Well-were it not a pleasant thing To fall asleep with all one's friends; To 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 thro' terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars,

As wild as aught of fairy lore;
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.

II.

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep

Thro' sunny decads new and strange, Or gay quinquenniads would we reap

The flower and quintessence of change.

III.

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.

IV.
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 waken'd hopes?

What lips, like thine, so sweetly join'd? 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:

And briony-vine and ivy-wreath Ran forward to his rhyming, And from the valleys underneath Came little copses climbing.

The linden broke her ranks and rent
The woodbine wreaths that bind her,
And down the middle buzz! she went
With all her bees behind her:
The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded,
The shock-head willows two and two
By rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shot alder from the wave,

Came yews, a dismal coterie ; Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Poussetting with a sloe-tree: Old elms came breaking from the vine, The vine stream'd out to follow, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine From many a cloudy hollow.

And was n't it a sight to see,

When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Look'd down, half-pleased, halffrighten'd,

As dash'd about the drunken leaves

The random sunshine lighten'd!

O, nature first was fresh to men,
And wanton without measure;
So youthful and so flexile then,

You moved her at your pleasure. Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,

And scirrhous roots and tendons.

"T is vain! in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; The very sparrows in the hedge

Scarce answer to my whistle; Or at the most, when three-parts-sick With strumming and with scraping, A jackass heehaws from the rick,

The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound

Like sleepy counsel pleading;

O Lord! 't is in my neighbor's ground,
The modern Muses reading.
They read Botanic Treatises,

And Works on Gardening thro' there,

And Methods of transplanting trees,
To look as if they grew there.
The wither'd Misses! how they prose
O'er books of travell'd seamen,
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbors clipt and cut,
And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut
And warm'd in crystal cases.

But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,

The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed

That blows upon its mountain, The vilest herb that runs to seed Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,
Upon my proper patch of soil

To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom :
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.

ST. AGNES' EVE.

DEEP on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon :
My breath to heaven like vapor goes:
May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers

Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil'd and dark,
To yonder shining ground;

As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;

So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be.

Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
Thro' all yon starlight keen,
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.