HERE lies a clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city grey,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life's tournament:
Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.
And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;
From twilight to the halls of dawn he went;
His lance is broken; but he lies content
With that high hour, in which he lived and died.
And falling thus he wants no recompense,
Who found his battle in the last resort;
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.
FAREWELL! the village leaning to the hill,
And all the cawing rooks that homeward fly;
The bees; the drowsy anthem of the mill;
And winding pollards, where the plover cry.
We watch the breakers crashing on the bow
And those far flashes in the Eastern haze;
The fields and friends, that were, are fainter now
Than whispering of ancient water-ways.
Now England stirs, as stirs a dreamer wound
In immemorial slumber: lids apart,
Soon will she rouse her giant limbs attuned
To that old music hidden at her heart.
Farewell! the little men! Their menial cries
Are distant as the sparrows' chatterings;
She rises in her circuit of the skies,
An eagle with the dawn upon her wings.
We come to harbour in the breath of wars;
Welcome again the land of our farewells!
In this strange ruin open to the stars
We find the haven, where her spirit dwells:
Where the near guns boom; and the stricken towns are rolled
Skyward athunder with their trail of gold.
IN domes of dim and ancient gold,
In cloisters, where the lightning plays,
Where gleam the gorgeous saints of old
In aisles of jade and chrysoprase,
In halls that wave like waving water,
Still moves the voice of Ocean's daughter.
Venice! What siren music then
Stirred on the shoals and shallow sea,
When that small band of wandering men
First in their dreams imagined thee,
And hung that lyric splendour high
Between the water and the sky!
What Triton strains in other days
Were heard, when, on a sea of flame,
Thy battlefleet swung through the haze,
And homeward in her glory came,
Bearing the beauty of the East
To make Thy happy saint a feast.
Now, though that sceptre-hand be cold,
Those argent argosies no more
Their Tyrian-tinted wings unfold
From Cyprus unto Elsinore;
With broken sword, and banner furled,
How dies the Siren of the world?
The cloud has lifted from the stars,
And now again the starlight falls;
Now Venus calls again to Mars,
And Bacchus reels about his halls;
And, lovely in a thousand forms,
Our Lady drifts above the storms.
Among the moonlit marble lace,
That wreathes this avenue forlorn,
Some God has made his dwelling place
And takes his manna from the morn,
And every young and wandering soul,
That passes here, must pay its toll.
Far off the city fades away,
Save where one tow'r of rosy light,
Like some dissolving shaft of day,
Pierces the bosom of the night:
The distant lightning breaks its shroud
Valhalla gleams beyond the cloud.
Alone we float through gulfs remote,
The black canal no longer seen;
My boat it is a fairy boat,
Above the ripple silver-green,
Upon the wavelet violet-crowned,
My boat and I are outward bound!
A YOUNG MAN TO A MERCHANT.
OLD Man, your pearls are not for us,
Your rubies die too soon:
Have you the pearls of Sirius,
Or opals of the moon?
I do not ask for other gems;
Flashing with frost and fire
The sky's undying diadems
Shall be my love's attire.
Emeralds, that into rubies melt
Upon the brow of night,
I've taken from Orion's belt
To make her girdle bright.
On high ways of the albatross
I scale the purple air
For sapphires of the Southern Cross
And wreathe them in her hair.
Her robe it is the morning sky,
Her veil it is the West;
So robed, so veiled my love will fly,
When I am gone to rest.
Yet all the rays of all the moons,
The lights of all the skies
Are pale beside the dim lagoons
Of those mysterious eyes.
Old Man, your pearls are not for us,
Your rubies die too soon:
Have you the pearls of Sirius,
Or opals of the moon?
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