How should we grow in other ground? -Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease; 210 And leave our desert to its peace!" GEIST'S GRAVE (January, 1881) Four years!-and didst thou stay above 5 Only four years those winning ways, That loving heart, that patient soul, 10 Had they indeed no longer span, To run their course, and reach their goal, That liquid, melancholy eye, From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs 15 Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry, The sense of tears in mortal things— That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled And temper of heroic mould 20 What, was four years their whole short day? Yes, only four!-and not the course Of nature, with her countless sum 25 Of figures, with her fulness vast Stern law of every mortal lot! 30 Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear, And builds himself I know not what Of second life I know not where. But thou, when struck thine hour to go, 35 A meek last glance of love didst throw, Yet would we keep thee in our heart- 40 And be as if thou ne'er hadst been. And so there rise these lines of verse 45 We stroke thy broad brown paws again, We see the flaps of thy large ears Nor to us only art thou dear Who mourn thee in thine English home; 55 Thou hast thine absent master's tear, Dropt by the far Australian foam. Thy memory lasts both here and there, Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame, 65 We lay thee, close within our reach, Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form, Asleep, yet lending half an ear 70 To travellers on the Portsmouth road;- Then some, who through this garden pass, People who lived here long ago DOVER BEACH (From New Poems, 1867) The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 5 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd sand, 10 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 15 Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Egean, and it brought Find also in the sound a thought, 20 Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 25 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear Ah, love, let us be true 30 To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 35 And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night, LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS (From Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, 1852) In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand! 5 Birds here make song, each bird has his, How green under the boughs it is! Sometimes a child will cross the glade Here at my feet what wonders pass, Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod 20 Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. In the huge world, which roars hard by, But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan. 25 I on men's impious uproar hurl'd, |