'I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too.
'I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful-a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
'I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
'I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song.
'She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said "I love thee true."
'She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes
'And there she lulléd me asleep,
And there I dream'd-Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.
'I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all, They cried "La belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!"
'I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapéd wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.
'And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.'
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND Cricket
THE poetry of earth is never dead;
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the grasshopper's-he takes the lead
In summer luxury,-he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER
MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne :
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
-Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez-when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
THE HUMAN SEASONS
FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:-
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
GREAT SPIRITS NOW ON EARTH ARE
SOJOURNING
GREAT spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing;
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake:
And lo!-whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings in the human mart?
Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piléd books, in charact❜ry
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love-then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
BRIGHT STAR! would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:-
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, or else swoon to death.
Ан, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.
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