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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,

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, 'tis whisper'd— 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 labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave

and oar;

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

A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.

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;

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.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art

Held me above the subject, as strong gales Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho' my heart, Brimful of those wild tales,

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.

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;

And clattering flints batter'd with clanging hoofs:
And I saw crowds in column'd sanctuaries;
And forms that pass'd 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;
Lances in ambush set;

And high shrine-doors burst thro' with heated blasts
That run before the fluttering tongues of fire;
White surf wind-scatter'd over sails and masts,
And ever climbing higher;

Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates,
And hush'd seraglios.

So shape chased shape as swift as, when to land

Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way,

Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand,
Torn from the fringe of spray.

I started once, or seem'd to start in pain,

Resolved on noble things, and strove to speak, As when a great thought strikes along the brain, And flushes all the cheek.

And once my arm was lifted to hew down
A cavalier from off his saddle-bow,
That bore a lady from a leaguer'd town;
And then, I know not how,

All those sharp fancies, by down-lapsing thought Stream'd onward, lost their edges, and did creep Roll'd on each other, rounded, smooth'd, and brought Into the gulfs of sleep.

At last methought that I had wander'd far

In an old wood: fresh-wash'd in coolest dew, The maiden splendours of the morning star Shook in the stedfast blue.

Enormous elmtree-boles did stoop and lean
Upon the dusky brushwood underneath
Their broad curved branches, fledged with clearest green,
New from its silken sheath.

The dim red morn had died, her journey done,

And with dead lips smiled at the twilight plain, Half-fall'n across the threshold of the sun,

Never to rise again.

There was no motion in the dumb dead air,
Not any song of bird or sound of rill ;
Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre
Is not so deadly still

As that wide forest. Growths of jasmine turn'd
Their humid arms festooning tree to tree,
And at the root thro' lush green grasses burn'd
The red anemone.

I knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, I knew
The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn
On those long, rank, dark wood-walks drench'd in dew,
Leading from lawn to lawn.

The smell of violets, hidden in the green,

Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remember to have been

Joyful and free from blame.

And from within me a clear under-tone

Thrill'd thro' mine ears in that unblissful clime "Pass freely thro' the wood is all thine own, Until the end of time."

At length I saw a lady within call,

Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there;

A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,

And most divinely fair.

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