blooming fair: The page has caught her hand in his : His own are pouted to a kiss: The blush is fix'd upon her cheek. 5. Till all the hundred summers pass, The beams, that through the oriel shine, Make prisms in every carven glass, And beaker brimm'd with noble wine. Each baron at the banquet sleeps, Grave faces gather'd in a ring. His state the king reposing keeps. He must have been a jovial king. 6. All round a hedge upshoots, and shows And grapes with bunches red as blood; 7. When will the hundred summers die, THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. 1. Year after year unto her feet, She lying on her couch alone, Across the purpled coverlet, The maiden's jet-black hair has grown, On either side her tranced form Forth streaming from a braid of pearl: The slumbrous light is rich and warm, And moves not on the rounded curl. 2. The silk star-broider'd coverlid Unto her limbs itself doth mould Languidly ever; and, amid Her full black ringlets downward roll'd, And liberal applications lie In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 't were to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. 1. You shake your head. A random string To fall asleep with all one's friends; To pass with all our social ties To silence from the paths of men; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep thro' terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars, As wild as aught of fairy lore; The Federations and the Powers; 2. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 3. Ah, yet would I-and would I might! That I might kiss those eyes awake! For, am I right or am I wrong, To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song, And I will take my pleasure there: And, am I right or am I wrong, My fancy, ranging thro' and thro', To search a meaning for the song, Perforce will still revert to you; Nor finds a closer truth than this All-graceful head, so richly curl'd, And evermore a costly kiss The prelude to some brighter world. 4. For since the time when Adam first Embraced his Eve in happy hour, And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes? Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; That lets thee neither hear nor see: EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, O whisper to your glass, and say, "What wonder, if he thinks me fair?" What wonder I was all unwise, To shape the song for your delight, Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, And scirrhous roots and tendons. "Tis vain! in such a brassy age But what is that I hear? a sound Like sleepy counsel pleading: O Lord! 't is in my neighbor's ground, They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening through there, The wither'd Misses! how they prose But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, And I must work thro' months of toil, And years of cultivation, Upon my proper patch of soil To grow my own plantation. WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MON OLOGUE. MADE AT THE COCK. O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock, How goes the time? "T is five o'clock. But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers. No vain libation to the Muse, To make me write my random rhymes, I pledge her, and she comes and dips Until the charm have power to make I pledge her silent at the board. Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And that child's heart within the man's Thro' many an hour of summer suns The current of my days. I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd I grow in worth, and wit, and sense. Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men, Who hold their hands to all, and cry Ah yet, tho' all the world forsake, I will not cramp my heart, nor take Let Whig and Tory stir their blood; Let there be thistles, there are grapes; Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme. As on this whirligig of Time We circle with the seasons. This earth is rich in man and maid: With fair horizons bound! This whole wide earth of light and shade And, set in Heaven's third story, I look at all things as they are, Head-waiter, honor'd by the guest The pint, you brought me, was the best But tho' the port surpasses praise, For since I came to live and learn, Unsubject to confusion, Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out, For I am of a numerous house, |