Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, To make a twice-told tale of God. They said the fairies tript no more, Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, City of Elf-land, just without Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue. I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height; I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night. Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, Thy countersign of long-lost speech, Those fountained courts, those chambers still, Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? I know not and never will pry, But trust our human heart for all; Hide in thine own soul, and surprise Lowell. CLOUDLAND. IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease, O, or 0, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould And cheek aslant, see rivers' flow of gold, land! Or, listening to the tide with closèd sight, Be that blind Bard, who on the Chian strand By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I THE LOST BOWER. ́N the pleasant orchard closes, 'God bless all our gains,' say we; But May God bless all our losses,' Better suits with our degree. Listen gentle―ay, and simple! Listen children on the knee ! Green the land is where my daily Steps in jocund childhood played - Dappled very close with shade; Summer-snow of apple blossoms running up from glade to glade. There is one hill I see nearer, In my vision of the rest; And a little wood seems clearer, As it climbeth from the west, Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland crest. Small the wood is, green with hazels, And, completing the ascent, Where the wind blows and sun dazzles, Thrills in leafy tremblement ; Like a heart that, after climbing, beateth quickly through content. Not a step the wood advances O'er the open hill-top's bound: You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound. For you hearken on your right hand, How the birds do leap and call In the greenwood, out of sight and Out of reach and fear of all; And the squirrels crack the filberts, through their cheerful madrigal. On your left, the sheep are cropping Separate shadows toward the vale, Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their "All hail!" Far out, kindled by each other, Shining hills on hills arise; Close as brother leans to brother, When they press beneath the eyes Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of paradise. While beyond, above them mounted, And above their woods also, Malvern hills, for mountains counted Keepers of Piers Plowman visions, through the sunshine and the snow. Yet in childhood little prized I The least mischief worth a nay Up and down-as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday. But the wood, all close and clenching Oh, the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute. Few and broken paths showed through it, Where the sheep had tried to run, Forced with snowy wool to strew it Round the thickets, when anon They with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into the sun. But my childish heart beat stronger Than those thickets dared to grow: I could pierce them! I could longer Travel on, methought, than so. Sheep for sheep paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go. |