I wander'd from the noisy town,

I found a wood with thorny boughs: I took the thorns to bind my brows, I wore them like a civic crown:

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns

From youth and babe and hoary hairs: They call'd me in the public squares The fool that wears a crown of thorns: They call'd me fool, they call'd me child: I found an angel of the night;

The voice was low, the look was bright; He look'd upon my crown and smiled: He reach'd the glory of a hand,

That seem'd to touch it into leaf: The voice was not the voice of grief, The words were hard to understand.

LXX

CANNOT see the features right,

When on the gloom I

strive to paint

The face I know; the

hues are faint

And mix with hollow
masks of night;

Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
A hand that points, and pallid shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;

And crowds that stream from yawning doors,

And shoals of pucker'd faces drive;

Dark bulks that tumble half alive, And lazy lengths on boundless shores;

Till all at once beyond the will

I hear a wizard music roll,

And thro' a lattice on the soul Looks thy fair face and makes it still.

LXXI

LEEP, kinsman thou to death and trance

And madness, thou hast forged at last

A night-long Present of the Past

In which we went thro' summer France.

Hadst thou such credit with the soul? Then bring an opiate trebly strong, Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong That so my pleasure may be whole; While now we talk as once we talk'd

Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something In walking as of old we walk'd [strange, Beside the river's wooded reach,

The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach.

ISEST thou thus, dim dawn, again,

And howlest, issuing out of night,

With blasts that blow

the poplar white,

And lash with storm the
streaming pane?

Day, when my crown'd estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken'd every living bloom,
And blurr'd the splendour of the sun;

Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close

Her crimson fringes to the shower;

Who might'st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look'd the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;

Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime, When the dark hand struck down thro' And cancell'd nature's best: but thou, [time, Lift as thou may'st thy burden'd brows

Thro' clouds that drench the morning And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar, [star, And sow the sky with flying boughs,

And up thy vault with roaring sound

Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day; Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray, And hide thy shame beneath the ground.

LXXIII

O many worlds, so much to do,

So little done, such things

to be,

How know I what had

need of thee,

For thou wert strong as
thou wert true?

The fame is quench'd that I foresaw,
The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath;
I curse not nature, no, nor death;

For nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,

Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results

Of force that would have forged a name.

S sometimes in a dead man's face

To those that watch it more and more,

A likeness, hardly seen before,

Comes out-to some one
of his race:

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.

LXXV

LEAVE thy praises unexpress'd

In verse that brings my

self relief,

And by the measure of my grief

I leave thy greatness to
be guess'd;

What practice howsoe'er expert
In fitting aptest words to things,
Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?