The hard condition; but that she would Boring a little auger-hole in fear, loose The people therefore, as they loved her well, From then till noon no foot should pace the street, No eye look down, she passing; but that all Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd. Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused; And she, that knew not, pass'd: and al at once, Then fled she to her inmost bower, With twelve great shocks of sound, the and there shameless noon towers, Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee ; Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the wall. Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, One after one but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd, To meet her lord, she took the tax away And built herself an everlasting name. THE DAY-DREAM. PROLOGUE. O LADY FLORA, let me speak: While, dreaming on your damask cheek, I went thro' many wayward moods A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dream'd, until at last Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had, And see the vision that I saw, Then take the broidery-frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw, And I will tell it. Turn your face, Nor look with that too-earnest eyeThe rhymes are dazzled from their place And order'd words asunder fly. THE SLEEPING PALACE. I. THE varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains, THE DEPARTURE. I. AND on her lover's arm she leant, In that new world which is the old : Across the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, II. 'I'd sleep another hundred years, O love, for such another kiss ;' 'O wake for ever, love,' she hears, O love, 'twas such as this and this." And o'er them many a sliding star, And many a merry wind was borne, And, stream'd thro' many a golden bar, The twilight melted into morn. III. O eyes long laid in happy sleep!' "O happy sleep, that lightly fled !' 'O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!' O love, thy kiss would wake the dead! And o'er them many a flowing range Of vapour buoy'd the crescent-bark, And, rapt thro' many a rosy change, The twilight died into the dark. IV. A hundred summers! can it be? And whither goest thou, tell me where?' 'O seek my father's court with me, For there are greater wonders there.' And o'er the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Thro' all the world she follow'd him. MORAL. I. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And if you find no moral there, Go, look in any glass and say, What moral is in being fair. Oh, to what uses shall we put The wildweed-flower that simply blows? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose? II. But any man that walks the mead, A meaning suited to his mind. In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 'twere to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. I. You shake your head. A random string To fall asleep with all one's friends; To 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; To sleep thro' 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; And all that else the years will show, The Poet-forms of stronger hours, The vast Republics that may grow, The Federations and the Powers; Titanic forces taking birth In divers seasons, divers climes; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. II. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep Thro' sunny decads new and strange, Or gay quinquenniads would we reap The flower and quintessence of change. III. Ah, yet would I—and would I might! So much your eyes my fancy takeBe still the first to leap to light That I might kiss those eyes awake! For, am I right, or am I wrong, And I will take my pleasure there : My fancy, ranging thro' and thro', To search a meaning for the song, Perforce will still revert to you; Nor finds a closer truth than this All-graceful head, so richly curl'd, And evermore a costly kiss The prelude to some brighter world. IV. For since the time when Adám first In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes, What lips, like thine, so sweetly Where on the double rosebud droops Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; A sleep by kisses undissolved, That lets thee neither hear nor see: Are clasp'd the moral of thy life, EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, 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-tail'd birds of Paradise That float thro' Heaven, and cannot Or old-world trains, upheld at court AMPHION. My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, That grows within the woodland. Nor cared for seed or scion ! And fiddled in the timber! 'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, He set up his forlorn pipes, Coquetting with young beeches; The linden broke her ranks and rent The woodbine wreaths that bind her, Came wet-shod alder from the wave, |