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.

6

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.

Lotos] a plant in Homer's legend whose fruit produced dreaminess and killed desire of home.

7 But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) With half-dropt eyelids still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hillTo hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twinèd vineTo 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.

8 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 Lotos-dust

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 foam

fountains 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 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

а

and oar ;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more,

Tennyson, 1832.

160

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,

Thy tribute wave deliver :
No more by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,

A rivulet then a river :
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,

But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine

aspen

shiver ;
And here by thee will hum the bee,

For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,

A thousand moons will quiver ;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Tennyson.

161

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-

bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes

dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the

cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake-water lapping with low sounds by the shore ; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W. B. Yeats.

162 To the Rev. F. D. Maurice

COME, when no graver cares employ,
Godfather, come and see your boy :

Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy.

For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,

Should eighty-thousand college-councils
Thunder' Anathema,' friend, at you;
Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,

Yet one lay-heart would give you welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;
Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown

All round a careless-order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.
You 'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,

And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine :

a

a

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand ;

And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand;

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Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,

And on thro' zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,
We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin ;

Dispute the claims, arrange the chances ;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win :
Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;
Till
you