LIKE Souls that balance joy and pain, With tears and smiles from heaven again The maiden Spring upon the plain Came in a sunlit fall of rain.
In crystal vapor everywhere Blue isies of heaven laugh'd between, And far, in forest-deeps unseen, The topmost elm-tree gather'd green From draughts of balmy air.
Sometimes the linnet piped his song; Sometimes the throstle whistled strong; Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along, Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong;
By grassy capes with fuller sound In curves the yellowing river ran, And drooping chestnut-buds began To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.
Then, in the boyhood of the year, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer, With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring; A gown of grass-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore Closed in a golden ring.
Now on some twisted ivy-net, Now by some tinkling rivulet, In mosses mixt with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set; And fleeter now she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings With jingling bridle-reins.
As she fled fast thro' sun and shade, The happy winds upon her play'd, Blowing the ringlet from the braid. She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips, A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.
First printed in 1842, and unaltered except 'thousand suns' for hundred suns.'
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, For ever and for ever.
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.
I HAD a vision when the night was late; A youth came riding toward a palace-gate. He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down. And from the palace came a child of sin, And took him by the curls, and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes, Expecting when a fountain should arise. A sleepy light upon their brows and lips - As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse, Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail. Then the music touch'd the gates and died, Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As 't were a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound, Caught the sparkles, and in circles, Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes, Flung the torrent rainbow round. Then they started from their places, Moved with violence, changed in hue, Caught each other with wild grimaces, Half-invisible to the view, Wheeling with precipitate paces To the melody, till they flew, Hair and eyes and limbs and faces, Twisted hard in fierce embraces, Like to Furies, like to Graces, Dash'd together in blinding dew;
Friendship-to be two in one — Let the canting liar pack! Well I know, when I am gone, How she mouths behind my back.
• Virtue ! to be good and just Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
'O, we two as well can look Whited thought and cleanly life As the priest, above his book Leering at his neighbor's wife. Fill the cup and fill the can, Have a rouse before the morn: Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.
'Drink, and let the parties rave; They are fill'd with idle spleen,
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