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While all things else have rest from weariness?

All things have rest: why should we toil alone,

We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan,

Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings,

And cease from wanderings,

Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;

Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, 'There is no joy but calm!'

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

III.

Lo! in the middle of the wood,

The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud

With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no

care,

Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.

Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,

Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,

Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

IV.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we
have.

To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward
the grave

In silence; ripen, fall and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

V.

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,

With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber
light,

Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;

To hear each other's whisper'd speech; Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melan-
choly;

To muse and brood and live again in

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Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change:

For surely now our household hearths are cold:

Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:

And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.

Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings

Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,

And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.

Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,

THE LOTOS-EATERS-A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII.

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)

With half-dropt eyelid still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hill-
To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine

To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling

Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath

divine!

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.

VIII.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak: The Lotos blows by every winding creek: All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the

yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the

clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

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Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,

Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;

Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd-down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,

Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

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