A little hint to solace woe,
A hint, a whisper breathing low,
"I may not speak of what I know."

Like an Æolian 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, "Rejoice! rejoice!"

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:

Here rests the sap within the leaf,

Here stays the blood along the veins. Faint shadows, vapors lightly curl'd, Faint murmurs from the meadows

come,

Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb.

2.

Soft lustre bathes the range of urns
On every slanting terrace-lawn.
The fountain to his place returns,

Deep in the garden lake withdrawn.
Here droops the banner on the tower,
On the hall-hearths the festal fires,
The peacock in his laurel bower,
The parrot in his gilded wires.

3. Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:

In these, in those the life is stay'd, The mantles from the golden pegs Droop sleepily: no sound is made, Not even of a gnat that sings.

More like a picture seemeth all Than those old portraits of old kings, That watch the sleepers from the wall,

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; 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.

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?

Or old-world trains, upheld at court
By Cupid-boys of blooming hue-
But 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
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!

'T is said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation,

Began to make him merry,
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,
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 wasn't it a sight to see,

eaves

When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain. [frighten'd, Look'd down, half-pleased, half. As dash'd about the drunken leaves The random sunshine lighten'd! O, 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.