Titanic forces taking birth In divers seasons, divers climes; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. Thro' So sleeping, so aroused from sleep 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 thro' and thro', 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 curl'd, 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, haye waken'd hopes? Where on the double rosebud droops 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 clasp'd the moral of thy life, And that for which I care to live. EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, O whisper to your glass, and say, "What wonder, if he thinks me fair?" What wonder I was all unwise, To shape the song for your delight Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise, That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hue But take it earnest wed with sport, AMPHION. My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree And waster than a warren : Yet say the neighbours when they call, It is not bad but good land, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, And legs of trees were limber, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, And fiddled in the timber! 'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation ; Wherever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move, The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, Coquetting with young beeches; And briony-vine and ivy-wreath And from the valleys underneath Came little copses climbing. |