The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He play'd at counsellors and kings, With one that was his earliest mate; Who ploughs with pain his native lea And reaps the labour of his hands, Or in the furrow musing stands; 'Does my old friend remember me?' CIII I DREAM'D there would be Spring no more, The streets were black with smoke and frost, They chatter'd trifles at the door : I wander'd from the noisy town, I found a wood with thorny boughs: 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 fool, they call'd me child : The voice was low, the look was bright; 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. CIV SWEET after showers, ambrosial air, The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, Ill brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odour streaming far, CV How pure at heart and sound in head, With what divine affections bold Should be the man whose thought would hold An hour's communion with the dead. In vain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say, My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast, The memory like a cloudless air, But when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits, They can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within. CVI My love has talk'd with rocks and trees; Two partners of a married life— I look'd on these and thought of thee And of my spirit as of a wife. These two-they dwelt with eye on eye, Their hearts of old have beat in tune, Their meetings made December June, Their every parting was to die. Their love has never past away; The days she never can forget He loves her yet, she will not weep, He seems so near and yet so far, He looks so cold: she thinks him kind. She keeps the gift of years before, A wither'd violet is her bliss: She knows not what his greatness is, For that, for all, she loves him more. For him she plays, to him she sings Of early faith and plighted vows; She knows but matters of the house, And he, he knows a thousand things. Her faith is fixt and cannot move, She darkly feels him great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 'I cannot understand: I love.' CVII RISEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves Who wakenest with thy balmy breath O wheresoever those may be, Betwixt the slumber of the poles, CVIII I CLIMB the hill: from end to end Or low morass and whispering reed, Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw That hears the latest linnet trill, Nor quarry trench'd along the hill And haunted by the wrangling daw; Nor runlet tinkling from the rock; Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves That feed the mothers of the flock; But each has pleased a kindred eye, And each reflects a kindlier day; And, leaving these, to pass away, I think once more he seems to die. CIX UNWATCH'D, the garden bough shall sway, The tender blossom flutter down, Unloved, that beech will gather brown, This maple burn itself away; Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, Ray round with flames her disc of seed, And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air; Unloved, by many a sandy bar, The brook shall babble down the plain, Is twisting round the polar star; Uncared for, gird the windy grove, And flood the haunts of hern and crake; The sailing moon in creek and cove; Till from the garden and the wild And year by year the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger's child; As year by year the labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills. CX AGAIN at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth; And calmly fell our Christmas-eve : R |