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WANDERLUST

TO JANE: THE INVITATION

BEST and Brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which, like thee, to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn Spring
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
To hoar February born;

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Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May

Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear

Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness

Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.

I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor:-

"I am gone into the fields

To take what this sweet hour yields;--
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.—
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,-
You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,―
I will pay you in the grave,-
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!

To-day is for itself enough;
Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment's good
After long pain-with all your love,
This you never told me of."

Radiant Sister of the Day
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,

Round stems that never kiss the sun.
Where the lawns and pastures be,
And the sandhills of the sea;-
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,

And the multitudinous

Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,

And all things seem only one

In the universal sun.

Perry Bysshe Shelley [1792–1822]

"Afar in the Desert"

1669.

"MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS "

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,-
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

The birthplace of valor, the country of worth;

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

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Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,-
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

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AFAR in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I cling to the past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And shadows of things that have long since fled
Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead:
Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon;
Day-dreams that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments by fate or falsehood reft;
Companions of early days lost or left-
And my native land-whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;

The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young, and the world was new,
Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;
All-all now forsaken-forgotten-foregone!
And I-a lone exile remembered of none-

My high aims abandoned, my good acts undone
Aweary of all that is under the sun-

With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan,
I fly to the desert afar from man.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,

With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife—
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear-
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear-
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh-
Oh! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand—
The only law of the Desert Land!

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.
Away-away from the dwellings of men,

By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen;

By valleys remote where the oribi plays,

Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze,
And the kudu and eland unhunted recline

By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine:
Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood,
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood,
And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will
In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill.

"Afar in the Desert "

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.
O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively:
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh
Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view
In the pathless depths of the parched karroo.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.
Away-away-in the wilderness vast

Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan:
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

1671

Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt-lake's brink;
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears, to refresh the aching eye;

But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread-void of living sight or sound.
And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,

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