OH, I would have these tongues oracular
Dip into silence, tease no more, let be!
They madden, like some choral of the free
Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar.
To earth the boast that her gold empires are,
The menace of delicious death to me,
Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree,
Piercing the heart with beauty from afar!
Music too winning to the sense forlorn!
Of what angelic lineage was she born,
Bred in what rapture?—These her sires and friends:
Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe.
Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so
Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.
SLEEP.
O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide
On whose moon-heaving breast my head hath lain,
Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain
Thro’ holy hours, be yet unsatisfied,
Loose me betimes! for in my soul abide
Urgings of memory; and exile’s pain
Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain
May throb for the old strife wherein he died.
Often and evermore, across the sea
Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of day
O speed me! like that outworn king erewhile
From kind Phæacia shoreward borne; for me,
Thy loving healèd Greek, thou too shall lay
Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle.
THE ATONING YESTERDAY.
YE daffodilian days, whose fallen towers
Shielded our paradisal prime from ill,
Fair past, fair motherhood! let come what will,
We, being yours, defy the anarch powers.
For us the happy tidings fell, in showers
Enjewelling the wind from every hill;
We drained the sun against the winter’s chill;
Our ways were barricadoed in with flowers: