And I too dream'd, until at last Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. IV. Here sits the Butler with a flask And would you have the thought I had, The wrinkled steward at his task, Nor look with that too-earnest eye- THE SLEEPING PALACE. I. THE varying year with blade and sheaf Here stays the blood along the veins. II. Soft lustre bathes the range of urns Deep in the garden lake withdrawn III. Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs: More like a picture seemeth all The maid-of-honour blooming fair; V. Till all the hundred summers pass, The beams, that thro' the Oriel shine, Each baron at the banquet sleeps, Grave faces gather'd in a ring. II. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. I. YEAR after year unto her feet, She lying on her couch alone, Across the purpled coverlet, The maiden's jet-black hair has grown, On either side her tranced form Forth streaming from a braid of pearl : The slumbrous light is rich and warm, And moves not on the rounded curl. II. The silk star-broider'd coverlid Her full black ringlets downward roll'd, Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm With bracelets of the diamond bright : Her constant beauty doth inform Stillness with love, and day with light. III. The bodies and the bones of those 'They perish'd in their daring deeds.' This proverb flashes thro' his head, "The many fail: the one succeeds.' III. He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks : He breaks the hedge: he enters there : The colour flies into his cheeks: He trusts to light on something fair; For all his life the charm did talk About his path, and hover near With words of promise in his walk, And whisper'd voices at his ear. IV. More close and close his footsteps wind: She sleeps her breathings are not heard Beats quick and quicker, till he find In palace chambers far apart. The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest : She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells A perfect form in perfect rest. The quiet chamber far apart. His spirit flutters like a lark, He stoops-to kiss her- on his knee. 'Love, if thy tresses be so dark, How dark those hidden eyes must be!' II. But any man that walks the mead, A meaning suited to his mind. 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 To silence from the paths of men ; 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 ; The Poet-forms of stronger hours, The Federations and the Powers; Titanic forces taking birth In divers seasons, divers climes ; So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 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', Perforce will still revert to you; The prelude to some brighter world. IV. For since the time when Adam first 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, And in the rights that name may give, Are clasp'd 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, O whisper to your glass, and say, 'What wonder, if he thinks me fair?' What wonder I was all unwise, To shape the song for your delight Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you. ΑΜΡΗΙΟΝ. My father left a park to me, A garden too with scarce a tree, And waster than a warren: Yet say the neighbours when they call, That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, 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, |