V.

Large dowries doth the raptured eye

To the young spirit present

When first she is wed;

And like a bride of old

In triumph led,

With music and sweet showers

Of festal flowers,

Unto the dwelling she must sway.

Well hast thou done, great artist Memory,
In setting round thy first experiment

With royal frame-work of wrought gold; Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay, And foremost in thy various gallery

Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls
Upon the storied walls;

For the discovery

And newness of thine art so pleased thee,
That all which thou hast drawn of fairest

Or boldest since, but lightly weighs

With thee unto the love thou bearest

The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like,

Ever retiring thou dost gaze

On the prime labour of thine early days :
No matter what the sketch might be ;

Whether the high field on the bushless Pike,

Or even a sand-built ridge

Of heaped hills that mound the sea,

Overblown with murmurs harsh,

Or even a lowly cottage whence we see

Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enormous marsh,

Where from the frequent bridge,

Like emblems of infinity,

The trenched waters run from sky to sky;

Or a garden bower'd close

With plaited alleys of the trailing rose,

Long alleys falling down to twilight grots,

Or opening upon level plots

Of crowned lilies, standing near

Purple-spiked lavender :

Whither in after life retired

From brawling storms,

From weary wind,

With youthful fancy reinspired,

We may

hold converse with all forms

Of the many-sided mind,

And those whom passion hath not blinded,
Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded.

My friend, with you to live alone,
Methinks were better than to own
A crown, a sceptre, and a throne.
O strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,

Thou dewy dawn of memory.

SONG.

I.

A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours

Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:

To himself he talks ;

For at eventide, listening earnestly,

At his work you may hear him sob and sigh

In the walks ;

Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

Of the mouldering flowers:

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;

Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

II.

The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;

My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath

Of the fading edges of box beneath,

And the year's last rose.

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;

Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.