MORAL

:

I

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
And if you find no moral there,
Go, look in any glass and say,
What moral is in being fair.
Oh, to what uses shall we put

The wildweed-flower that simply blows?

And is there any moral shut

Within the bosom of the rose?

But any man that walks the mead,
In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find
According as his humours lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.

And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend;

So 'twere to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

L'ENVOI

I

YOU shake your head. A random string
Your finer female sense offends.
Well-were it not a pleasant thing

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; And all that else the years will show, The Poet-forms of stronger hours, The vast Republics that may grow, The Federations and the Powers; Titanic forces taking birth

In divers seasons, divers climes; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.

II

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep
Thro' sunny decads new and strange,
Or gay quinquenniads would we reap
The flower and quintessence of change.

III

Ah, yet would I-and would I might!
So much your eyes my fancy take-
Be still the first to leap to light

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.

IV

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?
What lips, like thine, so sweetly join'd?
Where on the double rosebud droops

The fulness of the pensive mind;
Which all too dearly self-involved,
Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee neither hear nor see:

But break it. In the name of wife,
And in the rights that name may give,

Are clasp'd the moral of thy life,

And that for which I care to live.

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
Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise,

That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it-earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you.

O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock,

To which I most resort,

How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock.
Go fetch a pint of port:

But let it not be such as that

You set before chance-comers,

But such whose father-grape grew fat

On Lusitanian summers.