But any man that walks the mead,

In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humors lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend;
So 't were to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

You shake

L'ENVOI.

your head. A random string

Your finer female sense offends.

Well

were it not a pleasant thing

To fall asleep with all one's friends;

Το pass with all our social ties

To silence from the paths of men ;

And every hundred years to rise

And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep through terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars,

And all that else the years will show,
The Poet-forms of stronger hours,
The vast Republics that may grow,
The Federations and the Powers;
Titanic forces taking birth

In divers seasons, divers climes;
For we are Ancients of the earth,

And in the morning of the times.

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep
Through sunny decades new and strange,

Or gay quinquenniads, would we reap
The flower and quintessence of change.

Ah, yet would I—and would I might!
So much your eyes my fancy take
Be still the first to leap to light,

That I might kiss those eyes awake!
For, am I right or am I wrong,

To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song,

And I will take my pleasure there:

And, am I right or am I wrong,

My fancy, ranging through and through, To search a meaning for the song,

Perforce will still revert to you;

But

any man that walks the mead,

In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,

According as his humors lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend;

So 't were to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

L'ENVOI.

You shake your head. A random string

Your finer female sense offends.

Well were it not a pleasant thing

To fall asleep with all one's friends;

То pass with all our social ties

To silence from the paths of men ;

And

every hundred years to rise

And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep through terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars,

And all that else the years will show,
The Poet-forms of stronger hours,
The vast Republics that may grow,
The Federations and the Powers;
Titanic forces taking birth

In divers seasons, divers climes ;
For we are Ancients of the earth,

And in the morning of the times.

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep
Through sunny decades new and strange,

Or gay quinquenniads, would we reap
The flower and quintessence of change.

Ah, yet would I—and would I might!
So much your eyes my fancy take-
Be still the first to leap to light,

That I might kiss those eyes awake!
For, am I right or am I wrong,

To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song, And I will take my pleasure there:

And, am I right or am I wrong,

My fancy, ranging through and through, To search a meaning for the song,

Perforce will still revert to you;

Nor finds a closer truth than this

All-graceful head, so richly curled, And evermore a costly kiss,

The prelude to some brighter world.

For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,

And every bird of Eden burst

In carol, every bud to flower,

What eyes, like thine, have wakened hopes?
What lips, like thine, so sweetly joined?
Where on the double rosebud droops
The fulness of the pensive mind;
Which all too dearly self-involved,

Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee neither hear nor see:
But break it. In the name of wife,
And in the rights that name may give,

Are clasped the moral of thy life,