The peacock sits perched on the roof all night,
And wakes up the farmhouse before 't is light;
But his matins they suit not the delicate ear
Of the drowsy damsels, that half in fear
And half in disgust his discord hear.

If the soul's migration from frame to frame
Be truth, tell me now whence the peacock's came?
Say if it had birth at the musical close
Of a dying hyena, — or if it arose
From a Puritan scold that sang psalms through her nose?

Well: a jackass there was — but you need not look
For this fable of mine in old Ã?sop's book —

This day was sacred, once, to Pan,
And kept with song and wine;
But when our better creed began
'T was held no more divine,
Until there came a holy man,
One Bishop Valentine.

He, finding, as all good men will,
Much in the ancient way
That was not altogether ill,
Restored the genial day,
And we the pagan fashion still
With pious hearts obey.

Without this custom, all would go
Amiss in Love's affairs;
All passion would be poor dumb show,
Pent sighs, and secret prayers;
And bashful maids would never know

Come, O thou mighty Savior,
We look for thine appearing;
Descend we pray,
Thy love display,
Our waiting spirits cheering.

Come, clothed with glorious power;
Let all thy saints adore thee,
And let thy word,
The Spirit's sword,
Subdue thy foes before thee.

May every heart with gladness,
Thine offered grace receiving,
Now cease from sin,
And pure within,
Have peace, in thee believing.

Then, when thou com'st to judgment,
On flying clouds descending,
May we rejoice,
When, at thy voice,

Night may forget the day,
The roses and the dew,
And yet my heart alway,
Lady, remembers you.

Day may forget the night,
Forget both moon and star,
Yet deathless, dark or light,
Your memories are!

Hardly who bends o'er Wayland bridge
Can tell which side the current flows;
In vain you mark the swaying sedge —
This way and that each eddy goes.

I drop a leaflet on the wave —
A crimson page from autumn's book —
Did ever thing so misbehave?
For less it moves as more I look!

They say the Sudbury seeks the sea,
But ocean to the eastward lies;
This dallying streamlet seems to be
Bound for the spring whence it had rise,

And lingers as it loved the meads
And mossy rocks where cattle stray

Thy beauty, Roslin, woke a loftier thought —
Those friars are gone, but not the truths they taught;
The mind that planned thee, and the monks that reared,
Censers, bells, candles — all have disappeared:
But the same spirit hovers round thy walls
That hallows Westminster, pervades St. Paul's,
Or makes the pile that sanctifies the Ouse
A place of pilgrimage for my small muse.

When Scotland's poet led his poet-guest
To thee from Hawthornden's romantic nest,
Thou wast a wreck, and Johnson's learned eye
Read in thy stones but barbarism gone by.

On the rough Bracco's top, at break of day,
High o'er that gulf which bounds the Genoese,
Since thou and I pursued our mountain way,
Twenty Decembers have disrobed the trees.

Charmed by the glowing earth and golden sky,
In Arno's vale you made yourself a nest;
There perched in peace and bookish case, while I,
In love with Freedom, sought her in the West.

And here, amid remembrances that throng

Farewell, Ravenna's forest! and farewell
For aye through coming centuries to the sound,
Over blue Adria, of the lyric pines,
And Chiassi's bird-song keeping burden sweet
To their low moan as once to Dante's lines,
Which when my step first felt Italian ground
I strove to follow, carried by the spell
Of that sad Florentine whose very street
(At morn and midnight) where he used to dwell
My father bade me pace with reverent feet.
Some rapid spirit, misapprehending this,
Will say, “Perchance our imbecile prefers

Wee Shemus was a misdropt man
Without a shoulder to his back;
He had the way to lift a rann
And throttled rabbits in a sack.

And red-haired Mary whom he wed,
Brought him but thirty shillings told;
She had but one eye in her head,
But Shemus counted it for gold.

The two went singing in the hay
Or kissing underneath the sloes,
And where they chanced to pass the day
There was no need to scare the crows.

But now with Mary waked and laid
As decent as she lived and died,
Poor Shemus went to buy a spade

Now I am a plant, a weed
Bending and swinging
On a rocky ledge
And now I am long brown grass
Fluttering like flame
I am a reed
An old shell singing
For ever the same
A drift of sedge
A white, white stone
A bone
Until I pass
Into sand again
And spin and blow
To and fro, to and fro
On the edge of the sea
In the fading light.
For the light fades.

But if you were to come you would not say
She is not waiting here for me
She has forgotten. Have we not in play