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
Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever; and, amid

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
That strove in other days to pass,
Are wither'd in the thorny close,
Or scatter'd blanching on the grass.
He gazes on the silent dead:

'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.

In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps on either hand upswells

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,
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.
II.

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, 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,
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 not 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,