Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.

All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

4.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease!

5.

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream!

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whispered speech;

Eating the Lotos, day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender-curving lines of creamy spray :

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy

Heaped over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!

6.

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives

And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold :
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange :
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes, over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle ?

Let what is broken so remain.

The Gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labor unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out with many wars,
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

7.

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly,) With half-dropt eyelids still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave through the thick-twined vineTo watch the emerald-colored water falling

Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.

8.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Through every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotosdust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foamfountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted

lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of

wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,

Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and

oil;

Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered-down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,

Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the

shore

Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander

more.

A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.

I.

I READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
"The Legend of Good Women," long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

II.

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill

The spacious times of great Elizabeth

With sounds that echo still.

III.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales

Hold swollen clouds from raining, though my heart,
Brimful of those wild tales,

IV.

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.

V.

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars, And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong, And trumpets blown for wars;

VI.

And clattering flints battered with clanging hoofs:
And I saw crowds in columned sanctuaries;
And forms that passed at windows and on roofs
Of marble palaces;

VII.

Corpses across the threshold; heroes tall
Dislodging pinnacle and parapet
Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall;
Lancers in ambush set;

VIII.

And high shrine-doors burst through with heated blasts

That run before the fluttering tongues of fire; White surf wind-scattered over sails and masts, And ever climbing higher;

IX.

Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates,
And hushed seraglios.