I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?

But many a dingle on the loved hillside,

With thorns once studded, old, white-blossomed trees,

Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried,

High towered the spikes of purple orchises,

Hath since our day put by The coronals of that forgotten time; Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,

And only in the hidden brookside gleam

Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door,

Above the locks, above the boating throng,

Unmoored our skiff, when, through the Wytham flats,

Red loosestrife and blond meadowsweet among,

And darting swallows, and light water-gnats,

We tracked the shy Thames shore?

Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell

Of our boat passing heaved the

As in old days, jovial and talking, ride.

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.

Quick! let me fly, and cross

Into yon further field. 'Tis done; and see,

Backed by the sunset, which doth glorify

The orange and pale violet eveningsky,

Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!

I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,

The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,

The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,

And in the scattered farms the lights come out.

I cannot reach the Signal-Tree tonight,

Yet, happy omen, hail! Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale,

(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep

The morningless and unawakening sleep

Under the flowery oleanders pale,)

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,

Shy to illumine; and I seek it too. This does not come with houses or with gold,

With place, with honor, and a flattering crew;

'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold.

But the smooth-slipping weeks Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired.

Out of the heed of mortals is he gone,

He wends unfollowed, he must house alone;

Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on this quest wert bound,

Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour.

Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,

If men esteemed thee feeble, gave thee power,

If men procured thee trouble, gave

thee rest.

And oft his cogitations sink as low As, through the abysses of a joyless heart,

The heaviest plummet of despair can go

But whence that sudden check? that fearful start!

He hears an uncouth sound
Anon his lifted eyes

Saw, at a long-drawn gallery's dusky bound,

A shape of more than mortal size And hideous aspect, stalking round and round!

A woman's garb the Phantom wore,

And fiercely swept the marble floor,

Like Auster whirling to and fro, His force on Caspian foam to try; Or Boreas when he scours the snow That skins the plains of Thessaly, Or when aloft on Mænalus he stops His flight, 'mid eddying pine-tree tops!

"Avaunt, inexplicable Guest!

avaunt,"

Exclaimed the chieftain ...

But Shapes that come not at an earthly call,

Will not depart when mortal voices bid;

Lords of the visionary eye whose lid,

Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall!

Ill-fated Chief! there are whose hopes are built

Upon the ruins of thy glorious name; Who, through the portals of one moment's guilt,

Pursue thee with their deadly aim! O matchless perfidy! portentous lust Of monstrous crime! that horrorstriking blade,

Drawn in defiance of the gods, hath laid

The noble Syracusan low in dust! Shuddered the walls, the marble city wept,

And sylvan places heaved a pensive sigh;

But in calm peace the appointed
Victim slept,

As he had fallen, in magnanimity
Of spirit too capacious to require

Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this,

And say, besides, that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk

Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state,

I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog,

And smote him-thus. [Stabs himSHAKSPEARE.

self.