But any man that walks the mead 2050 In bud or blade, or bloom, may find, According as his humors lead, A meaning suited to his mind. And liberal applications lie In Art like Nature, dearest friend; z/0 So 't were to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. You shake your head. A random string Well were it not a pleasant thing 215 Το To fall asleep with all one's friends; pass with all our social ties To silence from the paths of men ; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; 226 To sleep through terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars, As wild as aught of fairy lore; VOL. II. And all that else the years will show, 22 The Poet-forms of stronger hours, The vast Republics that may grow, The Federations and the Powers; In divers seasons, divers climes ; And in the morning of the times. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 230 Through sunny decades new and strange, Ah, yet would I—and would I might! That I might kiss those eyes awake! To choose your own you did not care; And, am I right or am I wrong, 246 241 My fancy, ranging through and through, Perforce will still revert to you; 7 Nor finds a closer truth than this All-graceful head, so richly curled, 250 And evermore a costly kiss, The prelude to some brighter world. For since the time when Adam first Embraced his Eve in happy hour, And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, 255 What eyes, like thine, have wakened hopes? Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; A sleep by kisses undissolved, That lets thee neither hear nor see: But break it. In the name of wife, 265 And in the rights that name may give, Are clasped the moral of thy life, And that for which I care to live. EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, 270 O whisper to your glass, and say, "What wonder, if he thinks me fair?" What wonder I was all unwise, To shape the song for your delight, Like long-tailed birds of Paradise, 275 That float through Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hue — But take it earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you. 280 AMPHION. My father left a park to me, A garden too with scarce a tree, Yet say the neighbors when they call, It is not bad but good land, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. 8 O had I lived when song was great And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, And fiddled in the timber! 6 |