30

The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,

Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, The Lotos blows by every winding creek; All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd 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.

110

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd

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 towns, 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 tho' the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,

120

For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled
on life

Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard
myself,

30

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I
mine.

40

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.

"T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 60
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old
days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we

To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with
tears

To hear me? Let me go; take back thy gift.

Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet
for all?

30

Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East; How can my nature longer mix with thine? Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the

steam

Floats up from those dim fields about the homes

Of happy men that have the power to die, 70 And grassy barrows of the happier dead. Release me, and restore me to the ground. Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave;

Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn, I earth in earth forget these empty courts, And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

[First published in the 'Holy Grail' volume.] FLOWER in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.

[First printed in 1842, and unaltered.] BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;

SWEET and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

Father will come to thee soon;

Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west

Under the silver moon;

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

III

THE splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying,
dying.

IV

'TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they

mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

'Fresh as the first beam glittering on a

sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld,

Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

'Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering

square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no

more.

'Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!'

V

HOME they brought her warrior dead;
She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry.

All her maidens, watching, said,
'She must weep or she will die.'