  Down from that blithe Idalian Hill Where Violets drink of dew their fill, And wading thro’ wet eastern Flowers With wash’d feet Eos and the Hours Come laughing down, I laughing came. The Morn had now her threads of flame Inlaid to Earth’s green tapestries, Gold-inwoven; and to their knees In chilly baths of thridding rills At tremble stood luce Daffodils; When lo I mark’d toward me move Those Maidens Three whom poets love. ‘O whither away, rash Youth,’ they cried, ‘Singing thro’ daffodils dost thou stride?’ ‘Ladies, I wander for a while’— And here I duck’d and doff’d in style— ‘I wander by Bourn, I wander by Byre, By Cape and Cote and Castle Spire, And sometime stick in puddled Mire; Or where the shrieking moon-drawn Tides Drench dripping jags on Mountain sides; Or twanging strings sound gay reprieve To smoky Villages at eve, The while toward their wattled home The baaing Sheep do go, I roam, And when the paddock’d Ass careers Mirthful, with high prick’d tail and ears. And I have left behind me there My Hippocrate teaching the air; Now whipping Cupid with her shoe.’ Then, of those slipper’d Maidens, She Robed in flush rose red answer’d me, Who brightly gazing with mild look Held still a finger-parted book. ‘Come then,’ she cried, ‘with me and dwell In my Valley of Asphodel, Which is a land of laughing rills And hung about with dazzling hills, Where oft the Swain with garter’d legs Piping for love in music begs Nor Thisbe turns her petulant ear. There large-eyed Plato thou may’st here Persuade, or, if not idly awed, Masters a Master’s theme applaud. Or if the Thunder more invite Than silver-threaded rain’s delight And sloping seats of knolled moss, Come where some thwarted Torrent toss Thro’ his black gorges, mad to break The shining levels of the Lake. Or, if engross’d with human Fate, On ranged boards mark Love and Hate Egg on to midnight-living crime, And glaring Horrors of dead time Creep in behind. Or, restive still, Unlock’d from Hell soar Heaven’s hill Thro’ sun-outstaring Cherubim.’ ‘Not so,’ cried one, a Virgin slim, Plumed, wrap’d and robed in such gold-green As thro’ woods sunset-dazed is seen, Who half upon her dinted breast Apollo sculpt in little press’d. ‘Come to my House of all delights, Whose marble Stairs with merged flights Are shallow’d in the viewless Lake; Whose overpeering Turrets take The peep of Dawn, or flashing turn To Eve departing golden scorn. There fairy-fluted pillars soar To cloudy Roofs of limned lore, And Walls are window’d with rare scapes And rich designs: of blazon’d Capes Pawing the sunset-burnish’d flood; Of rib-railed reaches of Solitude; Of rounded World and globed Skies, And Stars between, and faint Moonrise; Of black Tarns set mid mountain peaks And spouting silver-foamed leaks; Of Gods reclined, and Maids who move, Unlidding lustrous eyes of love; Of War; of Wisdom with a skull. And in the high aisles Fountains full Disperse a stream of coolness there For frosted fern and maidenhair, And sculptured beauty hold the way. So thither go with me to-day.’ Then She who all in purple dight, Brow-starr’d with orbed ruby light, Lifted from under rich deep locks Looks wrapt on Heaven, to earthly shocks Descending, thus replied: ‘Not these Flat hapless lands of Towers and Trees May past the morn your spirit please. But to some cold Crag, doffing drifts, His cleared brow that Heavenward lifts, And turns beneath the mistless Stars, Come. There no dew distilled mars The many hued Sidereal blaze, And mooned Venus in white rage Stares down the Dawn. Come; for that Glow There solves to unpolluted flow The crumbling crystals of the Snow; And windworn Cataracts wavering plunge To lightless pine-valleys. Come, O come! Lest those faint Harmonies be unheard Which, as from silver and gold strings stir’d By the light fingers of the Wind, Run from the poised orbs swiftly spin’d.’ She ceased, and with her finger tip Made sound the lyre upon her hip, And would have sung; but I replied, ‘To be unchosen is descried; And we shall be made mad in Heaven By need of choice of good things given. I love all Three so passing well Alas!’—I cried, but checked the word, For close behind a footstep heard Compel’d me turn; when lo that Maid, Dress’d in black velvet, who bewray’d Plump Popes and Pastors once to fear, Came up and took me by the ear. ‘Is this the way,’ she cried, ‘you waste Time should be spent in huddling haste To harry Ignorance to her den, Or pink fat Folly with the pen? Small unobserved things to use, PRINTED BY |
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