How he sleepeth! having drunken / Weary childhood's mandragore, / From his pretty eyes have sunken / Pleasures, to make room for more / Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before. / Nosegays! leave them for the waking: / Throw them earthward where they grew. / Dim are such, beside the breaking / Amaranths he looks unto / Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do. / Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden / From the paths they sprang beneath, / Now perhaps divinely holden, / Swing against him in a wreath / We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath. / Vision unto vision calleth, / While the young child dreameth on. / Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth / With the glory thou hast won! / Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn, by summer sun. / We should see the spirits ringing / Round thee, were the clouds away. / 'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing / In the silent-seeming clay / Singing! Stars that seem the mutest, go in music all the way. / As the moths around a taper, / As the bees around a rose, / As the gnats around a vapour, / So the Spirits group and close / Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose. / Shapes of brightness overlean thee, / Flash their diadems of youth / On the ringlets which half screen thee, / While thou smilest, . . . not in sooth / Thy smile . . . but the overfair one, dropt from some aethereal mouth. / Haply it is angels' duty, / During slumber, shade by shade: / To fine down this childish beauty / To the thing it must be made, / Ere the world shall bring it praises, or the tomb shall see it fade. / Softly, softly! make no noises! / Now he lieth dead and dumb / Now he hears the angels' voices / Folding silence in the room / Now he muses deep the meaning of the Heaven-words as they come. / Speak not! he is consecrated / Breathe no breath across his eyes. / Lifted up and separated, / On the hand of God he lies, / In a sweetness beyond touching held in cloistral sanctities. / Could ye bless him father mother ? / Bless the dimple in his cheek? / Dare ye look at one another, / And the benediction speak? / Would ye not break out in weeping, and confess yourselves too weak? / He is harmless ye are sinful, / Ye are troubled he, at ease: / From his slumber, virtue winful / Floweth outward with increase / Dare not bless him! but be blessed by his peace and go in peace.

I heard an angel speak last night, / And he said "Write! / Write a Nation's curse for me, / And send it over the Western Sea." / I faltered, taking up the word: / "Not so, my lord! / If curses must be, choose another / To send thy curse against my brother. / "For I am bound by gratitude, / By love and blood, / To brothers of mine across the sea, / Who stretch out kindly hands to me." / "Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou write / My curse to-night. / From the summits of love a curse is driven, / As lightning is from the tops of heaven." / "Not so," I answered. "Evermore / My heart is sore / For my own land's sins: for little feet / Of children bleeding along the street: / "For parked-up honors that gainsay / The right of way: / For almsgiving through a door that is / Not open enough for two friends to kiss: / "For love of freedom which abates / Beyond the Straits: / For patriot virtue starved to vice on / Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion: / "For an oligarchic parliament, / And bribes well-meant. / What curse to another land assign, / When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?" / "Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou write / My curse to-night. / Because thou hast strength to see and hate / A foul thing done within thy gate." / "Not so," I answered once again. / "To curse, choose men. / For I, a woman, have only known / How the heart melts and the tears run down." / "Therefore," the voice said, "shalt thou write / My curse to-night. / Some women weep and curse, I say / (And no one marvels), night and day. / "And thou shalt take their part to-night, / Weep and write. / A curse from the depths of womanhood / Is very salt, and bitter, and good." / So thus I wrote, and mourned indeed, / What all may read. / And thus, as was enjoined on me, / I send it over the Western Sea. / Because ye have broken your own chain / With the strain / Of brave men climbing a Nation's height, / Yet thence bear down with brand and thong / On souls of others, for this wrong / This is the curse. Write. / Because yourselves are standing straight / In the state / Of Freedom's foremost acolyte, / Yet keep calm footing all the time / On writhing bond-slaves, for this crime / This is the curse. Write. / Because ye prosper in God's name, / With a claim / To honor in the old world's sight, / Yet do the fiend's work perfectly / In strangling martyrs, for this lie / This is the curse. Write. / Ye shall watch while kings conspire / Round the people's smouldering fire, / And, warm for your part, / Shall never dare O shame! / To utter the thought into flame / Which burns at your heart. / This is the curse. Write. / Ye shall watch while nations strive / With the bloodhounds, die or survive, / Drop faint from their jaws, / Or throttle them backward to death; / And only under your breath / Shall favor the cause. / This is the curse. Write. / Ye shall watch while strong men draw / The nets of feudal law / To strangle the weak; / And, counting the sin for a sin, / Your soul shall be sadder within / Than the word ye shall speak. / This is the curse. Write. / When good men are praying erect / That Christ may avenge His elect / And deliver the earth, / The prayer in your ears, said low, / Shall sound like the tramp of a foe / That's driving you forth. / This is the curse. Write. / When wise men give you their praise, / They shall praise in the heat of the phrase, / As if carried too far. / When ye boast your own charters kept true, / Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do / Derides what ye are. / This is the curse. Write. / When fools cast taunts at your gate, / Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate / As ye look o'er the wall; / For your conscience, tradition, and name / Explode with a deadlier blame / Than the worst of them all. / This is the curse. Write. / Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done, / Go, plant your flag in the sun / Beside the ill-doers! / And recoil from clenching the curse / Of God's witnessing Universe / With a curse of yours. / This is the curse. Write.

O Rose! who dares to name thee? / No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet; / But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat, / Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee. / The breeze that used to blow thee / Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away / An odour up the lane to last all day, / If breathing now, unsweetened would forego thee. / The sun that used to smite thee, / And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn, / Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn, / If shining now, with not a hue would light thee. / The dew that used to wet thee, / And, white first, grow incarnadined, because / It lay upon thee where the crimson was, / If dropping now, would darken where it met thee. / The fly that lit upon thee, / To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet, / Along thy leaf's pure edges, after heat, / If lighting now, would coldly overrun thee. / The bee that once did suck thee, / And build thy perfumed ambers up his hive, / And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive, / If passing now, would blindly overlook thee. / The heart doth recognise thee, / Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet, / Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete, / Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee. / Yes, and the heart doth owe thee / More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold / As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold! / Lie still upon this heart which breaks below thee!

I /     Love me Sweet, with all thou art, /     Feeling, thinking, seeing; /     Love me in the lightest part, /     Love me in full being. / II /     Love me with thine open youth /     In its frank surrender; /     With the vowing of thy mouth, /     With its silence tender. / III /     Love me with thine azure eyes, /     Made for earnest grantings; /     Taking colour from the skies, /     Can Heaven's truth be wanting? / IV /     Love me with their lids, that fall /     Snow-like at first meeting; /     Love me with thine heart, that all /     Neighbours then see beating. / V /     Love me with thine hand stretched out /     Freely, open-minded: /     Love me with thy loitering foot, /     Hearing one behind it. / VI /     Love me with thy voice, that turns /     Sudden faint above me; /     Love me with thy blush that burns /     When I murmur 'Love me!' / VII /     Love me with thy thinking soul, /     Break it to love-sighing; /     Love me with thy thoughts that roll /     On through living, dying. / VIII /     Love me in thy gorgeous airs, /     When the world has crowned thee; /     Love me, kneeling at thy prayers, /     With the angels round thee. / IX /     Love me pure, as muses do, /     Up the woodlands shady: /     Love me gaily, fast and true, /     As a winsome lady. / X /     Through all hopes that keep us brave, /     Farther off or nigher, /     Love me for the house and grave, /     And for something higher. / XI /     Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear, /     Woman's love no fable, /     I will love thee, half a year /     As a man is able.

I. /     What was he doing, the great god Pan, /     Down in the reeds by the river ? /     Spreading ruin and scattering ban, /     Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, /     And breaking the golden lilies afloat /     With the dragon-fly on the river. / II. /     He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, /     From the deep cool bed of the river : /     The limpid water turbidly ran, /     And the broken lilies a-dying lay, /     And the dragon-fly had fled away, /     Ere he brought it out of the river. / III. /     High on the shore sate the great god Pan, /     While turbidly flowed the river ; /     And hacked and hewed as a great god can, /     With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, /     Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed /     To prove it fresh from the river. / IV. /     He cut it short, did the great god Pan, /     (How tall it stood in the river !) /     Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, /     Steadily from the outside ring, /     And notched the poor dry empty thing /     In holes, as he sate by the river. / V. /     This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan, /     Laughed while he sate by the river,) /     The only way, since gods began /     To make sweet music, they could succeed.' /     Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, /     He blew in power by the river. / VI. /     Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan ! /     Piercing sweet by the river ! /     Blinding sweet, O great god Pan ! /     The sun on the hill forgot to die, /     And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly /     Came back to dream on the river. / VII. /     Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, /     To laugh as he sits by the river, /     Making a poet out of a man : /     The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, /     For the reed which grows nevermore again /     As a reed with the reeds in the river.

We walked beside the sea, / After a day which perished silently / Of its own glory, like the Princess weird / Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared, / Uttered with burning breath, "Ho! victory!" / And sank adown, an heap of ashes pale; / So runs the Arab tale. / The sky above us showed / An universal and unmoving cloud, / On which, the cliffs permitted us to see / Only the outline of their majesty, / As master-minds, when gazed at by the crowd! / And, shining with a gloom, the water grey / Swang in its moon-taught way. / Nor moon nor stars were out. / They did not dare to tread so soon about, / Though trembling, in the footsteps of the sun. / The light was neither night's nor day's, but one / Which, life-like, had a beauty in its doubt; / And Silence's impassioned breathings round / Seemed wandering into sound. / O solemn-beating heart / Of nature! I have knowledge that thou art / Bound unto man's by cords he cannot sever, / And, what time they are slackened by him ever, / So to attest his own supernal part, / Still runneth thy vibration fast and strong, / The slackened cord along. / For though we never spoke / Of the grey water anal the shaded rock, / Dark wave and stone, unconsciously, were fused / Into the plaintive speaking that we used, / Of absent friends and memories unforsook; / And, had we seen each other's face, we had / Seen haply, each was sad.

If God compel thee to this destiny, / To die alone, with none beside thy bed / To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said / And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee, / Pray then alone,' O Christ, come tenderly! / By thy forsaken Sonship in the red / Drear wine-press, by the wilderness out-spread, / And the lone garden where thine agony / Fell bloody from thy brow, by all of those / Permitted desolations, comfort mine! / No earthly friend being near me, interpose / No deathly angel 'twixt my face aud thine, / But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose, / And smile away my mortal to Divine!'

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed, / She has counted six, and over, / Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried, / Oh, each a worthy lover! / They "give her time"; for her soul must slip / Where the world has set the grooving; / She will lie to none with her fair red lip: / But love seeks truer loving. / She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb, / As her thoughts were beyond recalling; / With a glance for one, and a glance for some, / From her eyelids rising and falling; / Speaks common words with a blushful air, / Hears bold words, unreproving; / But her silence says, what she never will swear, / And love seeks better loving. / Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar, / And drop a smile to the bringer; / Then smile as sweetly, when he is far, / At the voice of an in-door singer. / Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes; / Glance lightly, on their removing; / And join new vows to old perjuries, / But dare not call it loving! / Unless you can think, when the song is done, / No other is soft in the rhythm; / Unless you can feel, when left by One, / That all men else go with him; / Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath, / That your beauty itself wants proving; / Unless you can swear "For life, for death!" / Oh, fear to call it loving! / Unless you can muse in a crowd all day / On the absent face that fixed you; / Unless you can love, as the angels may, / With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; / Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, / Through behoving and unbehoving; / Unless you can die when the dream is past, / Oh, never call it loving!

He listened at the porch that day, / To hear the wheel go on, and on; / And then it stopped, ran back away, / While through the door he brought the sun: / But now my spinning is all done. / He sat beside me, with an oath / That love ne'er ended, once begun; / I smiled, believing for us both, / What was the truth for only one: / And now my spinning is all done. / My mother cursed me that I heard / A young man's wooing as I spun: / Thanks, cruel mother, for that word, / For I have, since, a harder known! / And now my spinning is all done. / I thought, O God! my first-born's cry / Both voices to mine ear would drown: / I listened in mine agony, / It was the silence made me groan! / And now my spinning is all done. / Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave, / (Who cursed me on her death-bed lone) / And my dead baby's (God it save!) / Who, not to bless me, would not moan. / And now my spinning is all done. / A stone upon my heart and head, / But no name written on the stone! / Sweet neighbours, whisper low instead, / "This sinner was a loving one, / And now her spinning is all done." / And let the door ajar remain, / In case he should pass by anon; / And leave the wheel out very plain, / That HE, when passing in the sun, / May see the spinning is all done.

Now, by the verdure on thy thousand hills, / Beloved England, doth the earth appear / Quite good enough for men to overbear / The will of God in, with rebellious wills! / We cannot say the morning-sun fulfils / Ingloriously its course, nor that the clear / Strong stars without significance insphere / Our habitation: we, meantime, our ills / Heap up against this good and lift a cry / Against this work-day world, this ill-spread feast, / As if ourselves were better certainly / Than what we come to. Maker and High Priest, / I ask thee not my joys to multiply, / Only to make me worthier of the least.