II. 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. I. You shake your head. A random string To fall asleep with all one's friends; To silence from the paths of men ; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; As wild as aught of fairy lore; The Federations and the Powers; 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 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 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', Perforce will still revert to you; The prelude to some brighter world. IV. For since the time when Adam first 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 fullness 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: Are clasp'd the moral of thy life, 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, Yet say the neighbours when they call, That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, Such happy intonation, 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. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, Coquetting with young beeches; And down the middle, buzz! she went With all her bees behind her: The poplars, in long order due, With cypress promenaded, The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shot alder from the wave, grave, Poussetting with a sloe-tree : Old elms came breaking from the vine, 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, As dash'd about the drunken leaves Oh, nature first was fresh to men, And wanton without measure; So youthful and so flexile 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 The passive oxen gaping. |