PROGRESS OF EVENING.
FROM yonder wood mark blue-eyed Eve procede:
First thro' the deep and warm and secret glens,
Thro' the pale-glimmering privet-scented lane,
And thro' those alders by the river-side:
Now the soft dust impedes her, which the sheep
Have hollow'd out beneath their hawthorn shade.
But ah! look yonder! see a misty tide
Rise up the hill, lay low the frowning grove,
Enwrap the gay white mansion, sap its sides
Until they sink and melt away like chalk;
Now it comes down against our village-tower,
Covers its base, floats o'er its arches, tears
The clinging ivy from the battlements,
Mingles in broad embrace the obdurate stone,
All one vast ocean! and goes swelling on
In slow and silent, dim and deepening waves.
QUEEN of the double sea, beloved of him
"Stay! spare him! save the last!
Medea!... is that blood? again! it drops
I will invoke the Eumenides no more..
From my imploring hand upon my feet...
I will forgive thee. . bless thee.. bend to thee
In all thy wishes. . . do but thou, Medea,
Tell me, one lives.
Cries from the firy car an angry voice;
And swifter than two falling stars descend
Two breathless bodies. . warm, soft, motionless,
As flowers in stillest noon before the sun,
They lie three paces from him. . such they lie
As when he left them sleeping side by side,
A mother's arm round cach, a mother's cheeks
Between them, flusht with happiness and love.
He was more changed than they were. . doomed
to shew
And shall I too deceive?"
Thee and the stranger, how defaced and scarred
Grief hunts us down the precipice of years,
And whom the faithless prey upon the last.
To give the inertest masses of our earth
Her loveliest forms was thine, to fix the Gods
Within thy walls, and hang their tripods round
With fruits and foliage knowing not decay.
A nobler work remains; thy citadel
Invites all Greece: o'er lands and floods remote
Many are the hearts that still beat high for thee:
Confide then in thy strength, and unappalled
Look down upon the plain, while yokemate kings
Run bellowing, where their herdsmen goad them
Instinct is sharp in them and terrour true .. They smell the floor wheron their necks must lie.
WERT thou but blind, O Fortune, then perhaps
Thou mightest always have avoided me:
For never voice of mine (young, middle-aged,
Or going down on tottering knee the shelf
That crumbles with us to the vale of years)
Called thee aside, whether thou rannest on
To others who expected, or didst throw
Into the sleeper's lap the unsought prize.
But blind thou art not; the refreshing cup
For which my hot heart thirsted, thou hast ever
Who shakes the world's foundations, thou hast (When it was full and at the lip) struck down.
Glory in all her beauty, all her forms;
Seen her walk back with Theseus when he left
The bones of Sciron bleaching to the wind,
Above the ocean's roar and cormorant's flight,
So high that vastest billows from above
Shew but like herbage waving in the mead;
Seen generations throng thy Isthmian games,
And pass away. . . the beautiful, the brave,
And them who sang their praises.
But, O Queen,
Audible still, and far beyond thy cliffs,
As when they first were uttered, are those words
Divine which praised the valiant and the just;
And tears have often stopt, upon that ridge
So perilous, him who brought before his eye
The Colchian babes.
YES, in this chancel once we sat alone,
O Dorothea! thou wert bright with youth,
Freshness like Morning's dwelt upon thy cheek,
While here and there above the level pews,
Above the housings of the village dames,
The musky fan its groves and zephyrs waved.
I know not why, since we had each our book
And lookt upon it stedfastly, first one
Outran the learned labourer from the desk,
Then tript the other, and limpt far behind,
And smiles gave blushes birth, and blushes smiles.
Ah me! where are they flown, my lovely friend!
As when they first were uttered, are most do.
Divine which praised the valiant and the just;
And tears have often stopt, upon that ridge
o perilous, him who brought before his eye
The Colchian babes.
Outran the learned labourer from the desk,
Then tript the other, and limpt far behind,
And smiles gave blushes birth, and blushes smiles.
Ah me! where are they flown, my lovely friend!
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