DIVINELY shapen cup, thy lip
Unto me seemeth thus to speak: "Behold in me the workmanship, The grace and cunning of a Greek!
Long ages since he mixed the clay, Whose sense of symmetry was such, The labor of a single day
Immortal grew beneath his touch.
"For dreaming while his fingers went Around this slender neck of mine, The form of her he loved was blent With every matchless curve and line.
They do not miss their meadow place,
Nor are they conscious that their skies
Are not the heavens, but her face,
Her hair, and mild blue eyes.
There, in the downy meshes pinned,
Such sweet illusions haunt their rest; They think her breath the fragrant wind, And tremble on her breast;
As if, close to her heart, they heard
A captive secret slip its cell,
And with desire were sudden stirred
To find a voice and tell!
GIVE me the room whose every nook
Is dedicated to a book:
Two windows will suffice for air
And grant the light admission there, —
One looking to the south, and one
To speed the red, departing sun.
The eastern wall from frieze to plinth
Shall be the Poet's labyrinth,
Where one may find the lords of rhyme
From Homer's down to Dobson's time;
And at the northern side a space
Shall show an open chimney-place,
Set round with ancient tiles that tell
Some legend old, and weave a spell
About the firedog-guarded seat,
Where, musing, one may taste the heat:
Above, the mantel should not lack
For curios and bric-à-brac,-
Not much, but just enough to light
The room up when the fire is bright.
The volumes on this wall should be
All prose and all philosophy,
From Plato down to those who are
The dim reflections of that star;
And these tomes all should serve to show
How much we write - how little know;
For since the problem first was set
No one has ever solved it yet.
Upon the shelves along the west
The scientific books shall rest;
Beside them, History; above,
Religion, hope, and faith, and love:
Lastly, the southern wall should hold
The story-tellers, new and old;
O to lie in long grasses!
O to dream of the plain!
Where the west wind sings as it passes
A weird and unceasing refrain;
Where the rank grass wallows and tosses,
And the plains' ring dazzles the eye;
Where hardly a silver cloud bosses
The flashing steel arch of the sky.
To watch the gay gulls as they flutter
Like snowflakes and fall down the sky,
To swoop in the deeps of the hollows,
Where the crow's-foot tosses awry,
And gnats in the lee of the thickets
Are swirling like waltzers in glee
1 Copyright, 1899,
To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets, And the song of the lark and the bee.
O far-off plains of my west land!
O lands of winds and the free,
Swift deer my mist-clad plain !
From my bed in the heart of the forest,
From the clasp and the girdle of pain
Your light through my darkness passes;
To your meadows in dreaming I fly
To plunge in the deeps of your grasses,
To bask in the light of your sky!
THE MEADOW LARK
A BRAVE little bird that fears not God, A voice that breaks from the snow-wet clod
With prophecy of sunny sod,
Set thick with wind-waved goldenrod.
From the first bare clod in the raw, cold spring,
From the last bare clod, when fall winds
The farm-boy hears his brave song ring, And work for the time is a pleasant thing. by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
|