And make leap up with joy the beauteous head Of Prosperine, among whose crowned hair Are flowers, first open'd on Sicilian air, And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead. O easy access to the hearer's grace When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine! For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, She knew the Dorian water's gush divine, She knew each lily white which Enna yields, Each rose with blushing face; She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain. But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard! Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd! And we should tease her with our plaint in vain. Well! wind-dispers'd and vain the words will be, Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour In the old haunt, and find our treetopp'd hill! Who, if not I, for questing here hath not I? But many a dingle on the loved hill-side, With thorns once studded, old, whiteblossom'd trees, Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried, High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises, Hath since our day put by The coronals of that forgotten time. Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team, And only in the hidden brookside gleam Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door, Above the locks, above the boating throng, Unmoor'd our skiff, when, through the I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night, Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale (For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep The morningless and unawakening sleep Under the flowery oleanders pale), Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there! Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim, These brambles pale with mist engarlanded, That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him. To a boon southern country he is fled, Wandering with the great Mother's train divine (And purer or more subtle soul than thee, I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see!) Within a folding of the Apennine, Thou hearest the immortal strains of old. Putting his sickle to the perilous grain In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, For thee the Lityerses song again Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing; Sings his Sicilian fold, His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes; And how a call celestial round him rang And heavenward from the fountainbrink he sprang, And all the marvel of the golden skies. There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here Sole in these fields; yet will I not despair; Despair I will not, while I yet descry 'Neath the soft canopy of English air That lonely Tree against the western sky Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear, Woods with anemones in flower till Know him a wanderer still; then why not me? A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, gold, With place, with honour, and a flattering crew; 'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold. But the smooth-slipping weeks Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired; Out of the heed of mortals he is gone, He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone; Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired. Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wert bound, Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour; Men gave thee nothing, but this happy quest, If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power, If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest. And this rude Cumner ground, Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields, CROUCH'D on the pavement close by Belgrave Square A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied; Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied. The rich she had let pass with frozen stare. Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers; She will not ask of aliens, but of friends, Of sharers in a common human fate. She turns from that cold succour, which attends The unknown little from the unknowing great, And points us to a better time than ours. ANTI-DESPERATION [1867.] LONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare! Christ, some one says, was human as we are; No judge eyes us from heaven, our sin to scan; We live no more, when we have done our span. 'Well, then, for Christ,' thou answerest, 'who can care? From sin, which heaven records not, why forbear? Live we like brutes our life without a plan!' So answerest thou; but why not rather say: 'Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high! Sits there no judge in heaven, our sin to see? Even in a palace, life may be led well! mell, Is it to feel our strength- Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Yes, this, and more! but not, Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline! 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever THE LAST WORD CREEP into thy narrow bed, Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans and swans are geese. They out-talk'd thee, hissed thee, tore thee. Charge once more, then, and be dumb! A WISH [1867.] I ASK not that my bed of death I ask not each kind soul to keep tears. I ask but that my death may find Spare me the whispering, crowded room, Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Nor fetch, to take the accustom'd toll The future and its viewless things - Which one who feels death's winnowing wings Must needs read clearer, sure, than he! Bring none of these! but let me be, Bathed in the sacred dews of morn Which never was the friend of one, There let me gaze, till I become |