Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

Father will come to thee soon: Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west

Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

THE BUGLE SONG.

[The Princess, Part III.]

THE splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story. The long light shakes across the lakes

And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying,

dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blow-
ing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

TEARS, IDLE TEARS.

[The Princess, Part IV.]

"TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean.

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no

more.

"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

That brings our friends up from the under-world,

Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the

verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no

more.

"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no

more.

"Dear as remember'd kisses after

death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more."

O SWALLOW, SWALLOW, FLYING, FLYING SOUTH. [The Princess, Part IV.]

"O SWALLOW, Swallow, flying, flying South,

Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded

eaves,

And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee

"O tell her, Swallow, that thou knowest each,

That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,

And dark and true and tender is the North.

"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow and light

Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

"O were I thou that she might take me in,

And lay me on her bosom, and her heart

Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.

Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,

Delaying as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?

"O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown:

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,

But in the North long since my nest is made.

"O tell her, brief is life, but love is long,

And brief the sun of summer in the North,

And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

"O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,

Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine,

And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee."

HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD. [The Princess, Part V.] HOME they brought her warrior dead:

She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry: All her maidens, watching, said, "She must weep or she will die."

TAL LOVE.

[In Memoriam.]

STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot

Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why;

He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;

For knowledge is of things we see; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to

more,

But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear: But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began;

For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise.

I SOMETIMes hold IT HALF A SIN.

[In Memoriam, V.]

I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold; But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

LO, AS A DOVE WHEN UP SHE

SPRINGS.

[In Memoriam, XII.] Lo, as a dove when up she springs

To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe, Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go; I cannot stay;

I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,

And reach the glow of southern skies, And see the sails at distance rise, And linger weeping on the marge,

And saying, "Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?"
And circle moaning in the air:
"Is this the end? Is this the end?"

And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn, That I have been an hour away.

THE PATH BY WHICH WE
TWAIN DID GO.

[In Memoriam, XXII.]

THE path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well,

Thro' four sweet years arose and fell From flower to flower, from snow to

snow:

And we with singing cheer'd the way,

And crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May:

But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended, following Hope, There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;

Who broke our fair companionship,

And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And dull'd the murmur on thy lip,

And bore thee where I could not see

Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,
And think that somewhere in the
waste

The Shadow sits and waits for me.

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes:
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth,
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

O YET WE TRUST THAT SOME
HOW GOOD.
[In Memoriam, LIII.]

O YET We trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood.

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroy'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile com plete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last far off- at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

I ENVY NOT IN ANY MOODS. [In Memoriam, XXVII.]

J ENVY not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:

RING OUT, WILD BELLS, TO THE WILD SKY.

[In Memoriam, CV.]

RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.