VII.

thee :

Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, Only to ceremonial days,
The aspirations unattained,

And great processions of imperial song
The rhythms so rathe and delicate, That set the world at gaze,
They bent and strained

Doth such high privilege belong : And broke, beneath the sombre weight But thou a postern-door canst ope Of any airiest mortal word.

To humbler chanıbers of the selfsame

palace

Where Memory lodges, and her sister What warm protection dost thou bend

Hope, Round curtained talk of friend with whose being is but as a crystal chalice friend,

Which, with her various mood, the While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, of joy or sorrow,

elder fills To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain

So coloring as she wills Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane!

With hues of yesterday the unconscious Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne

morrow. By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted upon her natal morn

Ix. By him with fire, by her with dreams, Thou sinkest, and my fancy sinks with Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grape's bewildering juice, For thee I took the idle shell, We worship, unforbid of thee ; And struck the unused chords again, And, as her incense floats and curls

But they are gone who listened well; In airy spires and wayward whirls, Some are in heaven, and all are far from Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery,

Even as I sing, it turns to pain, So winds and loiters, idly free,

And with vain tears my eyelids throb The current of unguided talk,

and swell : Now laughter-rippled, and now caught Enough ; I come not of the race In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. That hawk their sorrows in the marketMeanwhile thou mellowest every word, place. A sweetly unobtrusive third ;

Earth stops the ears I best had loved to For thou hast magic beyond wine,

please ; To unlock natures each to each ;

Then bieak, ye untuned chords, or rust The unspoken thought thou canst in peace! divine ;

As if a white-haired actor should come Thou fill'st the pauses of the speech

back With whispers that to dream-land reach Some midnight to the theatre void and And frozen fancy-springs unchain

black, In Arctic outskirts of the brain ; And there rehearse his youth's great Sun of all inmost confidences,

part To thy rays doth the heart unclose

Mid thin applauses of the ghosts, Its formal calyx of pretences,

So seems it now : ye crowd upon my That close against rude day's offences, heart, And open its shy midnight rose ! And I bow down in silence, shadowy

hosts !

me :

VII.

Thou holdest not the master key
With which thy Sire sets free the mystic

FANCY'S CASUISTRY, gates of Past and Future : not for common How struggles with the tempest's swells fates

That warning of tumultuous bells ! Do they wide open fling,

The fire is loose ! and frantic knells And, with a far-heard ring,

Throb fast and faster, Swing back their willing valves melo- As tower to tower confusedly tells diously;

News of disaster.

And when the storm o'erwhelms the WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND

Now large and near, now more and The Pope himself to see in dream