Nor finds a closer truth than this All-graceful head, so richly curled, And evermore a costly kiss, The prelude to some brighter world. For since the time when Adam first And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have wakened hopes? Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; That lets thee neither hear nor see: But break it. In the name of wife, And in the rights that name may give, Are clasped 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, To shape the song for your delight, Like long-tailed birds of Paradise, That float through 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, A garden too with scarce a tree, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, 'Tis 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 stirred its busy crown, The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair, The bramble cast her berry, The gin within the juniper Began to make him merry, The poplars, in long order due, The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shod alder from the wave, Each plucked his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, And, sweating rosin, plumped the pine And was n 't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Looked down, half-pleased, half-frightened, As dashed about the drunken leaves O, nature first was fresh to men, So youthful and so flexile then, You moved her at your pleasure. 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. |