2. But any man that walks the mead, A meaning suited to his mind. In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 'twere to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOL 1. You shake your head. A random string Your finer female sense offends. Well-were it not a pleasant thing Το To fall asleep with all one's friends; To silence from the paths of men ; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep thro' terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more On secrets of the brain, the stars, In divers seasons, divers climes; 2. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 3. Ah, yet would I—and would I might! So much your eyes my fancy take— Be still the first to leap to light That I might kiss those eyes awake! For, am I right, or am I wrong, To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song, And I will take my pleasure there : And, am I right or am I wrong, The prelude to some brighter world. 4. For since the time when Adam first And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes? Where on the double rosebud droops Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; That lets thee neither hear nor see: But break it. In the name of wife, And in the rights that name may give, Are clasp'd the moral of thy life, And that for which I care to live. EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, To shape the song for your delight That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it-earnest wed with sport, And either sacred into you. AMPHION. My father left a park to me, A garden too with scarce a tree, Yet say the neighbours when they call, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great Nor cared for seed or scion ! |