With royal frame-work of wrought gold; Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls For the discovery And newness of thine art so pleased thee, With thee unto the love thou bearest On the prime labor of thine early days: No matter what the sketch might be; Whether the high field on the bushless Pike, Or even a sand-built ige Of heaped hills that mound the sea, Overblown with murmurs harsh, Or even a lowly cottage whence we see Stretched wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, Where from the frequent bridge, Like emblems of infinity, The trenched waters run from sky to sky; Or a garden bowered close With plaited alleys of the trailing rose, Long alleys falling down to twilight grots, Or opening upon level plots Of crowned lilies, standing near Purple-spiked lavender: Whether in after life retired From brawling storms, From weary wind, With youthful fancy reinspired, We may hold converse with all forms Of the many-sided mind, And those whom passion had not blinded, Thou dewy dawn of memory. SONG. I. A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours, For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks; Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers: Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. II. The air is damp, and hushed, and close, As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death; My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. ADELINE. MYSTERY of mysteries, Faintly smiling Adeline, Scarce of earth nor all divine, Nor unhappy, nor at rest, But beyond expression fair, Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes Take the heart from out my breast. Wherefore those dim looks of thine, Shadowy, dreaming Adeline? Whence that aery bloom of thine, And a rose-bush leans upon, |