2. But any man that walks the mead, A meaning suited to his mind. In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 'twere to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. 1. You shake your head. A random string To 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, to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars, In divers seasons, divers climes; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. 2. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 3. Ah, yet would I-and would I might! That I might kiss those eyes awake! 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, Perforce will still revert to you ; The prelude to some brighter world. 4. For since the time when Adam first And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes? Where on the double rosebud droops Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; That lets thee neither hear nor see: 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, 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, A garden too with scarce a tree Yet say the neighbours when they call, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, |