To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.

For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,

We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.

O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.

New Gods are crowned in the city, their flowers have broken your rods; They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;

Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.

Time and the Gods are at strife: ye dwell in the midst thereof, Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.

I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,

Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease. Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the pæan, the breast of the nymphs in the brake;

Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath; And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;

All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,

Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire. More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things? Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.

A little while and we die; shall life not

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend. Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;

But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides. O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods! O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods !

Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,

I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast

Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past: Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates, Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits: Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,

And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things, White-eyed and poisonous-finned, sharktoothed and serpentine-curled, Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world. The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;

In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey: In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears; With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour; And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour: And its vapor and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be; And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea: And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air: And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.

Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?

Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods? All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past: Ye are Gods, and behold ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last. In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things, Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings.

Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod,

Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,

Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead. Of the maiden thy mother, men sing as a goddess with grace clad around; Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned.

Yea, once we had sight of another but now she is queen, say these.

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas, Clothed round with the world's desire as

with raiment, and fair as the foam, And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess and mother of Rome.

For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours, Her deep hair heavily laden with odor and color of flowers,

White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendor, a flame, Bent down unto us that besought her,

and earth grew sweet with her

name.

For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she Came flushed from the full-flushed wave,

and imperial, her foot on the sea, And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways, And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays. Ye are fallen, our lords by what token? we wist that ye should not fall. Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.

But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.

O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,

I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.

In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art,

Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the

heart,

Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white,

And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,

And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,

In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun, Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and un

done.

Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;

For these give labor and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death. Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know

I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so. For the glass of the year is brittle wherein we gaze for a span ;

A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.1

So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep. For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep. 1866.

A MATCH

IF love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief ;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.

If I were what the words are,

And love were like the tune, With double sound and single Delight our lips would mingle,

1 ψυχάριον εἶ βαστάζον νεκρόν. EPICTETUS

With kisses glad as birds are That get sweet rain at noon; If I were what the words are And love were like the tune.

If you were life, my darling,

And I your love were death, We'd shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling

And hours of fruitful breath; If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death.

If you were thrall to sorrow,

And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May,

We'd throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady

And night were bright like day; If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein:
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.

1866.

The burden of bright colors. Thou shalt

respire,

And time's turned glass lets through the sighing sands ;

This is the end of every man's desire.

The burden of much gladness. Life and lust [light;

Forsake thee, and the face of thy deAnd underfoot the heavy hour strews dust;

And overhead strange weathers burn and bite:

And where the red was, lo, the bloodless white,

And where truth was, the likeness of a liar,

And where day was, the likeness of the night;

This is the end of every man's desire.

ENVOI

Princes, and ye whom pleasure quickeneth,

HERE, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep
Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbor,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,

And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes
Where no leaf blooms or blushes,
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated

Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,

She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow

And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,

The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken