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"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 Has ever truly long'd for death.

""Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, O life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want."

I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.
Then said the voice, in quiet scorn,
"Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.'

And I arose, and I released
The casement, and the light increased
With freshness in the dawning east.

Like soften'd airs that blowing steal,
When meres begin to uncongeal,
The sweet church bells began to peal.

On to God's house the people prest:
Passing the place where each must rest,
Each enter'd like a welcome guest.

One walk'd between his wife and child,
With measured footfall firm and mild,
And now and then he gravely smiled.

The prudent partner of his blood
Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood."

And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walk'd demure,
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.

These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.

I blest them, and they wander'd on:
I spoke, but answer came there none :
The dull and bitter voice was gone.

A second voice was at mine ear,
A little whisper silver-clear,
A murmur, "Be of better cheer."

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,
"I may not speak of what I know."

Like an Eolian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
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
From out my sullen heart a power
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,

To feel, altho' no tongue can prove,
That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.

And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.

I wonder'd at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers :
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
I wonder'd, while I paced along:
The woods were fill'd so full with song,
There seem'd no room for sense of wrong.

So variously seem'd all things wrought,
I marvell'd how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;

And wherefore rather I made choice
To commune with that barren voice,
Than him that said, "Rejoice! rejoice!"

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.

I.

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.

II.

Soft lustre bathes the range of urns
On every slanting terrace-lawn.
The fountain to his place returns

Deep in the garden lake withdrawn.
Here droops the banner on the tower,
On the hall-hearths the festal fires,
The peacock in his laurel bower,
The parrot in his gilded wires.

III.

Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs : In these, in those the life is stay'd. The mantles from the golden pegs Droop sleepily: no sound is made, Not even of a gnat that sings.

More like a picture seemeth all Than those old portraits of old kings, That watch the sleepers from the wall.

IV.

Here sits the Butler with a flask

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.

VI.

All round a hedge upshoots, and shows
At distance like a little wood;
Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes,

And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green

And glimpsing over these, just seen, Close-matted, burr and brake and brier, High up, the topmost palace-spire.

VII.

When will the hundred summers die,

And thought and time be born again, And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,

Bring truth that sways the soul of men? Here all things in their place remain,

As all were order'd, ages since. Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain, And bring the fated fairy Prince.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.

I.

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.

II.

The silk star-broider'd coverlid

Unto her limbs itself doth mould Languidly ever; and, amid

Her full black ringlets downward roll'd,

Between his knees, half-drain'd; and Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm

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"O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!" | Go, look in any glass and say,

"Olove, thy kiss would wake the dead!"
And o'er them many a flowing range
Of vapor buoy'd the crescent-bark,
And, rapt thro' many a rosy change,
The twilight died into the dark.

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What moral is in being fair.
O, to what uses shall we put

The wildweed-flower that simply blows!
And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?

II.

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

A meaning suited to his mind.
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.

MORAL.

I.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
And if you find no moral there,

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

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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 hue-
But take it earnest wed with sport,
And either sacred unto you.

AMPHION.

My father left a park to me,

But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree, And waster than a warren : Yet say the neighbors when they call, It is not bad but good land, And in it is the germ of all

That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,

Nor cared for seed or scion !
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,

And fiddled in the timber!

"T is said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation,
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove

He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.

The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown,
And, as tradition teaches,
Young ashes pirouetted down
Coquetting with young beeches;

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