Here sits the Butler with a flask The silk star-broider'd coverlid Unto her limbs itself doth mould Languidly ever; and, amid Her full black ringlets downward roll'd, Between his knees, half-drain'd; and Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm there The wrinkled steward at his task, V. Till all the hundred summers pass, And beaker brimm'd with noble wine. With bracelets of the diamond bright: Her constant beauty doth inform Stillness with love, and day with light. "O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!" | Go, look in any glass and say, "Olove, thy kiss would wake the dead!" IV. "A hundred summers! can it be? For there are greater wonders there." Beyond their utmost purple rim, What moral is in being fair. The wildweed-flower that simply blows! II. But any man that walks the mead, A meaning suited to his mind. In Art like Nature, dearest friend; Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. MORAL. I. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, I. You shake your head. A random string Well were it not a pleasant thing To fall asleep with all one's friends; To pass with all our social ties To silence from the paths of men ; And every hundred years to rise 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; In divers seasons, divers climes; And in the morning of the times. II. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep Thro' sunny decads new and strange, Or gay quinquenniads would we reap The flower and quintessence of change. III. Ah, yet would I — and would I might ! 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 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, 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 Or old-world trains, upheld at court AMPHION. 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 'T is 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 oak began to move, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, 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, The shock-head willows two and two 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 vine, The vine stream'd out to follow, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine From many a cloudy hollow. And was n't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, As dash'd about the drunken leaves O, nature first was fresh to men, 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 Scarce answer to my whistle; The passive oxen gaping. But what is that I hear? a sound Like sleepy counsel pleading; O Lord! 't is in my neighbor's ground, And Works on Gardening thro' there, i And Methods of transplanting trees, But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, That blows upon its mountain, And I must work thro' months of toil, To grow my own plantation. ST. AGNES' EVE. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows As these white robes are soil'd and dark, As this pale taper's earthly spark, So shows my soul before the Lamb, So in mine earthly house I am, Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, |