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With turfy terraces and garden plots,
And rows of slender urns, and mossy pots,
Laden with budding flowers, whose odours rise,
And tempt the plundering bees and butterflies;
Vistas of lofty, bough-inlacing trees,
Wind-tossed and murmurous as the surfy seas,
O'erarch the gravelled, winding avenues,
Edged round with evergreens of fadeless bloom,
Pouring a thousand intermingling hues,
From Heaven's o'erflowing goblet through the leaves,
A many-tinted flood of verdurous gloom;
And fountains gush aloft, like silver sheaves,
Drooping with shining ears, and plumes of spray,
And foamy tassels blowing every way,
Shaking in marble basins white and cold,
A drainless shower of diamond-beaded grain,
Which winnows off, in sun-illumined rain,
The dusty chaff, a cloud of misty gold;
And swans, superbly-necked, in stately pride,
Brushing with trailing waves the lilies white,
Sail slowly up and down the plashy tide,
Like peerless queens in beautiful disdain,
Sweeping amid their maids with trains of light;
And slim and graceful deer with startled looks,
Beneath the mimic forest where they browse,
Head-down are drinking at the lucid brooks,
Their antlers mirrored with the swaying boughs;
An obelisk enrailed upon a mound,

In a green opening where the morning shines,
And woodland deities are ranged around,
In rural temples over flowery shrines;
And here and there are seats with lattice backs
Smiling in shadow, painted screens, and racks,
And summer-houses wreathed with ivy twines,
And trimmest arbours bent with hanging vines,
Whose quivering leaves and clusters checker o'er
The carven benches and the grassy floor;
My rivers flow beyond, with guardant ranks
Of silver-liveried poplars on their banks;
Barges are fretting at the castle piers,
Moving with every ripple in the tide,

And bridges span the stream with arches wide,
Their stony 'butments mossed and gray with years;
An undulating range of vales, and hills
Tree-girt, and spots of meadow-land serene,
Thick-starred with lushest blooms, and silver rills
Stealing along through streaks of freshest green;
Sweet lanes and pastures, swarded glades and bowers,
And columned palaces and distant towers;
And on the welkin mountains bar the view,
Shooting their jagged peaks sublimely up the blue!

IV.

I saunter up the walks,

The great main avenue;

My sandals wetted through,

With dripping flowers and stalks,
(Roses, violets blue!)

My broidered mantle all bedabbled with the dew;
I climb a flight of steps, in regal pride,
And stroll along an echoing colonnade,
Sweeping against its pillared balustrade,
Adown a porch, and through a portal wide,
And I am in my castle, Lord of all;
My faithful groom is standing in the hall
To doff my shining robe, and servitors
And eringing chamberlains at open doors,
Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait,

And bow me on my way, in royal pomp and state!

V.

My chamber lies apart,

The castle's very heart,
And all things rich and rare,
From earth, and sea, and air,

Are lavished with a wild and waste profusion there!
The carpeting was woven in Turkish looms,
From softest wool of fine Circassian sheep,
Tufted, like springy moss in forests deep,
Illuminate with all its autumn blooms;
The antique chairs are made of cedar trees,
Felled on the lofty peaks of Lebanon,
Veined with the rings of vanished centuries,
And crisped with winter's frost and summer's sun;
And ivory-topped, mosaic, rosewood stands,
And downy couches, stuffed with cygnet's fleece,
With silken coverlets, and velvet bands
Loll round, inviting dreaminess and ease;
The gorgeous window-curtains, damask red,
Suspended, silver-ringed, from bars of gold
Droop heavily in many a fluted fold,

And rounding outward, intercept and shed
The prisoned daylight o'er the slumberous room,
In streams of rosy dimness, purple gloom;
The mantel-piece is heaped with curious shells
From loneliest islands, where the ocean swells,
Shaking his whited mane like Death's pale steed;
Shells twisted, jointed, hornéd, wreathed and curled,
And some like mimic, misty moons impearled
In vaporous rainbows, many a coral weed,
Unvalued jewels, costly precious stones,
And diamonds in the rough, like flakes of light,
Around a clock of alabaster white,

Hailing the happy hours with silver tones;
Cases of rare medallions, coins antique,
Effaced with age, obliterate with rust,
Found in the wrecks of cities, Roman, Greek,

And realms whose memories perished with their dust;
Etruscan urns, transparent, softly bright,

With bas-relievo figures on their sides,
And streaky marble vases, dug from night
In Pompeii, beneath its lava tides;
Clusters of sheeny weapons, scimetars
Whose steel is of the true Damascus brand,

Short swords with basket hilts to guard the hand,
Helmets, and casques, and rusty visor-bars,
Toledo blades, and creases from Malay,
Lances, and peaked pennons torn in fray,
And jousting spears, and battle-axes keen
With crescent edges, shields with studded thorns,
Yew bows and shafts, and curvéd hunting horns,
With tasseled baldricks of the Lincoln green;
And on the walls with lofted curtains, see!
The portraits of my noble ancestry,
Thin-featured stately dames with powdered locks,
And courtly shepherdesses tending flocks,
Stiff lords in wigs and ruffles white as snow,
Haught peers, and princes centuries ago,
And brave Sir Hugh, the founder of the line,
With all the knightly stars he won in Palestine.

VI.

My gallery sleeps aloof,

A dreamy little room,
Dim-lighted through the roof,
And bathed in pleasant gloom,
Enshrining pictures old,

And groups of statues cold,

Of wealth immense, untold,

The gems of art, when art was in her age of gold.

THE PICTURES.

1.

HELEN and PARIS on their bridal night,
Feasting, in all their loveliness and bloom,
Under the swinging cressets' starry light,
With Priam and his fifty sons around,
Filling their shining cups with eager hands,
Drinking a health, while pale Cassandra stands,

1

THE CASTLE IN THE AIR.

Wild eyed, her raven tresses all unbound, Her soul o'ershadowed by a coming doom! 2.

ANDROMACHE with all her tearful charms, Close-folded on the mighty Hector's breast, And the babe shrinking in its nurse's arms, Affrightened by the nodding of his crest.

3.

The towers of ILION girt by warring hosts,
Sword crossing sword, and shield opposed to shield,
And steeds and chariots plunging o'er the field,
And tents, and masted ships along the coast.

4.

The giant CYCLOPS sitting in his cave, Helped by the sage Ulysses, deep and wise, Spilling the wine in rivers down his beard, Shaggy and grim, his shoulder over-leered By swart Silenus, sly and cunning knave, Filching a puffy skin with twinkling eyes.

5.

ANACREON Couchant in the myrtle shades, Bibbing his Teian draughts with rich delight, Pledging the dancing girls and Cyprian maids, Pinching their little ears and shoulders white.

6.

An Orient SUNRISE on the sluggish Nile,
A bronzed sphynx and temple on the shore,
And robed priests that toss their censers, while
Abased in dust the populace adore,

A beaked galley fretting at its curb,
With reedy oars and masts and silken sails,
And Cleopatra walks the deck superb,
Slow-followed by her court in spangled veils.

7.

The Virgin MOTHER and the Holy Child,
Holding a globe and sceptre, sweet and mild;
The magi bring their gifts with reverent looks,
And the rapt shepherds lean upon their crooks!

8.

A Summer FETE, a party on a lawn,

Brave gallants, with their plumed caps in hand, Ladies with sweeping trails, and, far withdrawn, The rustic people dancing in a band.

9.

A bleak DEFILE, a pass in mountains deep,
Whose whitened summits in the morning glow;
And dark banditti winding down the steep
Of shelvy rocks, pointing their guns below.

10.

A HARVEST scene, a vineyard on the Rhine,
Arbours and wreathed pales, and laughing swains,
Pouring their crowded baskets in the wains,
And trodden presses, vats, and gushing wine.

11.

A Flemish TAVERN, boors and burghers hale, Drawn round a table o'er a board of chess, Smoking their heavy pipes and drinking ale, Blowing from tankard brims the frothiness.

12.

A picture of CATHAY, a justice scene,
Pagodas, statues, and a group around,
And in his sedan chair the Mandarin

Reading the scroll of laws to prisoners bound,
Bambooed with rods, and writhing on the ground.

And many more that Fancy fails to draw, Exceeding glorious, beautiful, and fine,

And statues of the Grecian gods divine, In all their various moods of love and awe; The Phidian Jove, with calm creative face, Like Heaven brooding o'er the deeps of space; Imperial Juno, Mercury winged-heeled, Lit with a message, Mars with heavy shield, Apollo with the discus bent to throw; The piping Pan, and Dian with her bow, And Cytherea just risen from the swell Of crudded foam, half-stooping on her knee, Wringing her dripping tresses in the sea, Whose tamed billows climb the curved shell, Kissing with pallid lips her nakedness of snow!

VII.

My study walls are niched,
And full of busts sublime,

And cabinets enriched

With books from every clime,

387

A harvesting of lore from out the fields of Time;
I throw the portals wide and stand before
A pyramid, where mighty souls are shrined,
Embalmed for ages in their robes of mind,
Thought-sceptered kings of earth for ever more;
Here slumbers Homer, with his world-wide story,
Simple in tongue and heart, a poet's glory;
Euripides and Eschylus severe,
Statues of Tragedy around her bier;
And eager Pindar with his fiery soul,
Hailing the chariots dashing to the goal;
Theocritus with choicest pastorals,
Mellifluous Virgil with his polished line,
And grimmest Dante, scowling Florentine,
And Tasso sighing o'er the Holy Walls;
And here are hieroglyphics-crumbling rolls
Of papyrus, discoloured vellum scrolls,
Scribe-written tomes, and saintly manuscripts,
From convent libraries and cloister crypts,
And monkish missals with emblazoned stains,
Like sunset clouds, enclasped with argent chains.
The bards of Albion: Chaucer, blithe and gay,
Fresh as the dewiest morning in the May;
Spenser, and Shakespeare-nature's paragon,
Her first, her last-she never had but one-
The monarch of the realm of poesy,
With coffers overheaped with richest rime,
Exhaustless, Croesus of the world and Time,
The heir of ages and Eternity;

Majestic, sombre Milton, stern and strong,'
The vastest column in the halls of song;
The twins, Beaumont and Fletcher, happy men,
And laboured classic Jonson, rare old Ben;
Dryden, and finished Pope, and solemn Young,
And timid Cowper with his nameless woes;
Impetuous Byron, with his passions stung
To madness, warring with his petty foes;
Wordsworth, and Coleridge, Shelley, martyred saint,
Exuberant Hunt, and careless, boyish Keats,
A prodigal almoner of luscious sweets,
And Tennyson, delicious, fine, and quaint,
The Priest of Luxury in her fane apart,
Like a soft thought in Cytherea's heart;
The bards of Atalantis-scanty band-
Grave-thinking Bryant, still, and deep, and grand,
The Nestor of our poets, gray and old,
Horatian Holmes, and Whittier free and bold,
And lo! my friends, the gifted, gentle Three,
The Doric Read, and tragic Boker sweet,

And Bayard Taylor, fresh from Italie,

Dear heart! the golden dust of travel on his feet!

VIII.

Away with books, away

I cannot read to-day;

I see through open blinds

The Heaven's clouded tents,

I snuff the summer winds,

And smell the violet scents,

And sink upon my couch in honied indolence;
Brimming with Helicon I dash the cup;

Why should I spend my years in hoarding up
The learning of the past? let dust return
To dust, my heart shall never be its urn;
Why should I sip my wine from little flasks,
Cobwebbed and dusted o'er, when nature yields,
And earth is full of purpled vintage fields?
Why strain at Beauty dimmed with mortal masks,
When I at will may have them all withdrawn,
And freely gaze on her transfigured face?
Why limp in fetters in a weary race,

When I may fly unbound like Mercury's fawn?
Why be contented with the sweets of old,
Albeit embalmed in nectar, when the trees,
The Eden bowers, the rich Hesperides,
Droop all around with living fruits of gold?
Man's heart has many passions deep and strong,
A thousand feathers in his spirits' wings,
The love of woman, idleness, and song,
Fortune, and fame, and all life's little things.
It is enough for us to live and breathe,

And feel our hearts at ease, and think no more;
The flowers that Nature binds, her simplest wreath,
Is worth the proudest crown that Wisdom ever wore.

I listen to the humming of the bees,

The water's flow, the wind, the wavy trees,
And then I take my lyre and touch the chords,
And set the summer's melody to words,
Chanting a quiet song, a florid lay,

As rich and gorgeous as the pomp of Day!
Sometimes I lounge in arbours, hung with vines,
Pressing the bunchy grapes in rosiest wines,
The which I sip and sip with pleasure mute,
O'er mouthful bites of golden-rinded fruit;
When evening comes, I lie in dreamy rest,
Where lifted casements front the glowing west,
Watching the clouds like banners wide unfurled,
Hung o'er the flaming threshold of the world;
Its mission o'er, the holy day recedes,
Borne heavenward in its car with fiery steeds,
Leaving behind a lingering flush of light,
Shedding its mantle at the feet of Night;
The flocks are penned, the earth is growing dim,
The moon comes rounding up the welkin's rim,
O'ermisted, rubious, an argent shell,

Washed from the caves of darkness on a swell;
And one by one, like pearls through azure brine,
In drifted beds, the stars begin to shine;

And lo! through clouds that part before the chase
Of silent winds, a belt of milky white,
The galaxy, a crested surge of light,

A reef of worlds along the sea of space;
My sweet musicians play, in distant vales,
A strain that wakes the chiding nightingales,
Who strive to drown the envious instruments;
My spirit faints in rapturous ravishments,
Lost in a flood of bliss, voluptuous, deep,
Joy-piloted into the heavenly ports of sleep.

IX.

Oh! what a life is mine,
A life of glee and mirth,
The sensuous life of earth,

For ever fresh and fine,

A heavenly worldliness, mortality divine!
When Orient skies, the sea and misty plain,
Illumined slowly, doff their nightly shrouds,
And heaven's bright archer, morn, begins to rain
His golden arrows through the banded clouds,
I rise and tramp away the jocund hours,
Knee-deep in dewy grass and beds of flowers;
I race my eager greyhound on the hills,

And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps,
Peak-lifted, gazing o'er the cloven deeps,
Where mighty rivers shrink to threaded rills;
The ramparts of the mountains loom around,
Like splintery fragments of a ruined world,
The cliff-bound, dashing cataracts, downward hurled
In thunderous volumes shake the chasms profound;
The imperial eagle, with a dauntless eye
Wheels round the sun, the monarch of the sky;

I pluck his eyrie in the blasted woods

Of ragged pines, and when the vulture screams,
I track his flight along the solitudes,
Like some dark spirit in the world of dreams;
Sometimes I rove beside the lonely shore,
Margined and flanked with slanting, shelvy ledges,
Bastioned by grayest rocks with dripping edges,
And caverns echoing Ocean's sullen roar,
Threading the bladdery weeds and paven shells,
Beyond the line of foam, the jewelled chain,
The largesse of the ever-giving main,
Tossed at the feet of Earth with surgy swells;
I plunge and grope the sand for lustrous pearls,
To deck my ladye's zone and shining curls,
And when my hands are full, I rise again,
And strow them on the beach, and swim away,
Breasting the billowyness of snowy spray;
When noon in fiery armour, travel-spent,
Glows through the curtains of his cloudy tent,
I loose my little shallop from its pier,
And down the winding river slowly float,
Steering in coves where trees are mirrored clear,
And birds are warbling with melodious throat;

Χ.

My heart is like a vine,
Full-fed with passion-springs,
And all its budding rings,
And tendrils interwine
Around my ladye dear,

And bear their lavishness of vintage all the year;
I bow, obeisant to her charmed sway,
The sovereignty that won my soul of yore;

I linger in her presence night and day,
And feel a heaven around her evermore;

I kneel beside her couch in chambers lone,
And soft unbraid and lay her locks apart,
And take her tapering fingers in my own,
And press them to my lips with leaps of heart;

I live for love, for love alone, and who
Dare chide me for it, who dare call it folly?
It is a holy thing, if aught is holy,

And true, if spotless Truth herself is true;
Earth cleaves to earth, and sensuous life is dear,
Mortals should love mortality while here,
And seize the glowing moments as they fly;
Full eyes should answer eyes, warm lips should meet,
And hearts enlocked to kindred hearts should beat,
And all be happy in their loves until they die.

ΧΙ.

I move with silent feet,
Along the chamber sweet,
The cage that holds my dove,

The palace of my love,
O'erhung with curtains white,
That shed a chastened light,

Like that which filled the sky on Dian's wedding night.
The windows all are shadowed o'er with vines,
Wreathing their lattices, and eglantines
Full-blown and scanty-leaved, and basil pots,
And mignonettes, and dear forget-me-nots;

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