'And surely, whatso great deeds have been done, Since with my fellows the Gold Fleece I won,
Still, here, some wild bull clears the frightened fields;
There, a great lion cleaves the sevenfold shields;
There, dwells some giant robber of the land;
There, whirls some woman-slayer's red right hand.
Yea, what is this they speak of even now,
That Theseus, having brought his conquering prow
From lying Crete, unto the fairwalled town,
Now gathers folk, since there are coming down
The shielded women of the Asian plain,
Myriads past counting, in the hope to gain
The mastery of this lovely land of Greece?
So be it, surely shall I snatch fair peace
From out the hand of war, and calm delight
From the tumultuous horror of the fight.'
So saying, gazing still across the sea,
Heavy with days and nights of misery,
His eyes waxed dim, and calmer still he grew,
Still pondering over times and things he knew,
While now the sun had sunk behind the hill,
And from a white-thorn nigh a thrush did fill
The balmy air with echoing minstrelsy,
And cool the night-wind blew across the sea,
And round about the soft-winged bats did sweep.
So 'midst all this at last he fell asleep,
Nor did his eyes behold another day,
For Argo, slowly rotting all away,
Had dropped a timber here, and there an oar,
All through that year, but people of the shore
Set all again in order as it fell.
But now the stempost, that had carried well,
The second rafter in King Pelias' hall,
Began at last to quiver towards its fall,
And whether loosed by some divinity,
Or that the rising wind from off the sea
Blew full upon it, surely I know not-
But, when the day dawned, still on the same spot,
Beneath the ruined stem did Jason lie
Crushed, and all dead of him that here can die.
THE wren had built within the Porch, she found
Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;
And on the lawn,-within its turfy mound,-
The rabbit made his burrow.
The rabbit wild and gray, that flitted through
The shrubby clumps, and frisked, and sat, and vanished,
But leisurely and bold, as if he knew
The wary crow,-the pheasant from the woods-
Lulled by the still and everlasting sameness,
Close to the Mansion, like domestic broods,
Fed with a 'shocking tameness.'
The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,
Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted.
The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water-lily.
No sound was heard, except, from far away,
The ringing of the Whitwall's shrilly laughter,
Or, now and then, the chatter of the jay,
That Echo murmured after.
But Echo never mocked the human tongue;
Some weighty crime, that Heaven could not pardon,
A secret curse on that old Building hung,
The beds were all untouched by hand or tool;
No footstep marked the damp and mossy gravel,
Each walk as green as is the mantled pool,
For want of human travel.
The vine unpruned, and the neglected peach,
Drooped from the wall with which they used to grapple ; And on the cankered tree, in easy reach,
But awfully the truant shunned the ground,
The vagrant kept aloof, and daring Poacher;
In spite of gaps that through the fences round
Invited the encroacher.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!
O GIFT of God! O perfect day : Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!
Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.
I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where through a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,
Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts.
Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!
Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!
O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?
NINE years old! The first of any
Seem the happiest years that come :
Yet when I was nine, I said
No such word! I thought instead
That the Greeks had used as many
In besieging Ilium.
Nine green years had scarcely brought me
To my childhood's haunted spring;
I had life, like flowers and bees,
In betwixt the country trees,
And the sun the pleasure taught me
Which he teacheth everything.
If the rain fell, there was sorrow,
Little head leant on the pane,
Little finger drawing down it
The long trailing drops upon it,
And the Rain, rain, come to-morrow,'
Said for charm against the rain.
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