Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream

- by these

Three queens with crowns of gold and

from them rose

A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one

comes,

Or hath come, since the making of the world.

Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge,"

And to the barge they came. There those three queens

Put forth their hands, and took the king, and wept.

But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands,

And call'd him by his name, complaining loud,

And dropping bitter tears against his brow

Striped with dark blood; for all his face

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something
more,

A bringer of new things: and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human
thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the
isle, -

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make
mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties decent, not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I
mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought with me, —

That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads, you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulf will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in
old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong

in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

LYRICS

From THE PRINCESS

SWEET and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,

Blow him again to me:

While my little one, while my pretty one,

sleeps.

Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made.