THE DAY-DREAM. 327 THE DAY-DREAM. PROLOGUE. O LADY FLORA, let me speak: A pleasant hour has passed away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay." As by the lattice you reclined, I went through many wayward moods To see you dreaming-and, behind, A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dreamed, 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 ordered 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 curled, 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 Soft lustre bathes the range of urns Deep in the garden lake withdrawn. III. Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs; More like a picture seemeth all IV. 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 fixed upon her cheek. V. Till all the hundred summers pass, The beams that through the oriel shine, Make prisms in every carven glass, And beaker brimmed with noble wine. Each baron at the banquet sleeps, Grave faces gathered in a ring. His state the king reposing keeps. He must have been a jovial king. VI. All round a hedge upshoots, and shows Close-matted, burr and brake and brier, VII. When will the hundred summers die, Bring truth that sways the soul of men? Here all things in their place remain, As all were ordered, 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 trancèd 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-broidered coverlid Unto her limbs itself doth mould Languidly ever: and, amid Her full black ringlets downward rolled, Glows forth each softly-shadowed arm With bracelets of the diamond bright: Her constant beauty doth inform Stillness with love, and day with light. III. She sleeps: her breathings are not heard I. You shake your head. A random string To fall asleep with all one's friends; To silence from the paths of men; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep through 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 The flower and quintessence of change. III. Ah, yet would I-and would I might! That I might kiss those eyes awake! 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 through and through, To search a meaning for the song, Perforce will still revert to you; EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, To shape the song for your delight, That float through 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. ST. AGNES. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows As these white robes are soiled and dark, As this pale taper's earthly spark, So shows my soul before the Lamb, So in mine earthly house I am, Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, He lifts me to the golden doors; Roll back, and far within For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, One sabbath deep and wide A light upon the shining sea The Bridegroom with his bride! EDWARD GRAY. SWEET Emma Moreland of yonder town Met me walking on yonder way, "And have you lost your heart?" she said; "And are you married yet, Edward Gray?" Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me: "Ellen Adair she loved me well, Against her father's and mother's will: To-day I sat for an hour and wept, By Ellen's grave, on the windy hill. "Shy she was, and I thought her cold; Thought her proud, and fled over the sea; Filled I was with folly and spite, When Ellen Adair was dying for me. "Cruel, cruel the words I said! To trouble the heart of Edward Gray.' "There I put my face in the grassWhispered, 'Listen to my despair: I repent me of all I did: Speak a little, Elen Adair!' "Then I took a pencil, and wrote On the mossy stone, as I lay, 'Here lies the body of Ellen Adair; And here the heart of Edward Gray!' "Love may come, and love may go, And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree But I will love no more, no more, Till Ellen Adair come back to me. "Bitterly wept I over the stone: Bitterly weeping I turned away: There lies the body of Ellen Adair! And there the heart of Edward Gray!" ΤΟ AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS. "Cursed be he that moves my bones." Shakespeare's Epitaph. You might have won the Poet's name, If such be worth the winning now, And gained a laurel for your brow Of sounder leaf than I can claim ; But you have made the wiser choice, And you have missed the irreverent doom For now the Poet cannot die Nor leave his music as of old, "Proclaim the faults he would not show: Break lock and seal: betray the trust: Keep nothing sacred: 'tis but just The many-headed beast should know." In her ear he whispers gayly, And they leave her father's roof. "I can make no marriage present; Little can I give my wife. SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. Love will make our cottage pleasant, And I love thee more than life." They by parks and lodges going See the lordly castles stand: Hears him lovingly converse, Lay betwixt his home and hers; Built for pleasure and for state. Where they twain will spend their days. Oh, but she will love him truly! He shall have a cheerful home; And beneath the gate she turns; Than all those she saw before: Bows before him at the door. Her sweet face from brow to chin: Pale again as death did prove; But he clasped her like a lover, And he cheered her soul with love. So she strove against her weakness, Though at times her spirits sank: Shaped her heart with woman's meekness To all duties of her rank: And a gentle consort made he, And her gentle mind was such That she grew a noble lady, And the people loved her much. But a trouble weighed upon her, And perplexed her, night and morn, With the burden of an honor Unto which she was not born. Faint she grew, and ever fainter, As she murmured, "Oh, that he Were once more that landscape-painter, Which did win my heart from me!" So she drooped and drooped before him Fading slowly from his side: Three fair children first she bore him, And he looked at her and said, Bore to earth her body, dressed 331 SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINE. VERE. A FRAGMENT. LIKE Souls that balance joy and pain, In crystal vapor everywhere Sometimes the linnet piped his song: Above the teeming ground. Then, in the boyhood of the year, She seemed a part of joyous Spring: Now on some twisted ivy-net, Her cream-white mule his pastern set: As she fled fast through sun and shade, |