To mimic heaven; and clapt her hands and cried, 'I marvel if my still delight In this great house so royal-rich, and wide, 'O all things fair to sate my various eyes! 'O God-like isolation which art mine, 'In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, Then of the moral instinct would she prate 'I take possession of man's mind and deed. Full oft the riddle of the painful earth * * Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, : And so she throve and prosper'd so three years Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, C Lest she should fail and perish utterly, Plagued her with sore despair. When she would think, where'er she turn'd her sight The kingdom of her thought. Deep dread and loathing of her solitude 'What! is not this my place of strength,' she said, But in dark corners of her palace stood On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, A spot of dull stagnation, without light A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, A star that with the choral starry dance Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, And death and life she hated equally, Remaining utterly confused with fears, Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound As in strange lands a traveller walking slow, A little before moon-rise hears the low And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, I have found She howl'd aloud, 'I am on fire within. So when four years were wholly finished, 'Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are III LOCKSLEY HALL COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn : Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. 'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time; When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed: When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.. In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young, And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. And I said, 'My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, Trust me, thee. cousin, all the current of my being sets to On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light, As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. And she turn'd-her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes— Saying, 'I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;' Saying, 'Dost thou love me, cousin?' weeping, 'I have loved thee long.' Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. |