All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful

ease.

V

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream!

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whisper'd speech;

Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy

Heap'd over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass !

VI

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives

And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange :
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile :

'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) With half-dropt eyelid still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine-
To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling

Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the
pine.

VIII

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak :
The Lotos blows by every winding creek :

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotosdust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foamfountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are
hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the

soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whisper'd -down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander

more.

XVI

THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE

(FOUNDED ON AN IRISH LEgend. A.D. 700)

I

I WAS the chief of the race-he had stricken my father dead

But I gather'd my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.

Each of them look'd like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,

And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.

Each was as brave in the fight as the bravest hero of

song,

And each of them liefer had died than have done one

another a wrong.

He lived on an isle in the ocean-we sail'd on a Friday morn

He that had slain my father the day before I was born.

II

And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he.

But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro' a boundless sea.

III

And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch'd at before,

Where a silent ocean always broke on a silent shore, And the brooks glitter'd on in the light without sound, and the long waterfalls

Pour'd in a thunderless plunge to the base of the mountain walls,

And the poplar and cypress unshaken by storm flourish'd up beyond sight,

And the pine shot aloft from the crag to an unbelievable height,

And high in the heaven above it there flicker'd a songless lark,

And the cock couldn't crow, and the bull couldn't low, and the dog couldn't bark.

And round it we went, and thro' it, but never a murmur, a breath

It was all of it fair as life, it was all of it quiet as

death,

And we hated the beautiful Isle, for whenever we strove to speak

Our voices were thinner and fainter than any flittermouse-shriek ;

And the men that were mighty of tongue and could raise such a battle-cry

That a hundred who heard it would rush on a thousand lances and die

O they to be dumb'd by the charm!-so fluster'd with anger were they

They almost fell on each other; but after we sail'd

away.

IV

And we came to the Isle of Shouting, we landed, a score of wild birds

Cried from the topmost summit with human voices and words;

Once in an hour they cried, and whenever their voices peal'd

The steer fell down at the plow and the harvest died from the field,

And the men dropt dead in the valleys and half of the cattle went lame,

And the roof sank in on the hearth, and the dwelling broke into flame;

And the shouting of these wild birds ran into the hearts of my crew,

Till they shouted along with the shouting and seized one another and slew ;

But I drew them the one from the other; I saw that we could not stay,

And we left the dead to the birds and we sail'd with our wounded away.

V

And we came to the Isle of Flowers: their breath met us out on the seas,

For the Spring and the middle Summer sat each on the lap of the breeze;

And the red passion-flower to the cliffs, and the darkblue clematis, clung,

And starr'd with a myriad blossom the long convolvulus hung;

And the topmost spire of the mountain was lilies in

lieu of snow,

And the lilies like glaciers winded down, running out below