And there will spring a garden in the low
Lush meads where once was swamp and reedy
There every delicate growth and bloom will blow,
Roses so rich and rare, and lilies chaste,
And violets with their musings still and deep,
And marigolds and march-tide daffodils,
And million daisies in the grasses peep,
And million cowslips cluster by the rills,
And from immortal trees the birds will pour
With bursting throats bliss, bliss for evermore.
In secret they were wed; in secret planned
Their flight. That region's ancient city-queen,
Long slave to kings, at length saw hope at hand
And chance of glad war where sad peace had been;
They would be plotters in that enterprise,
And mingle with the high-tuned soldier band Who daily looked at death with dauntless eyes
Hoping to win some glory for the land,
For one brief hour with love and their great cause They would live large, though fate be at their doors.
By night they fled dark was the stair: they passed
The corridor so hushed and solitary
Upon whose polished floor no lamp was glassed:
The black-roofed hall they won with footsteps wary,
And ere the zenith of the night were gone
Forth from her home's old portal, and together
Upon the ghostly terrace stood alone,
Free from the past's chill bond and their birth's
"Free" was the word they breathed as their lips
Free from all chains by buried use imposed.
Amid the farewell-whispering trees they went
Into the valley; and she needs must shed
A tear for memory's sake, although so bent
To glorify the purpose she had wed :
Godward behind them in the moon upsprung
Her towers, and low and gloomy lay the plain,
But hallowed hopes about her footsteps hung
Leading her on, and eased her passing pain;
And to the river's marge before the day
They came, and loosed a barge, and passed away
Into the undistinguished crowd, whose pain.
Is their elected pleasure: they, whose tears Water the seeds of hope like pleasant rain
Against the harvest of undreamed-of years; Adown the welling flood of Time they go
And Love goes with them: He will ever be
Their guiding voice and tell them what to do,
Nor do I dream that toil or misery
Can dull at any time their passion high,
Or lull them into rest, while He is by ;-
He, for whose sake a home of ease she left,
And, while youth still was tender and joy dear,
Chose to be of all meaner bliss bereft
So she might be his servant : selfish fear,
Pride, sloth, sin's cankering crowd could not avail
To stay her, when His look upon her fell,
Straight she uprose and went, she could not fail
To go, obedient to His smile's high spell,
With willing step and proudly smiling eye
To help the hearts of the world's chivalry.
THIS is a tale of simple Sicily
And Daphnis, a Sicilian shepherd-boy :
Reader, steal wings from fancy, and with me
Fly back to seasons long before the whirl
Of stirring cities shut the timid gods
Aloof from men, and made a need for shrines;
When all the earth more vocal seemed than now
Our loveliest scenes, with heavenly presences;
may some Muse more kind
Than her proud sisters speed one laden bee
With honey from Hymettus to these lips,
And O that through the hurry of the street
And clogging smoke and teen and toil may fall
A whisper of the woods of the dead earth
Upon my cheek, and I may something catch
Of the lost spirit of old pastorals
To animate with store of sweetness mined
Out of men's graves, whose living hearts were harps Resonant with forgotten chords, my song.
It is not told what was the embassage
Which led the message-bearer of the gods
To Sicily, where loitering he found
Dipping white feet into a slipping brook
A Naiad, lilywise slender and white,
By him before he went a mother made
In her old virgin valley.
Tarrying among the incomparable flowers
And straying through the umbrage of dark woods,
With laurel, pine, cypress and cedar dim,
He and his Naiad wife and smiling child-
Bright-limbed and dazzling triad, in the shade
Of far-receding forest-gaps who seemed
By their own light of limb and hair to shine-
Forgot himself the fleetest foot that sprung
Down from Olympus at the hest of Zeus,
Cleaving the clouds and buffeting the storms,
Earthward with lightning impact to convey
Joy, woe, heaven's chequered portioning, to men ;
Forgot the nectar and young Hebe's smile,
The talk of gods, the even temper fine
And plenitude of holy unbroken days;
And longed no more to fare to cities bright
On wings whose every beating was a bliss,
Cities built lofty with fair towers and gates
O'erbreasting wide champaign or watery wild,
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