"Adjusted concords soft enow
To hear the wine-cups passing, through,
And not too grave to spoil the show:
"Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
O sapient angel, leanest o'er
The window-sill of metaphor.
"To give our hearts up? fie! that rage
Barbaric antedates the age;
It is not done on any stage.
"Because your scald or gleeman went
With seven or nine-stringed instrument
Upon his back,—must ours be bent?
"We are not pilgrims, by your leave;
No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve,
It is to rhyme to—summer eve:
"And if we labour, it shall be
As suiteth best with our degree,
In after-dinner reverie."
More yet that speaker would have said,
Poising between his smiles fair-fed
Each separate phrase till finishèd;
But all the foreheads of those born
And dead true poets flashed with scorn
Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn,
Ay, jetted such brave fire that they,
The new-come, shrank and paled away
Like leaden ashes when the day
Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast,
A presence known by power, at last
Took them up mutely: they had passed.