2. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 3. Ah, yet would I and would I might ! So much your eyes my fancy take Be still the first to leap to light That I might kiss those eyes awake! To choose your own you did not care; My fancy, ranging thro' and thro', Perforce will still revert to you; The prelude to some brighter world. 4. For since the time when Adam first And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'! hopes? What lips, like thine, so sweetly join'd? Where on the double rosebud droops The fulness of the pensive mind; Which all too dearly self-involved, 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, And in the rights that name may give, Are clasp'd 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, 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 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. AMPHION. My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. 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, "Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, The linden broke her ranks and rent The shock-head willows two and two Came wet-shot alder from the wave, Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, And was n't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, And shepherds from the mountain-eaves As dash'd about the drunken leaves Oh, nature first was fresh to men, You moved her at your pleasure. 'Tis vain! in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; But what is that I hear? a sound O Lord! - 't is in my neighbor's ground, The modern Muses reading. They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening thro' there And Methods of transplanting trees, To look as if they grew there. The wither'd Misses! how they prose By squares of tropic summer shut But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, And I must work thro' months of toil, To grow my own plantation. ST. AGNES' EVE. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows The shadows of the convent-towers Still creeping with the creeping hours Make Thou my spirit pure and clear Or this first snowdrop of the year As these white robes are soil'd and dark, To yonder shining ground; As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be. Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, Thro' all yon starlight keen, Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, He lifts me to the golden doors; And deepens on and up! the gates For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, One sabbath deep and wide The Bridegroom with his bride! |