Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, All its allotted length of days, The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. IV 80 Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Should life all labour be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, In silence; ripen, fall, and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. 90 V How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! 100 To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whisper'd speech; Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heap'd over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! 110 VI Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, change; For surely now our household hearths are cold Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange, And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold 120 Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile; "T is hard to settle order once again. Sore tasks to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. 130 VII But propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet-while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly→→→ With half-dropped eyelid still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill— To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine-- To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling 140 Thro' many a woven acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. VIII The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, The Lotos blows by every winding creek; All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone; Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. 150 Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world; Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, 160 Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little' meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer-some, 't is whisper'd-down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore 170 Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. 1833. Lord Tennyson. |