The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. "Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; O Death in Life, the days that are no more." She ended with such passion that the tear, She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl Lost in her bosom : but with some disdain Answer'd the Princess If indeed there haunt About the moulder'd lodges of the Past So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men, Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool And so pace by but thine are fancies hatch'd In silken-folded idleness; nor is it Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, But trim our sails, and let old bygones be, While down the streams that float us each and all To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, Their cancell❜d Babels: tho' the rough kex break The starr'd mosaic, and the wild goat hang Upon the shaft, and the wild figtree split Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear A trumpet in the distance pealing news Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 'Know you no song of your own land,' she said, But deals with the other distance and the hues Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine.' Then I remember'd one myself had made What time I watch'd the swallow winging south From mine own land, part made long since, and part Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far As I could ape their treble, did I sing. 'O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee. 'O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North. 'O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 'O were I thou that she might take me in, And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, Delaying as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green ? O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown: 'O tell her, brief is life but love is long, And brief the sun of summer in the North, And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 'O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.' I ceased and all the ladies, each at each, Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, Stared with great eyes, and laugh'd with alien lips, Rang false but smiling Not for thee,' she said, O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan Shall burst her veil: marsh-divers, rather, maid, Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake Grate her harsh kindred in the grass and this We hold them slight they mind us of the time That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, I loved her. Peace be with her! she is dead. |