His spirit flutters like a lark,

He stoops

to kiss her

on his knee.

"Love, if thy tresses be so dark,

How dark those hidden eyes must be!"

THE REVIVAL.

1.

A TOUCH, a kiss! the charm was snapt.
There rose a noise of striking clocks,
And feet that ran, and doors that clapt,
And barking dogs, and crowing cocks;
A fuller light illumined all,

A breeze thro' all the garden swept,
A sudden hubbub shook the hall,
And sixty feet the fountain leapt.

2.

The hedge broke in, the banner blew,
The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd,
The fire shot up, the martin flew,

The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife,

The palace bang'd, and buzz'd, and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life

Dash'd downward in a cataract.

3.

And last with these the king awoke,

And in his chair himself uprear'd,

And yawn'd, and rubb'd his face, and spoke, "By holy rood, a royal beard!

How say you? we have slept, my lords.
My beard has grown into my lap.”
The barons swore, with many words,
'Twas but an after-dinner's nap.

4.

"Pardy," return'd the king, "but still
My joints are somewhat stiff or so.
My lord, and shall we pass the bill
I mention'd half an hour ago ?"
The chancellor, sedate and vain,

In courteous words return'd reply:
But dallied with his golden chain,
And, smiling, put the question by.

THE DEPARTURE.

1.

AND on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old:
Across the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess follow'd him.

2.

"I'd sleep another hundred years, O love, for such another kiss; " "O wake forever, love," she hears,

"O love, 't was 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.

3.

"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 vapor buoy'd the crescent-bark, And, rapt thro' many a rosy change, The twilight died into the dark.

4.

"A hundred summers! can it be?

66

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.

1.

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 ?

2.

But any man that walks the mead,
In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humors lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend;

So 't were to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

L'ENVOI.

1.

You shake your head. A random string

Your finer female sense offends.

Well were it not a pleasant thing

To fall asleep with all one's friends;

Το 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.

2.

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep
Thro' sunny decads new and strange,
Or gay quinquenniads would we reap
The flower and quintessence of change.

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!
For, am I right, or am I wrong,
To choose your own you did not care;
You'd have my moral from the song,

And I will take my pleasure there:
And, am I right or am I wrong,

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.
· 4.

For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,

And every bird of Eden burst

In carol, every bud to flower,

What eyes, like thine, have waken'd 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.

1

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 hueBut 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,
A garden too with scarce a tree
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbors when they call,
It is not bad but good land,

And in it is the germ of all

That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,

Nor cared for seed or scion !

And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!

"Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation,
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove
He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,

And flounder into hornpipes.