A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes, The bodies and the bones of those They perished in their daring deeds.” This proverb flashes through his head, "The many fail: the one succeeds." He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks : He breaks the hedge: he enters there : The color flies into his cheeks: He trusts to light on something fair; More close and close his footsteps wind; He stoops-to kiss her on his knee. "Love, if thy tresses be so dark, How dark those hidden eyes must be!" THE REVIVAL. 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 through all the garden swept, A sudden hubbub shook the hall, The hedge broke in, the banner blew, The parrot screamed, the peacock squalled, The maid and page renewed their strife, The palace banged, and buzzed and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life Dashed downward in a cataract. And last with these the king awoke, And yawned, and rubbed his face, and spoke, How say you? we have slept, my lords. Pardy," returned the king, "but still THE DEPARTURE. And on her lover's arm she leant, And deep into the dying day "I'd sleep another hundred years, "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 buoyed the crescent-bark, And, rapt through many a rosy change, The twilight died into the dark. "A hundred summers! can it be? 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, Through all the world she followed him. MORAL. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, O, to what uses shall we put The wildweed-flower that simply blows? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose But any man that walks the mead A meaning suited to his mind. In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 'twere to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. You shake your head. A random string To silence from the paths of men; And learn the world, and sleep again ; To sleep through 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. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep Through sunny decades new and strange, Ah, yet would I—and would I might ! That I might kiss those eyes awake! To choose your own you did not care; My fancy, ranging through and through, The prelude to some brighter world. For since the time when Adam first In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have wakened hopes? That lets thee neither hear nor see: Are clasped the moral of thy life, |