Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

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
Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus, the remembering wine;

Retrieve the loss of me and mine;

Vine for vine be antidote,

And the grape requite the lote.
Haste to cure the old despair,
Reason in nature's lotus drenched,

The memory of ages quenched ;-
Give them again to shine.

Let wine repair what this undid,
And where the infection slid,

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.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »