CXV

Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood, that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too, and my regret Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

CXVI

Is it, then, regret for buried time

That keenlier in sweet April wakes,

And meets the year, and gives and takes

The colors of the crescent prime?

Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.

Not all regret: the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone,

And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of me and mine.

Yet less of sorrow lives in me

For days of happy commune dead, Less yearning for the friendship fled Than some strong bond which is to be.

CXVII

O days and hours, your work is this, To hold me from my proper place, A little while from his embrace, For fuller gain of after bliss;

That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet,
And unto meeting, when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue,

For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.

CXVIII

Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant laboring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;

But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread

In tracts of fluent heat began,

And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man;

Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,

The herald of a higher race,

And of himself in higher place, If so he type this work of time

Within himself, from more to more;

Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,

And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom

To shape and use. Arise and fly

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.

CXIX

Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more; the city sleeps;
I smell the meadow in the street;

I hear a chirp of birds; I see

Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn

A light-blue lane of early dawn, And think of early days and thee,

And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, And bright the friendship of thine eye; And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh I take the pressure of thine hand.

CXX

I trust I have not wasted breath:

I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;

Not only cunning casts in clay:

Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to me? I would not stay.

Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.

CXXI

Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun

And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done.

The team is loosen'd from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken'd in the brain.

Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world's great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light.

The market boat is on the stream,

And voices hail it from the brink; Thou hear'st the village hammer clink, And see'st the moving of the team.

Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name

For what is one, the first, the last, Thou, like my present and my past, Thy place is changed; thou art the same.

CXXII

O, wast thou with me, dearest, then,

While I rose up against my doom, And yearn'd to burst the folded gloom, To bare the eternal heavens again,

Known and unknown, human, divine; Sweet human hand and lips and eye; Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,

Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be; Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold, I dream a dream of good, And mingle all the world with thee. CXXX

Thy voice is on the rolling air;

I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.

What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less.

My love involves the love before;

My love is vaster passion now; Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more.

Far off thou art, but ever nigh;

I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee tho' I die.

CXXXI

O living will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust

A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquer'd years To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,

The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved, And all we flow from, soul in soul.

O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.

O happy hour, behold the bride

With him to whom her hand I gave. They leave the porch, they pass the grave That has to-day its sunny side.

To-day the grave is bright for me,

For them the light of life increased, Who stay to share the morning feast, Who rest to-night beside the sea.

Let all my genial spirits advance

To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.

It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom,
As drinking health to bride and groom
We wish them store of happy days.

Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, tho' in silence, wishing joy.

But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favor'd horses wait;

They rise, but linger; it is late; Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.

A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look'd, and what he said,
And back we come at fall of dew.

Again the feast, the speech, the glee, The shade of passing thought, the wealth

Of words and wit, the double health, The crowning cup, the three-times-three,

And last the dance; - till I retire. Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,

And high in heaven the streaming cloud, And on the downs a rising fire:

And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapor sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,

The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o'er the friths that branch and

spread

Their sleeping silver thro' the hills;

And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendor fall
To spangle all the happy shores

By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,

And, moved thro' life of lower phase, Result in man, be born and think, And act and love, a closer link Betwixt us and the crowning race

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;