And one, an English home-gray twilight poured
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep-all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace.
Nor these alone, but every landscape fair,
As fit for every mood of mind,
Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there,
Not less than truth designed.
Or the maid-mother by a crucifix,
In tracts of pasture sunny warm,
Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx
Sat smiling, babe in arm.
Or in a clear-walled city on the sea,
Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily;
An angel looked at her.
Or thronging all one porch of Paradise,
A group of Houris bowed to see
The dying Islamite, with hands and eyes
That said, We wait for thee.
Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son
In some fair space of sloping greens
Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon,
And watch'd by weeping queens.
Or hollowing one hand against his ear
To list a footfall, ere he saw
The wood-nymph, stayed the Ausonian king to
Or over hills with peaky tops engrailed,
And many a tract of palm and rice,
The throne of Indian Cama slowly sailed
A summer fann'd with spice.
Or sweet Europa's mantle blue unclasp'd,
From off her shoulder backward borne:
From one hand droop'd a crocus; one hand grasp'd
The mild bull's golden horn.
Or else flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh.
Half buried in the Eagle's down,
Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky
Above the pillar'd town.
THE mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvoluses
That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail;
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in
The hollower bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise, but no sail.
There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch,
So still, the golden lizard on him paused,
A phantom made of many phantoms moved,
Before him haunting him, or he himself
Moved haunting people, things and places, known
Far in a darker isle beyond the line;
The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house,
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock yew-tree and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs,
The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves,
And the low moan of leaden-coloured seas.
Once likewise in the ringing of his ears
Tho' faintly, merrily-far and far away-
He heard the pealing of his parish bells;
Then, tho' he knew not wherefore, started up
Shuddering, and when the beauteous hateful isle
Return'd upon him, had not his poor heart
Spoken with That, which being everywhere
Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude.
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