Endymion!’ said Peona, ‘we are here!

What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier?’

Then he embraced her, and his lady’s hand

Pressed, saying: ‘Sister, I would have command,

If it were heaven’s will, on our sad fate.’

At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate

And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love,

To Endymion’s amaze: ‘By Cupid’s dove,

980

And so thou shalt! and by the lily truth

Of my own breast thou shalt, belovèd youth!’

And as she spake, into her face there came

Light, as reflected from a silver flame:

Her long black hair swelled ampler, in display

Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day

Dawned blue and full of love. Ay, he beheld

Phoebe, his passion! Joyous she upheld

Her lucid bow, continuing thus: ‘Drear, drear

Has our delaying been; but foolish fear

990

Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate;

And then ’twas fit that from this mortal state

Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlooked for change

Be spiritualized. Peona, we shall range

These forests, and to thee they safe shall be

As was thy cradle; hither shalt thou flee

To meet us many a time.’ Next Cynthia bright

Peona kissed, and blessed with fair good-night:

Her brother kissed her too, and knelt adown

Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon.

1000

She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,

Before three swiftest kisses he had told,

They vanished far away! – Peona went

Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

I

In drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy tree,

Thy branches ne’er remember

Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them,

With a sleety whistle through them,

Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

II

In drear-nighted December,

10

Too happy, happy brook,

Thy bubblings ne’er remember

Apollo’s summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

III

Ah! would ’twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any

20

Writhed not of passed joy?

The feel of not to feel it,

When there is none to heal it,

Nor numbèd sense to steel it,

Was never said in rhyme.

Before he went to live with owls and bats

Nebuchadnezzar had an ugly dream,

Worse than a housewife’s when she thinks her cream

Made a naumachia for mice and rats.

So scared, he sent for that ‘Good King of Cats’,

Young Daniel, who did straightway pluck the beam

From out his eye, and said ‘I do not deem

Your sceptre worth a straw – your cushion old door-mats’.

A horrid nightmare similar somewhat

10

Of late has haunted a most valiant crew

Of loggerheads and chapmen – we are told

That any Daniel though he be a sot

Can make their lying lips turn pale of hue

By drawling out, ‘Ye are that head of Gold.’

APOLLO

Which of the fairest three

Today will ride with me?

Which of the fairest three

Today will ride with me

THE GRACES all answer

I will, I – I – I –

O young Apollo let me fly along with thee,

I will, I – I – I,

10

The many, many wonders see –

I – I – I – I –

I – I – I – I

Cat! who hast passed thy grand climacteric,

How many mice and rats hast in thy days

Destroyed? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze

With those bright languid segments green, and prick

Those velvet ears – but prithee do not stick

Thy latent talons in me, and up-raise

Thy gentle mew, and tell me all thy frays

Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.

Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists –

10

For all the wheezy asthma, and for all

Thy tail’s tip is nicked off, and though the fists

Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,

Still is that fur as soft as when the lists

In youth thou enteredst on glass-bottled wall.

Chief of organic numbers!

Old scholar of the spheres!

Thy spirit never slumbers,

But rolls about our ears,

For ever, and for ever!

O what a mad endeavour

Worketh he,

Who to thy sacred and ennoblèd hearse

Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse

10

And melody.

How heavenward thou soundest,

Live temple of sweet noise,

And discord unconfoundest,

Give delight new joys,

And pleasure nobler pinions!

O, where are thy dominions?

Lend thine ear

To a young Delian oath – ay, by thy soul,

By all that from thy mortal lips did roll,

20

And by the kernel of thy earthly love,

Beauty in things on earth and things above,

I swear!

When every childish fashion

Has vanished from my rhyme,

Will I, grey-gone in passion,

Leave to an after-time

Hymning and harmony

Of thee, and of thy works, and of thy life;

But vain is now the burning and the strife,

30

Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife

With old Philosophy,

And mad with glimpses of futurity!

For many years my offering must be hushed;

When I do speak, I’ll think upon this hour,

Because I feel my forehead hot and flushed,

Even at the simplest vassal of thy power –

A lock of thy bright hair.

Sudden it came,

And I was startled, when I caught thy name

40

Coupled so unaware;

Yet, at the moment, temperate was my blood.

Methought I had beheld it from the Flood.

O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute!

Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!

Leave melodizing on this wintry day,

Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:

Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute

Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay

Must I burn through, once more humbly assay

The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

10

Begetters of our deep eternal theme!

When through the old oak forest I am gone,

Let me not wander in a barren dream,

But, when I am consumed in the fire,

Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

10

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love! – then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

I

O blush not so! O blush not so!

Or I shall think you knowing;

And if you smile the blushing while,

Then maidenheads are going.

II

There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,

And a blush for having done it:

There’s a blush for thought, and a blush for naught,

And a blush for just begun it.

III

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

10

For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;

By those loosened hips you have tasted the pips

And fought in an amorous nipping.

IV

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

For it only will last our youth out?

And we have the prime of the kissing time,

We have not one sweet tooth out.

V

There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,

And a sigh for I can’t bear it!

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

20

O, cut the sweet apple and share it!

Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,

Away with old Hock and Madeira,

Too couthly ye are for my sport;

There’s a beverage brighter and clearer.

Instead of a pitiful rummer,

My wine overbrims a whole summer;

My bowl is the sky,

And I drink at my eye,

Till I feel in the brain

10

A Delphian pain –

Then follow, my Caius! then follow!

On the green of the hill

We will drink our fill

Of golden sunshine,

Till our brains intertwine

With the glory and grace of Apollo!

God of the meridian,

And of the East and West,

To thee my soul is flown,

And my body is earthward pressed.

It is an awful mission,

A terrible division,

And leaves a gulf austere

To be filled with worldly fear.

Ay, when the soul is fled

10

To high above our head,

Affrighted do we gaze

After its airy maze,

As doth a mother wild,

When her young infant child

Is in an eagle’s claws –

And is not this the cause

Of madness? – God of Song,

Thou bearest me along

Through sights I scarce can bear:

20

O let me, let me share

With the hot lyre and thee,

The staid Philosophy.

Temper my lonely hours,

And let me see thy bowers

More unalarmed!

TO A FRIEND

No! those days are gone away,

And their hours are old and grey,

And their minutes buried all

Under the down-trodden pall

Of the leaves of many years;

Many times have winter’s shears,

Frozen North, and chilling East,

Sounded tempests to the feast

Of the forest’s whispering fleeces,

10

Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more,

And the twanging bow no more;

Silent is the ivory shrill

Past the heath and up the hill;

There is no mid-forest laugh,

Where lone Echo gives the half

To some wight, amazed to hear

Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June

20

You may go, with sun or moon,

Or the seven stars to light you,

Or the polar ray to right you;

But you never may behold

Little John, or Robin bold;

Never one, of all the clan,

Thrumming on an empty can

Some old hunting ditty, while

He doth his green way beguile

To fair hostess Merriment,

30

Down beside the pasture Trent;

For he left the merry tale

Messenger for spicy ale.

Gone, the merry morris din;

Gone, the song of Gamelyn;

Gone, the tough-belted outlaw

Idling in the ‘grenè shawe’;

All are gone away and past!

And if Robin should be cast

Sudden from his turfèd grave,

40

And if Marian should have

Once again her forest days,

She would weep, and he would craze.

He would swear, for all his oaks,

Fallen beneath the dockyard strokes,

Have rotted on the briny seas;

She would weep that her wild bees

Sang not to her – strange! that honey

Can’t be got without hard money!

So it is – yet let us sing,

50

Honour to the old bow-string!

Honour to the bugle-horn!

Honour to the woods unshorn!

Honour to the Lincoln green!

Honour to the archer keen!

Honour to tight little John,

And the horse he rode upon!

Honour to bold Robin Hood,

Sleeping in the underwood!

Honour to maid Marian,

60

And to all the Sherwood-clan!

Though their days have hurried by

Let us two a burden try.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have ye tippled drink more fine

Than mine host’s Canary wine?

Or are fruits of Paradise

Sweeter than those dainty pies

Of venison? O generous food!

10

Dressed as though bold Robin Hood

Would, with his maid Marian,

Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day

Mine host’s sign-board flew away,

Nobody knew whither, till

An astrologer’s old quill

To a sheepskin gave the story,

Said he saw you in your glory,

Underneath a new-old sign

20

Sipping beverage divine,

And pledging with contented smack

The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,

Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,

Since I was tangled in thy beauty’s web,

And snared by the ungloving of thy hand.

And yet I never look on midnight sky,

But I behold thine eyes’ well-memoried light;

I cannot look upon the rose’s dye,

But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight;

I cannot look on any budding flower,

10

But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips,

And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour

Its sweets in the wrong sense: – Thou dost eclipse

Every delight with sweet remembering,

And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.

Son of the old moon-mountains African!

Chief of the pyramid and crocodile!

We call thee fruitful, and, that very while,

A desert fills our seeing’s inward span.

Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,

Rest for a space ’twixt Cairo and Decan?

O may dark fancies err! They surely do.

10

’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew

Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too,

And to the sea as happily dost haste.

Spenser! a jealous honourer of thine,

A forester deep in thy midmost trees,

Did last eve ask my promise to refine

Some English that might strive thine ear to please.

But, Elfin Poet, ’tis impossible

For an inhabitant of wintry earth

To rise like Phoebus with a golden quell,

Fire-winged, and make a morning in his mirth.

It is impossible to escape from toil

10

O’ the sudden and receive thy spiriting:

The flower must drink the nature of the soil

Before it can put forth its blossoming.

Be with me in the summer days and I

Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.

Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, the domain

Of Cynthia, the wide palace of the sun,

The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,

The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.

Blue! ’Tis the life of waters – Ocean

And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,

May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can

Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.

Blue! Gentle cousin to the forest-green,

10

Married to green in all the sweetest flowers –

Forget-me-not, the blue-bell, and, that queen

Of secrecy, the violet. What strange powers

Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,

When in an eye thou art, alive with fate!

‘O thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind,

Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,

And the black elm tops, ’mong the freezing stars,

To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.

O thou, whose only book has been the light

Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on

Night after night when Phoebus was away,

To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.

O fret not after knowledge – I have none,

10

And yet my song comes native with the warmth.

O fret not after knowledge – I have none,

And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,

And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.’

Where didst thou find, young Bard, thy sounding lyre?

Where the bland accent, and the tender tone?

A-sitting snugly by thy parlour fire?

Or didst thou with Apollo pick a bone?

The Muse will have a crow to pick with me

For thus assaying in thy brightening path:

Who, that with his own brace of eyes can see,

Unthunderstruck beholds thy gentle wrath?

Who from a pot of stout e’er blew the froth

10

Into the bosom of the wandering wind,

Light as the powder on the back of moth,

But drank thy muses with a grateful mind?

Yea, unto thee beldams drink metheglin

And annisies, and carraway, and gin.

I

O! were I one of the Olympian twelve,

Their godships should pass this into a law –

That when a man doth set himself in toil

After some beauty veilèd far away,

Each step he took should make his lady’s hand

More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;

And for each briar-berry he might eat,

A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,

And pulp and ripen richer every hour,

10

To melt away upon the traveller’s lips.

II DAISY’S SONG

1

The sun, with his great eye,

Sees not so much as I;

And the moon, all silver-proud,

Might as well be in a cloud.

2

And O the spring – the spring!

I lead the life of a king!

Couched in the teeming grass,

I spy each pretty lass.

3

I look where no one dares,

10

And I stare where no one stares,

And when the night is nigh,

Lambs bleat my lullaby.

III FOLLY’S SONG

When wedding fiddles are a-playing,

Huzza for folly O!

And when maidens go a-maying,

Huzza, etc.

When a milk-pail is upset,

Huzza, etc.

And the clothes left in the wet,

Huzza, etc.

When the barrel’s set abroach,

10

Huzza, etc.

When Kate Eyebrow keeps a coach,

Huzza, etc.

When the pig is over-roasted,

Huzza, etc.

And the cheese is over-toasted,

Huzza, etc.

When Sir Snap is with his lawyer,

Huzza, etc.

And Miss Chip has kissed the sawyer,

20

Huzza, etc.

IV

O, I am frightened with most hateful thoughts!

Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale’s,

Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl;

Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know,

Not longer than the may-fly’s small fan-horns;

There may not be one dimple on her hand –

And freckles many. Ah! a careless nurse,

In haste to teach the little thing to walk,

May have crumped up a pair of Dian’s legs

10

And warped the ivory of a Juno’s neck.

V SONG

1

The stranger lighted from his steed,

And ere he spake a word,

He seized my lady’s lily hand,

And kissed it all unheard.

2

The stranger walked into the hall,

And ere he spake a word,

He kissed my lady’s cherry lips,

And kissed ’em all unheard.

3

The stranger walked into the bower –

10

But my lady first did go:

Ay, hand in hand into the bower,

Where my lord’s roses blow.

4

My lady’s maid had a silken scarf,

And a golden ring had she,

And a kiss from the stranger, as off he went

Again on his fair palfrey.

VI

Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl!

And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,

And let me call Heaven’s blessing on thine eyes,

And let me breathe into the happy air,

That doth enfold and touch thee all about,

Vows of my slavery, my giving up,

My sudden adoration, my great love!

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man.

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span.

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh

His nearest unto heaven. Quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

10

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness – to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

I

For there’s Bishop’s Teign

And King’s Teign

And Coomb at the clear Teign head –

Where close by the stream

You may have your cream

All spread upon barley bread.

II

There’s Arch Brook

And there’s Larch Brook

Both turning many a mill;

10

And cooling the drouth

Of the salmon’s mouth,

And fattening his silver gill.

III

There is Wild Wood,

A mild hood

To the sheep on the lea o’ the down,

Where the golden furze,

With its green, thin spurs,

Doth catch at the maiden’s gown.

IV

There is Newton Marsh

20

With its spear grass harsh –

A pleasant summer level

Where the maidens sweet

Of the Market Street

Do meet in the dusk to revel.

V

There’s the barton rich

With dyke and ditch

And hedge for the thrush to live in,

And the hollow tree

For the buzzing bee

30

And a bank for the wasp to hive in.

VI

And O, and O,

The daisies blow

And the primroses are wakened,

And violet white

Sits in silver plight,

And the green bud’s as long as the spike end.

VII

Then who would go

Into dark Soho,

And chatter with dacked-haired critics,

40

When he can stay

For the new-mown hay,

And startle the dappled prickets?

I

Where be ye going, you Devon maid?

And what have ye there i’ the basket?

Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,

Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?

II

I love your meads, and I love your flowers,

And I love your junkets mainly,

But ’hind the door I love kissing more,

O look not so disdainly.

III

I love your hills, and I love your dales,

10

And I love your flocks a-bleating –

But O, on the heather to lie together,

With both our hearts a-beating!

IV

I’ll put your basket all safe in a nook,

And your shawl I hang up on this willow,

And we will sigh in the daisy’s eye

And kiss on a grass-green pillow.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And over the bourn to Dawlish –

Where gingerbread wives have a scanty sale

And gingerbread nuts are smallish.

Rantipole Betty she ran down a hill

And kicked up her petticoats fairly.

Says I, ‘I’ll be Jack if you will be Jill.’

So she sat on the grass debonairly.

‘Here’s somebody coming, here’s somebody coming!’

10

Says I, ‘’Tis the wind at a parley.’

So without any fuss, any hawing and humming,

She lay on the grass debonairly.

‘Here’s somebody here, and here’s somebody there!’

Says I, ‘Hold your tongue, you young gipsy.’

So she held her tongue and lay plump and fair,

And dead as a Venus tipsy.

O who wouldn’t hie to Dawlish fair,

O who wouldn’t stop in a meadow?

O [who] would not rumple the daisies there,

20

And make the wild fern for a bed do?

Dear Reynolds, as last night I lay in bed,

There came before my eyes that wonted thread

Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances,

That every other minute vex and please:

Things all disjointed come from North and South –

Two witch’s eyes above a cherub’s mouth,

Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,

And Alexander with his nightcap on,

Old Socrates a-tying his cravat,

10

And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth’s cat,

And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so,

Making the best of’s way towards Soho.

Few are there who escape these visitings –

Perhaps one or two whose lives have patient wings,

And through whose curtains peeps no hellish nose,

No wild-boar tushes, and no mermaid’s toes;

But flowers bursting out with lusty pride,

And young Aeolian harps personified,

Some, Titian colours touched into real life –

20

The sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife

Gloams in the sun, the milk-white heifer lows,

The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows;

A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,

Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff.

The mariners join hymn with those on land.

You know the Enchanted Castle – it doth stand

Upon a rock, on the border of a lake,

Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake

From some old magic like Urganda’s sword.

30

O Phoebus! that I had thy sacred word

To show this castle, in fair dreaming wise,

Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!

You know it well enough, where it doth seem

A mossy place, a Merlin’s Hall, a dream.

You know the clear lake, and the little isles,

The mountains blue, and cold near-neighbour rills,

All which elsewhere are but half animate;

Here do they look alive to love and hate,

To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound

40

Above some giant, pulsing underground.

Part of the building was a chosen see,

Built by a banished santon of Chaldee;

The other part, two thousand years from him,

Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;

Then there’s a little wing, far from the sun,

Built by a Lapland witch turned maudlin nun;

And many other juts of aged stone

Founded with many a mason-devil’s groan.

The doors all look as if they oped themselves,

50

The windows as if latched by fays and elves,

And from them comes a silver flash of light,

As from the westward of a summer’s night;

Or like a beauteous woman’s large blue eyes

Gone mad through olden songs and poesies –

See! what is coming from the distance dim!

A golden galley all in silken trim!

Three rows of oars are lightening, moment-whiles,

Into the verdurous bosoms of those isles.

Towards the shade, under the castle wall,

60

It comes in silence – now ’tis hidden all.

The clarion sounds, and from a postern-grate

An echo of sweet music doth create

A fear in the poor herdsman, who doth bring

His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring.

He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,

To all his friends – and they believe him not.

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,

Would all their colours from the sunset take,

From something of material sublime,

70

Rather than shadow our own soul’s daytime

In the dark void of night. For in the world

We jostle – but my flag is not unfurled

On the admiral staff – and to philosophize

I dare not yet! O, never will the prize,

High reason, and the lore of good and ill,

Be my award! Things cannot to the will

Be settled, but they tease us out of thought.

Or is it that imagination brought

Beyond its proper bound, yet still confined,

80

Lost in a sort of purgatory blind,

Cannot refer to any standard law

Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw

In happiness, to see beyond our bourne –

It forces us in summer skies to mourn;

It spoils the singing of the nightingale.

Dear Reynolds, I have a mysterious tale,

And cannot speak it. The first page I read

Upon a lampit rock of green seaweed

Among the breakers. ’Twas a quiet eve;

90

The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave

An untumultuous fringe of silver foam

Along the flat brown sand. I was at home

And should have been most happy – but I saw

Too far into the sea, where every maw

The greater on the less feeds evermore. –

But I saw too distinct into the core

Of an eternal fierce destruction,

And so from happiness I far was gone.

Still am I sick of it; and though, today,

100

I’ve gathered young spring-leaves, and flowers gay

Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,

Still do I that most fierce destruction see –

The shark at savage prey, the hawk at pounce,

The gentle robin, like a pard or ounce,

Ravening a worm. – Away, ye horrid moods!

Moods of one’s mind! You know I hate them well,

You know I’d sooner be a clapping bell

To some Kamchatkan missionary church,

Than with these horrid moods be left in lurch.

110

Do you get health – and Tom the same – I’ll dance,

And from detested moods in new romance

Take refuge. Of bad lines a centaine dose

Is sure enough – and so ‘here follows prose’…

O that a week could be an age, and we

Felt parting and warm meeting every week,

Then one poor year a thousand years would be,

The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:

So could we live long life in little space,

So time itself would be annihilate,

So a day’s journey in oblivious haze

To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.

O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!

10

To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!

In little time a host of joys to bind,

And keep our souls in one eternal pant!

This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught

Me how to harbour such a happy thought.

I

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!

They could not in the self-same mansion dwell

Without some stir of heart, some malady;

They could not sit at meals but feel how well

It soothed each to be the other by;

They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep

But to each other dream, and nightly weep.

II

With every morn their love grew tenderer,

10

With every eve deeper and tenderer still;

He might not in house, field, or garden stir,

But her full shape would all his seeing fill;

And his continual voice was pleasanter

To her than noise of trees or hidden rill;

Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,

She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.

III

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch

Before the door had given her to his eyes;

And from her chamber-window he would catch

20

Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;

And constant as her vespers would he watch,

Because her face was turned to the same skies;

And with sick longing all the night outwear,

To hear her morning-step upon the stair.

IV

A whole long month of May in this sad plight

Made their cheeks paler by the break of June:

‘To-morrow will I bow to my delight,

To-morrow will I ask my lady’s boon.’

‘O may I never see another night,

30

Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.’

So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,

Honeyless days and days did he let pass –

V

Until sweet Isabella’s untouched cheek

Fell sick within the rose’s just domain,

Fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek

By every lull to cool her infant’s pain:

‘How ill she is,’ said he, ‘I may not speak,

And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:

If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,

40

And at the least ’twill startle off her cares.’

VI

So said he one fair morning, and all day

His heart beat awfully against his side;

And to his heart he inwardly did pray

For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide

Stifled his voice, and pulsed resolve away –

Fevered his high conceit of such a bride,

Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:

Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!

VII

So once more he had waked and anguishèd

50

A dreary night of love and misery,

If Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed

To every symbol on his forehead high.

She saw it waxing very pale and dead,

And straight all flushed; so, lispèd tenderly,

‘Lorenzo!’ – here she ceased her timid quest,

But in her tone and look he read the rest.

VIII

‘O Isabella, I can half-perceive

That I may speak my grief into thine ear.

If thou didst ever anything believe,

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Believe how I love thee, believe how near

My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve

Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear

Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live

Another night, and not my passion shrive.

IX

‘Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,

Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,

And I must taste the blossoms that unfold

In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time.’

So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,

70

And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:

Great bliss was with them, and great happiness

Grew, like a lusty flower, in June’s caress.

X

Parting they seemed to tread upon the air,

Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart

Only to meet again more close, and share

The inward fragrance of each other’s heart.

She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair

Sang, of delicious love and honeyed dart;

He with light steps went up a western hill,

80

And bade the sun farewell, and joyed his fill.

XI

All close they met again, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

All close they met, all eves, before the dusk

Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,

Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,

Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.

Ah! better had it been for ever so,

Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.

XII

Were they unhappy then? – It cannot be –

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Too many tears for lovers have been shed,

Too many sighs give we to them in fee,

Too much of pity after they are dead,

Too many doleful stories do we see,

Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;

Except in such a page where Theseus’ spouse

Over the pathless waves towards him bows.

XIII

But, for the general award of love,

The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;

Though Dido silent is in under-grove,

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And Isabella’s was a great distress,

Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove

Was not embalmed, this truth is not the less –

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,

Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

XIV

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,

Enrichèd from ancestral merchandise,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt

In torchèd mines and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quivered loins did melt

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In blood from stinging whip – with hollow eyes

Many all day in dazzling river stood,

To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

xv

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

And went all naked to the hungry shark;

For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death

The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel,

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That set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel.

XVI

Why were they proud? Because their marble founts

Gushed with more pride than do a wretch’s tears? –

Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts

Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs? –

Why were they proud? Because red-lined accounts

Were richer than the songs of Grecian years? –

Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,

Why in the name of Glory were they proud?

XVII

Yet were these Florentines as self-retired

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In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,

As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,

Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies –

The hawks of ship-mast forests – the untired

And panniered mules for ducats and old lies –

Quick cat’s-paws on the generous stray-away –

Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

XVIII

How was it these same ledger-men could spy

Fair Isabella in her downy nest?

How could they find out in Lorenzo’s eye

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A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt’s pest

Into their vision covetous and sly!

How could these money-bags see east and west? –

Yet so they did – and every dealer fair

Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

XIX

O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!

Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon,

And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,

And of thy roses amorous of the moon,

And of thy lilies, that do paler grow

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Now they can no more hear thy gittern’s tune,

For venturing syllables that ill beseem

The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

XX

Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale

Shall move on soberly, as it is meet;

There is no other crime, no mad assail

To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:

But it is done – succeed the verse or fail –

To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet,

To stead thee as a verse in English tongue,

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An echo of thee in the north wind sung.

XXI

These brethren having found by many signs

What love Lorenzo for their sister had,

And how she loved him too, each unconfines

His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad

That he, the servant of their trade designs,

Should in their sister’s love be blithe and glad,

When ’twas their plan to coax her by degrees

To some high noble and his olive-trees.

XXII

And many a jealous conference had they,

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And many times they bit their lips alone,

Before they fixed upon a surest way

To make the youngster for his crime atone;

And at the last, these men of cruel clay

Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone,

For they resolved in some forest dim

To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him.

XXIII

So on a pleasant morning, as he leant

Into the sunrise, o’er the balustrade

Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent

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Their footing through the dews; and to him said,

‘You seem there in the quiet of content,

Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade

Calm speculation; but if you are wise,

Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.

XXIV

‘To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount

To spur three leagues towards the Apennine;

Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count

His dewy rosary on the eglantine.’

Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,

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Bowed a fair greeting to these serpents’ whine;

And went in haste, to get in readiness,

With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman’s dress.

XXV

And as he to the court-yard passed along,

Each third step did he pause, and listened oft

If he could hear his lady’s matin-song,

Or the light whisper of her footstep soft;

And as he thus over his passion hung,

He heard a laugh full musical aloft,

When, looking up, he saw her features bright

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Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.

XXVI

‘Love, Isabel!’ said he, ‘I was in pain

Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow:

Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain

I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow

Of a poor three hours’ absence? but we’ll gain

Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow.

Good bye! I’ll soon be back.’ ‘Good bye!’ said she –

And as he went she chanted merrily.

XXVII

So the two brothers and their murdered man

210

Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno’s stream

Gurgles through straitened banks, and still doth fan

Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream

Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan

The brothers’ faces in the ford did seem,

Lorenzo’s flush with love. – They passed the water

Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.

XXVIII

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,

There in that forest did his great love cease.

Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win,

220

It aches in loneliness – is ill at peace

As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin.

They dipped their swords in the water, and did tease

Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur,

Each richer by his being a murderer.

XXIX

They told their sister how, with sudden speed,

Lorenzo had ta’en ship for foreign lands,

Because of some great urgency and need

In their affairs, requiring trusty hands.

Poor girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed,

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And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands;

Today thou wilt not see him, nor tomorrow,

And the next day will be a day of sorrow.

XXX

She weeps alone for pleasures not to be;

Sorely she wept until the night came on,

And then, instead of love, O misery!

She brooded o’er the luxury alone:

His image in the dusk she seemed to see,

And to the silence made a gentle moan,

Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,

240

And on her couch low murmuring ‘Where? O where?’

XXXI

But Selfishness, Love’s cousin, held not long

Its fiery vigil in her single breast.

She fretted for the golden hour, and hung

Upon the time with feverish unrest –

Not long – for soon into her heart a throng

Of higher occupants, a richer zest,

Came tragic – passion not to be subdued,

And sorrow for her love in travels rude.

XXXII

In the mid days of autumn, on their eves

250

The breath of Winter comes from far away,

And the sick west continually bereaves

Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay

Of death among the bushes and the leaves,

To make all bare before he dares to stray

From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel

By gradual decay from beauty fell,

XXXIII

Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes

She asked her brothers, with an eye all pale,

Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes

260

Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale

Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes

Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom’s vale;

And every night in dreams they groaned aloud,

To see their sister in her snowy shroud.

XXXIV

And she had died in drowsy ignorance,

But for a thing more deadly dark than all.

It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,

Which saves a sick man from the feathered pall

For some few gasping moments; like a lance,

270

Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall

With cruel pierce, and bringing him again

Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

XXXV

It was a vision. – In the drowsy gloom,

The dull of midnight, at her couch’s foot

Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb

Had marred his glossy hair which once could shoot

Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom

Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute

From his lorn voice, and past his loamèd ears

280

Had made a miry channel for his tears.

XXXVI

Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake;

For there was striving, in its piteous tongue,

To speak as when on earth it was awake,

And Isabella on its music hung.

Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,

As in a palsied Druid’s harp unstrung;

And through it moaned a ghostly under-song,

Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.

XXXVII

Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright

290

With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof

From the poor girl by magic of their light,

The while it did unthread the horrid woof

Of the late darkened time – the murderous spite

Of pride and avarice, the dark pine roof

In the forest, and the sodden turfed dell,

Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.

XXXVIII

Saying moreover, ‘Isabel, my sweet!

Red whortle-berries droop above my head,

And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;

300

Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed

Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat

Comes from beyond the river to my bed:

Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,

And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

XXXIX

‘I am a shadow now, alas! alas!

Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling

Alone. I chant alone the holy mass,

While little sounds of life are round me knelling,

And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,

310

And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,

Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,

And thou art distant in humanity.

XL

‘I know what was, I feel full well what is,

And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;

Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,

That paleness warms my grave, as though I had

A seraph chosen from the bright abyss

To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad;

Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel

320

A greater love through all my essence steal.’

XLI

The Spirit mourn’d ‘Adieu!’ – dissolved, and left

The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;

As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,

Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,

We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,

And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:

It made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache,

And in the dawn she started up awake –

XLII

‘Ha! ha!’ said she, ‘I knew not this hard life,

330

I thought the worst was simple misery;

I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife

Portioned us – happy days, or else to die;

But there is crime – a brother’s bloody knife!

Sweet Spirit, thou hast schooled my infancy:

I’ll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,

And greet thee morn and even in the skies.’

XLIII

When the full morning came, she had devised

How she might secret to the forest hie;

How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,

340

And sing to it one latest lullaby;

How her short absence might be unsurmised,

While she the inmost of the dream would try.

Resolved, she took with her an agèd nurse,

And went into that dismal forest-hearse.

XLIV

See, as they creep along the river side,

How she doth whisper to that agèd dame,

And, after looking round the champaign wide,

Shows her a knife.