And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes, over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle ?
Let what is broken so remain.

The Gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out with many wars,

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

7.

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly,)

With half-dropt eyelids still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hill.

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave through the thick-twined vine
To hear the emerald-colored water falling
Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.

8.

The Lotos blooms below the flowery peak:

The Lotos blows by every winding creek:

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Through every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust

is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge

was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming town's, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful

song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer-some, 't is whispered-down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and

oar;

O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.

I.

I READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
"The Legend of Good Women," long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

II.

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill

The spacious times of great Elizabeth

With sounds that echo still.

III.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art

Held me above the subject, as strong gales

Hold swollen clouds from raining, though my heart, Brimful of those wild tales,

IV.

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land

I saw, wherever light illumineth, Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand The downward slope to death.

V.

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song

Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars, And I heard sounds of insult, shame and wrong, And trumpets blown for wars;

VI.

And clattering flints battered with clanging hoofs: And I saw crowds in columned sanctuaries; And forms that passed at windows and on roofs Of marble palaces;

Corpses across the threshold; heroes tall

Dislodging pinnacle and parapet

Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall;

Lancers in ambush set;