wear

I.

HE sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright,

Blue isles and snowy mountains

The purple noon's transparent might, The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

II.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers,

thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my

emotion.

III.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace

within nor calm around,

Nor that content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned — Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; — To me that cup has been dealt in another

measure.

IV.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;

I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V.

Some might lament that I were cold,

gone,

As I, when this sweet day is Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, Insults with this untimely moan;

They might lament- for I am one Whom men love not, and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in mem

(I think such hearts yet never came to good)

Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;-
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which

lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they

rose,

The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters, every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and

wave,

And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, And silver moth fresh from the grave,

every

Which is its cradle-ever from below

Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far, To be consumed within the purest glow