Or like the Atlantic streams which run When the South Sea calls. Water and bread; Food which needs no transmuting, Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting; Wine which is already man, Food which teach and reason can. Wine which music is ; Music and wine are one; That I, drinking this, Shall hear far chaos talk with me, Kings unborn shall walk with me, And the poor grass shall plot and plan What it will do when it is man: Quickened so, will I unlock Every crypt of every rock. I thank the joyful juice For all I know; Winds of remembering Of the ancient being blow, And seeming-solid walls of use Pour, Bacchus, the remembering wine; Retrieve the loss of me and mine; Vine for vine be antidote, And the grape requite the lote. The memory of ages quenched ;- Let wine repair what this undid, A dazzling memory revive. Refresh the faded tints, Recut the aged prints, And write my old adventures, with the pen Which, on the first day, drew Upon the tablets blue The dancing Pleiads, and the eternal men. LOSS AND GAIN. VIRTUE runs before the muse And defies her skill, She is rapt, and doth refuse To wait a painter's will. Star-adoring, occupied, Virtue cannot bend her, Just to please a poet's pride, To parade her splendour. The bard must be with good intent No more his, but hers, Throw away his pen and paint, Kneel with worshippers. Then, perchance, a sunny ray From the heaven of fire, His lost tools may over-pay, And better his desire. MEROPS. WHAT care I, so they stand the same,— Things of the heavenly mind, How long the power to give them fame Tarries yet behind ? Thus far to-day your favours reach, O fair, appeasing Presences! Ye taught my lips a single speech, And a thousand silences. Space grants beyond his fated road No inch to the god of day, And copious language still bestowed One word, no more, to say. THE HOUSE. THERE is no architect Can build as the muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan; Slow and warily to choose Rafters of immortal pine, Or cedar incorruptible, Worthy her design. She threads dark Alpine forests, Or valleys by the sea, In many lands, with painful steps, Ere she can find a tree. She ransacks mines and ledges, And quarries every rock, To hew the famous adamant, For each eternal block. |