Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space;

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,

Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

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Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,

Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,

GODIVA

First published in 1842, when line 64 had 'archways.'

I WAITED for the train at Coventry;

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped

The city's ancient legend into this: —

Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,

And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she

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◊ LADY FLORA, let me speak;

A pleasant hour has passed away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay. As by the lattice you reclined,

I went thro' many wayward moods
To see you dreaming — and, behind,
A summer crisp with shining woods.
And I too dream'd, until at last

Across my fancy, brooding warm,
The reflex of a legend past,

And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had, And see the vision that I saw, Then take the broidery-frame, and add A crimson to the quaint macaw, And I will tell it. Turn your face,

Nor look with that too-earnest eye The rhymes are dazzled from their place And order'd words asunder fly.

THE SLEEPING PALACE

I

THE varying year with blade and sheaf
Clothes and reclothes the happy plains,
Here rests the sap within the leaf,
Here stays the blood along the veins.

Till all the hundred summers pass,

The beams that thro' the oriel shine Make prisms in every carven glass

And beaker brimm'd with noble wine. Each baron at the banquet sleeps, Grave faces gather'd in a ring. His state the king reposing keeps He must have been a jovial king.

VI

All round a hedge upshoots, and shows At distance like a little wood; Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes,

And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green Close-matted, bur and brake and brier, And glimpsing over these, just seen, High up, the topmost palace spire

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