MASTER OLIVER
—O Son, is it sleep that upon thee is fallen?
Not death, O my dear one!—speak yet but a little!
KING PHARAMOND (raising himself again)
O be glad, foster-father! and those troubles past over,—
Be thou thereby when once more I remember
And sit with my maiden and tell her the story,
And we pity our past selves as a poet may pity
The poor folk he tells of amid plentiful weeping.
Hush now! as faint noise of bells over water
A sweet sound floats towards me, and blesses my slumber:
If I wake never more I shall dream and shall see her. [Sleeps.
MASTER OLIVER
Is it swooning or sleeping? in what wise shall he waken?
—Nay, no sound I hear save the forest wind wailing.
Who shall help us to-day save our yoke-fellow Death?
Yet fain would I die mid the sun and the flowers;
For a tomb seems this yew-wood ere yet we are dead.
And its wailing wind chilleth my yearning for time past,
And my love groweth cold in this dusk of the daytime.
What will be? is worse than death drawing anear us?
Flit past, dreary day! come, night-tide and resting!
Come, to-morrow's uprising with light and new tidings!
—Lo, Lord, I have borne all with no bright love before me;
Wilt thou break all I had and then give me no blessing?
THE MUSIC
LOVE IS ENOUGH: through the trouble and tangle
From yesterdays dawning to yesterday's night
I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle,