That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.

And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.

I wonder❜d at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers:
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
I wonder'd, while I paced along:
The woods were fill'd so full with song,
There seem'd no room for sense of wrong.
So variously seem'd all things wrought,
I marvell'd how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;
And wherefore rather I made choice
To commune with that barren voice,
Than him that said,,,Rejoice! rejoice!"

THE DAY DREAM.
PROLOGUE.

O LADY FLORA, let me speak:

A pleasant hour has past away
While, dreaming on your damask cheek,
The dewy sister-eyelids lay.
As by the lattice you reclined,

I went thro' many wayward moods
To see you dreaming- and, behind,
A summer crisp with shining woods.
And I too dream'd, 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 eye The rhymes are dazzled from their place, And order'd words asunder fly.

THE SLEEPING PALACE.

VII.

When will the hundred summers die,
And thought and time be born again,
And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,

Bring truth that sways the soul of men? Here all things in their place remain,

As all were order'd, ages since.
Come, care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain,
And bring the fated fairy Prince.

Across the hills, and far way
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess follow'd him.

II.

,,I'd sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss;"
"O wake for ever, love," she hears,

"O love, 't was such as this and this." And o'er them many a sliding star,

And many a merry wind was borne, And, stream'd thro' many a golden bar, The twillight melted into morn.

III.

O eyes long laid in happy sleep!"

O happy sleep, that lightly fled!" "O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!"

O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!" And o'er them many a flowing range Of vapour buoy'd the crescent-bark, And, rapt thro' many a rosy change, The twilight died into the dark.

IV.

"A hundred summers! can it be?

And whither goest thou, tell me where?" "O seek my father's court with me,

For there are greater wonders there."
And o'er the hills, and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro' all the world she follow'd him.
MORAL.

I.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And if you find no moral there, Go, look in any glass and say, What moral is in being fair. Oh, to what uses shall we put

The wildweed-flower that simply blows? And is there any moral shut

Within the bosom of the rose?

II

But any man that walks the mead,
In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humours lead,"

A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 'twere to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI.

I.

You shake your head. A random string Your finer female sense offends.

Well -were it not a pleasant thing
To fall asleep with all one's friends;
To pass with all our social ties
To silence from the paths of men;
And every hundred years to rise

And learn the world, and sleep again, To sleep thro' 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.

11.

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep

Thro' sunny decads new and strange, Or gay quinquenniads would we reap The flower and quintessence of change.

III.

Ah, yet would I - and would I might! So much your eyes my fancy takeBe still the first to leap to light

That I might kiss those eyes awake! For, am I right, or am I wrong,

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 thro' and thro',
To search a meaning for the song,

Perforce will still revert to you:
Nor finds a closer truth than this
All-graceful head, so richly curl'd,
And evermore a costly kiss

The prelude to some brighter world.

IV.

For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,

And every bird of Eden burst
In carol, every bud to flower,
What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes?
What lips, like thine, so sweetly join'd?
Where on the double rosebud droops

The fullness of the pensive mind:
Which all too dearly self-involved,
Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee neither hear nor see: But break it. In the name of wife,

My father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:

Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is nod bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all

That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion !
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!

'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 stirr'd its bushy crown,
And, as tradition teaches,
Young ashes pirouetted down
Coquetting with young beeches;
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath
Ran forward to his rhyming,
And from the valleys underneath
Came little copses climbing.
The linden broke her ranks and rent

The woodbine wreaths that bind her,

And down the middle buzz! she went
With all her bees behind her;
The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded,
The shock-head willows two and two
Bij rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shot alder from the wave,
Came yews, a dismal coterie;
Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave,
Poussetting with a sloe-tree:

Old elms came breaking from the vine,
The vine stream'd out to follow,
And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine
From many a cloudy hollow.
And wasn'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
Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frighten'd,
As dash'd about the drunken leaves

The random sunshine lighten'd! Oh! nature first was fresh to men, And wanton without measure; 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.

'Tis vain! in such a brassy age

I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle;
Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick,
The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound
Like sleepy counsel pleading;
O Lord! 'tis in my neighbour's ground,
The modern Muses reading.

They read Botanic Treatises,

And Works on Gardening thro' there,
And Methods of transplanting trees,
To look as if they grew there.
The wither'd Misses! how they prose
O'er books of travell'd seamen,
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbours clipt and cut,
And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut
And warm'd in crystal cases.
But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,
The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed
That blows upon its mountain,
The vilest herb that runs to seed
Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,
Upon my proper patch of soil

To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom:
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.

ST. AGNES' EVE.

DEEP on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapour goes:
May my soul follow soon!"

The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,

Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil'd and dark,

To yonder shining ground;

As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;

So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;

So in mine earthly house I am,
To that 1 hope to be.

Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
Thro' all yon starlight keen,
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.
He lifts me to the golden doors;

The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.

The sabbaths of Eternity,

One sabbath deep and wide A light upon the shining sea The Bridegroom with his bride!

SIR GALAHAD.

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.

The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel:

They reel, they roll in clanging lists,

And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers,

That lightly rain from ladies' hands. How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favours fall!

For them I battle till the end,

To save from shame and thrall: But all my heart is drawn above,

My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love,

Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will. When down the stormy crescent goes, A light before me swims. Between dark stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns:

Then by some secret shrine I ride;

I hear a voice, but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide, The tapers burning fair.

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,

The silver vessels sparkle clean,
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
And solemn chaunts resound between.
Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
I find a magic bark;

I leap on board: no helmsman steers:
I float till all is dark.

A gentle sound, and awful light!

Three angels bear the holy Grail:
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!

My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,