Spirits in Bondage | Page 8

echoing streets that drown?The heart's own silent music. Though they too?Sing in their proper rhythm, and still delight?The friendly ear that loves warm human kind,?Yet it is good to leave them all behind,?Now when from lily dawn to purple night?Summer is queen,?Summer is queen in all the happy land.?Far, far away among the valleys green?Let us go forth and wander hand in hand?Beyond those solemn hills that we have seen?So often welcome home the falling sun?Into their cloudy peaks when day was doneBeyond?them till we find the ocean strand?And hear the great waves run,?With the waste song whose melodies I'd follow?And weary not for many a summer day,?Born of the vaulted breakers arching hollow?Before they flash and scatter into spray,?On, if we should be weary of their play?Then I would lead you further into land?Where, with their ragged walls, the stately rocks?Shunt in smooth courts and paved with quiet sand?To silence dedicate. The sea-god's flocks?Have rested here, and mortal eyes have seen?By great adventure at the dead of noon?A lonely nereid drowsing half a-swoon?Buried beneath her dark and dripping locks.
XVIII. Noon
Noon! and in the garden bower?The hot air quivers o'er the grass,?The little lake is smooth as glass?And still so heavily the hour?Drags, that scarce the proudest flower?Pressed upon its burning bed?Has strength to lift a languid head:?-Rose and fainting violet?By the water's margin set?Swoon and sink as they were dead?Though their weary leaves be fed?With the foam-drops of the pool?Where it trembles dark and cool?Wrinkled by the fountain spraying?O'er it. And the honey-bee?Hums his drowsy melody?And wanders in his course a-straying?Through the sweet and tangled glade?With his golden mead o'erladen,?Where beneath the pleasant shade?Of the darkling boughs a maiden?-Milky limb and fiery tress,?All at sweetest random laidSlumbers,?drunken with the excess?Of the noontide's loveliness.
XIX. Milton Read Again (In Surrey)
Three golden months while summer on us stole?I have read your joyful tale another time,?Breathing more freely in that larger clime?And learning wiselier to deserve the whole.
Your Spirit, Master, has been close at hand?And guided me, still pointing treasures rare,?Thick-sown where I before saw nothing fair?And finding waters in the barren land,
Barren once thought because my eyes were dim.?Like one I am grown to whom the common field?And often-wandered copse one morning yield?New pleasures suddenly; for over him
Falls the weird spirit of unexplained delight,?New mystery in every shady place,?In every whispering tree a nameless grace,?New rapture on the windy seaward height.
So may she come to me, teaching me well?To savour all these sweets that lie to hand?In wood and lane about this pleasant land?Though it be not the land where I would dwell.
.?XX. Sonnet
The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall?About a dreaming garden still and sweet,?I hear the unseen bats above me bleat?Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,?And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.?Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet?For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,?Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall?With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear?With magic sponge can wipe away an hour?Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,?Why could a man not loiter in that bower?Until a thousand painless cycles wore,?And then-what if it held him evermore?
XXI. The Autumn Morning
See! the pale autumn dawn?Is faint, upon the lawn?That lies in powdered white
Of hoar-frost dight
And now from tree to tree?The ghostly mist we see?Hung like a silver pall
To hallow all.
It wreathes the burdened air?So strangely everywhere?That I could almost fear
This silence drear
Where no one song-bird sings?And dream that wizard things?Mighty for hate or love
Were close above.
White as the fog and fair?Drifting through the middle air?In magic dances dread
Over my head.
Yet these should know me too?Lover and bondman true,?One that has honoured well
The mystic spell
Of earth's most solemn hours?Wherein the ancient powers?Of dryad, elf, or faun
Or leprechaun
Oft have their faces shown?To me that walked alone?Seashore or haunted fen
Or mountain glen
Wherefore I will not fear?To walk the woodlands sere?Into this autumn day
Far, far away.
Part II Hesitation
XXII. L'Apprenti Sorcier
Suddenly there came to me?The music of a mighty sea?That on a bare and iron shore?Thundered with a deeper roar?Than all the tides that leap and run?With us below the real sun:?Because the place was far away,?Above, beyond our homely day,?Neighbouring close the frozen clime?Where out of all the woods of time,?Amid the frightful seraphim?The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam,?Revolving hate and misery?And wars and famines yet to be.?And in my dreams I stood alone?Upon a shelf of weedy stone,?And saw before my shrinking eyes?The dark, enormous breakers rise,?And hover and fall with deafening thunder?Of thwarted foam that echoed under?The ledge, through many a cavern drear,?With hollow sounds of wintry fear.?And through the waters waste and grey,?Thick-strown for many a league away,?Out of the toiling sea arose?Many a face and form of those?Thin, elemental people dear?Who live beyond our heavy sphere.?And all