No certain clearness, but at best A vague suspicion of the breast: "But if I grant, thou might'st defend The thesis which thy words intendThat to begin implies to end; "Yet how should I for certain hold, Because my memory is so cold, That I first was in human mould ? "I cannot make this matter plain, But I would shoot, howe'er in vain, A random arrow from the brain.

'It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round. 'As old mythologies relate,

Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping thro' from state to state.

"As here we find in trances, men Forget the dream that happens then, Until they fall in trance again.

"So might we, if our state were such As one before, remember much, For those two likes might meet and touch.

"But, if I lapsed from nobler place, Some legend of a fallen race Alone night hint of my disgrace; "Some vague emotion of delight In gazing up an Alpine height, Some yearning toward the lamps of night.

"Or if thro' lower lives I cameTho' all experience past became Consolidate in mind and frame

"I might forget my weaker lot; For is not our first year forgot? The haunts of memory echo not. "And men, whose reason long was blind,

From cells of madness unconfined, Oft lose whole years of darker mind. "Much more, if first I floated free, As naked essence, must I be Incompetent of memory:

"For memory dealing but with time, And he with inatter, should she climb Beyond her own material prime? "Moreover, something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams"Of something felt, like something here;

Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare."

The still voice laugh'd. "I talk," said he,

"Not with thy dreams. Suffice it theo Thy pain is a reality."

"But thou," said I, "hast miss'd thy mark,

Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark, By making all the horizon dark. "Why not set forth, if I should do This rashness, that which might ensuo With this old soul in organs new? "Whatever crazy sorrow saith,

No life that breathes with human breath

IIas ever truly long'd for death.
"Tis life, whereof our nerves

scant,

aro

O life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."

I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.
Then said the voice, in quiet scorn,
"Behold it is the Sabbath morn."
And I arose, and I released

The casement, and the light increased
With freshness in the dawning east.

Like soften'd airs that blowing steal,
When meres begin to uncongeal,
The sweet church bells began to peal.
On to God's house the people prest:
Passing the place where each must
rest,

Each enter'd like a welcome guest.
One walk'd between his wife and child,
With measured footfall firm and mild,
And now and then he gravely smiled.
The prudent partner of his blood
Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good,
Wearing the rose of womanhood.
And in their double love secure,
The little maiden walk'd demure,
Pacing with downward eyelids pure.
These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.
I blest them, and they wander'd on:
I spoke, but answer came there none;
The dull and bitter voice was gone.
A second voice was at mine ear,
A little whisper silver-clear,
A murmur, "Be of better cheer."
As from some blissful neighborhood,
A notice faintly understood,

66

"I see the eud, and know the good."

A little hint to solace woe,

A hint, a whisper breathing low, "I may not speak of what I know." Like an Eolian harp that wakes No certain air, but overtakes Far thought with music that it makes: Such seem'd the whisper at my side: "What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?" I cried.

"A hidden hope," the voice replied: So heavenly-toned, that in that hour From out my sullen heart a power Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,

To feel, altho' no tongue can prove,
That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.
And forth into the fields I went,
And Nature's living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
I wonder'd at the bounteous hours,
The slow result of winter showers:
You scarce could see the grass for
flowers.

I wonder'd, while I paced along:
The woods were fill'd so full with song,
There seem'd no room for sense of

wrong.

So variously seem'd all things wrought,
I marvell'd how the mind was brought
To anchor by one gloomy thought;
And wherefore rather I made choice
To commune with that barren voice,
Than him that said, 46
"Rejoice! re-
joice!"

THE DAY DREAM.

PROLOGUE.

O LADY FLORA, let me speak:
A pleasant hour has past away
While, dreaming on your damask
cheek,

The dewy sister-eyelids lay.
As by the lattice you reclined,

I went thro' many wayward moods To see you dreaming-and, behind, A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dream'd, until at last

Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had,

And see the vision that I saw, Then take the broidery-frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw, And I will tell it. Turn your face,

Nor look with that too-earnest eyeThe rhymes are dazzled from their place,

And order'd words asunder fly.

THE SLEEPING PALACE,

I.

THE varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains;

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. II,

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

III.

Ah, yet would I-and would I might! So much your eyes my fancy takeBe still the first to leap to light

That I right 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.

IV.

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.

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?

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 oaks began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes

The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown,
And, as tradition teaches,
Young ashes pirouetted down

Coquetting with young beeches;
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath
Ran forward to his rhyming,
And from the valleys underneath
Came little copses climbing.

The linden broke her ranks and rent
The woodbine wreaths that bind her,
And down the middle buzz! she went
With all her bees behind her;
The poplars, in long order duc,
With cypress promenaded,

The shock-head willows two and two
By rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shot alder from the wave,
Came yews, a dismal coterie;

Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave,

Poussetting with a sloe-tree: Old elms came breaking from the vinc, The vine stream'd out to follow, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine From many a cloudy hollow. And wasn't it a sight to see,

When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain

eaves

Look'd down, half-pleased, halff:ighten'd,

As dash'd about the drunken leaves
The random sunshine lighten'd!
Oh! nature first was fresh to men,
And wanton without measure;

So youthful and so flex:le then,
You moved her at your pleasure.
Twang out, my fiddle! shake the
twigs!

And make her dance attendance, Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,

And scirrhous roots and tendons.
"Tis vain! in such a brassy age
I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle;
Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick,
The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound
Like sleepy counsel pleading;
O Lord! 'tis in my neighbour's

ground,

The modern Muses reading.

They read Botanic Treatises, And Works

there,

on Gardening thro'

And Methods of transplanting trees,
To look as if they grew there.
The wither'd Misses! how they prose
O'er books of travell'd seamen,
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbors clipt and cut,
And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut
And warm'd in crystal cases.

But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,
The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed
That blows upon its mountain,
The vilest herb that runs to seed
Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,

Upon my proper patch of soil

To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom:
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.

ST. AGNES' EVE.

DEEP on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapor gocc:
May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil'd and dark,