Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, A secret sweetness in the stream, The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He played at counsellors and kings, With one that was his earliest mate; Who ploughs with pain his native lea, LXIV. SWEET Soul! do with me as thou wilt; With "Love's too precious to be lost, A little grain shall not be spilt.” And in that solace can I sing, Till out of painful phases wrought There flutters up a happy thought, Self-balanced on a lightsome wing; Since we deserved the name of friends, LXV. You thought my heart too far diseased; You wonder when my fancies play, To find me gay among the gay, Like one with any trifle pleased. The shade by which my life was crossed, Which makes a desert in the mind, Has made me kindly with my kind, And like to him whose sight is lost; Whose feet are guided through the land, Whose jest among his friends is free, Who takes the children on his knee, And winds their curls about his hand; He plays with threads, he beats his chair LXVI. WHEN on my bed the moonlight falls, Thy marble bright in dark appears, The mystic glory swims away; From off my bed the moonlight dies: I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray : And then I know the mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast, And in the dark church like a ghost Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. LXVII. WHEN in the down I sink my head, Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Nor can I dream of thee as dead: I walk as ere I walked forlorn, When all our path was fresh with dew, Reveillée to the breaking morn. But what is this? I turn about, I find a trouble in thine eye, Which makes me sad, I know not why, Nor can my dream resolve the doubt: But ere the lark hath left the lea I wake, and I discern the truth; It is the trouble of my youth That foolish sleep transfers to thee. LXVIII. I DREAMED there would be Spring no more, I wandered from the noisy town, I found a wood with thorny boughs; I wore them like a civic crown. I met with scoffs, I met with scorns, From youth and babe and hoary hairs: They called me in the public squares The fool that wears a crown of thorns. They called me fool, they called me child: The voice was low, the look was bright, He looked upon my crown and smiled: He reached the glory of a hand, That seemed to touch it into leaf: The voice was not the voice of grief; The words were hard to understand. LXIX. I CANNOT see the features right, Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, And crowds that stream from yawning doors, Till all at once, beyond the will, LXX. SLEEP, kinsman thou to death and trance And madness, thou hast forged at last A night-long Present of the Past In which we went through summer France, Hadst thou such credit with the soul? While now we talk, as once we talked Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walked Beside the river's wooded reach, The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach. LXXI. RISEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, Day, when my crowned estate begun Who usherest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears that make the rose Her crimson fringes to the shower; Who mightst have heaved a windless flame Up the deep East, or, whispering, played A checker-work of beam and shade Along the hills, yet looked the same, |