THE DAY-DREAM. PROLOGUE. O LADY FLORA, let me speak : A pleasant hour has passed away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, I went thro' many wayward moods Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had, Then take the broidery-frame, and add Nor look with that too-earnest eye The rhymes are dazzled from their place, And order'd words asunder fly. THE SLEEPING PALACE. I. THE varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains, Here rests the sap within the leaf, Here stays the blood along the veins. Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd, Faint murmurs from the meadows come, Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb. II. Soft lustre bathes the range of urns On every slanting terrace-lawn. The peacock in his laurel bower, III. Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs : The mantles from the golden pegs Not even of a gnat that sings. More like a picture seemeth all Than those old portraits of old kings, That watch the sleepers from the wall. IV. Here sits the Butler with a flask Between his knees, half-drain'd; and there The wrinkled steward at his task, The maid-of-honour blooming fair; The page has caught her hand in his : The blush is fix'd upon her cheek. V. Till all the hundred summers pass, And beaker brimm'd with noble wine. VI. All round a hedge upshoots, and shows At distance like a little wood; Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes, And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green Close-matted, bur and brake and briar, And glimpsing over these, just seen, High up, the topmost palace spire. VII. When will the hundred summers die, Bring truth that sways the soul of men ? Here all things in their place remain, As all were order'd, ages since. Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain, And bring the fated fairy Prince. |