Puslapio vaizdai
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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,
That Nature's ancient power was lost :

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 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.

CIV

SWEET after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare

The round of space, and rapt below

Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow

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,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'

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,
Imaginations calm and fair,

The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest :

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;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown'd;
He sees himself in all he sees.

Two partners of a married life—

I look'd on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,

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
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate'er the faithless people say.
Her life is lone, he sits apart,

He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
He reads the secret of the star,

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,
So loud with voices of the birds,
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men ;

Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red
On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;

Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;

Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth,
And unto myriads more, of death.

O wheresoever those may be,

Betwixt the slumber of the poles,
To-day they count as kindred souls ;
They know me not, but mourn with me.

CVIII

I CLIMB the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,

Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;

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
To left and right thro' meadowy curves,

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,
At noon or when the lesser wain

Is twisting round the polar star;

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,

And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break

The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,

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;
The silent snow possess'd the earth,

And calmly fell our Christmas-eve :

R

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