Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet,
I leave thy covert haunt untrod,
And envy Science not her feat

To make a twice-told tale of God.

They said the fairies tript no more,
And long ago that Pan was dead ;
'Twas but that fools preferred to bore
Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead.

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long,
The fairies dance each full-mooned night,
Would we but doff our lenses strong,
And trust our wiser eyes' delight.

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;
Wonders that from the seeker fly
Into an open sense may fall.

Hide in thine own soul, and surprise
The password of the unwary elves;
Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies;
Unsought, they whisper it themselves.

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,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low,

And cheek aslant, see rivers' flow of gold,
'Twixt crimson banks; and then a traveller go
From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous

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,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odysse

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 -
Dimpled close with hill and valley,

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:
There, in green arrest, the branches
See their image on the ground :

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
The slant grass and daisies pale;
And five apple-trees stand dropping

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
That fair walk and far survey:
'Twas a straight walk, unadvised by

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
Bough in bough and root in root,
No more sky (for over-branching)
At your head than at your foot, -

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.