please?

Ah yes; consider well the guest,
And whatsoe'er he does seems best;
He ruleth by the right divine
Of helplessness, so lately born
In purple chambers of the morn,
As sovereign over thee and thine.
He speaketh not; and yet there lies 60
A conversation in his eyes:
The golden silence of the Greek,
The gravest wisdom of the wise,
Not spoken in language, but in looks
More legible than printed books,
As if he could but would not speak.
And now, O monarch absolute,
Thy power is put to proof; for, lo!
Resistless, fathomless, and slow,

69

The nurse comes rustling like the sea, And pushes back thy chair and thee, And so good-night to King Canute.

IV

As one who walking in a forest sees A lovely landscape through the parted trees,

Then sees it not, for boughs that intervene ;

Or as we see the moon sometimes revealed

Through drifting clouds, and then again concealed,

So I behold the scene.

There are two guests at table now;
The king, deposed and older grown, &
No longer occupies the throne,
The crown is on his sister's brow;
A Princess from the Fairy Isles,
The very pattern girl of girls,
All covered and embowered in curls,
Rose-tinted from the Isle of Flowers,
And sailing with soft, silken sails
From far-off Dreamland into ours.
Above their bowls with rims of blue
Four azure eyes of deeper hue
Are looking, dreamy with delight ;
Limpid as planets that emerge
Above the ocean's rounded verge,
Soft-shining through the summer
night.

90

Steadfast they gaze, yet nothing see Beyond the horizon of their bowls; Nor care they for the world that rolls With all its freight of troubled souls Into the days that are to be.

Flutter awhile, then quiet lie,
Like timid birds that fain would fly,
But do not dare to leave their nests;
And youths, who in their strength
elate

Challenge the van and front of fate,
Eager as champions to be
In the divine knight-errantry
Of youth, that travels sea and land 120
Seeking adventures, or pursues,
Through cities, and through solitudes
Frequented by the lyric Muse,
The phantom with the beckoning
hand,

That still allures and still eludes.
O sweet illusions of the brain!
O sudden thrills of fire and frost!
The world is bright while ye remain,
And dark and dead when ye are lost!

The crown of stars is broken in parts;
Its jewels, brighter than the day,
Have one by one been stolen away
To shine in other homes and hearts.
One is a wanderer now afar
In Ceylon or in Zanzibar,
Or sunny regions of Cathay;

And one is in the boisterous camp 149
Mid clink of arms and horses' tramp,
And battle's terrible array.

I see the patient mother read,
With aching heart, of wrecks that
float

Disabled on those seas remote,
Or of some great heroic deed

On battle-fields, where thousands bleed
To lift one hero into fame.