English

Strange that in your dark-dappled sanguine flower
The sculpturesque repose can still endure
Of that celestial lily, wrought so pure
It lives as chastity's white type this hour!
By what mysterious art, what baleful power,
Did you, Diana of all blooms, allure
From Nature's mood this Maenad vestiture,
And mock with gaudy tints your taintless dower?

Nay, long ago, I dream, through some warm dell
Of Asian lands a wearied tiger stole
Where you, in pale bud, felt your first dews cling;

Tradition's favoring verdict would express
In you all duteous thrift and toil extreme,
Against gray wintry dearth, while summers beam,
Hoarding with zeal your honeyed bounteousness.
And yet in drowsy reverie I confess
That booming now where flowery vistas gleam,
Among these jubilant garden-paths you seem
The murmurous incarnations of idlesse!

Nay, more, you are like those pages, clad of old
By pampering lords in velvet and in gold,
Who bore sweet amorous words, with cautious airs,

I

I move through a land like a land of dream,
Where the things that are, and that shall be, seem
Wov'n into one by a hand of air,
And the Good looks piercingly down through the Fair!
No form material is here unmated;
Here blows no bud, no scent can rise,
No song ring forth, unconsecrated
To meaning or model in Paradise!
Fallen, like man, is elsewhere man's earth;
Human, at best, in her sadness and mirth;
Or if she aspires after something greater,

Mine eyes, dissolue your globes in brinie streames,
And with a cloud of sorrow dimme your sight;
The sunne's bright sunne is set, of late whose beames
Gaue luster to your day, day to your night.
My voyce, now deafen earth with anatheames,
Roare foorth a challenge in the world's despight,
Tell that disguised griefe is her delight,
That life a slumber is of fearfull dreames.
And, woefull minde, abhorre to thinke of ioy,
My senses all now comfortlesse you hide,
Accept no object but of black annoy,

O woefull life! life, no, but liuing death,
Fraile boat of christall in a rockie sea,
A sport expos'd to Fortune's stormie breath,
Which, kept with paine, with terrour doth decay:
The false delights, true woes thou dost bequeath,
Mine all-appalled minde doe so affraye,
That I those enuie who are laid in earth,
And pittie them that runne thy dreadfull waye.
When did mine eyes behold one chearefull morne?
When had my tossed soule one night of rest?
When did not hatefull starres my projects scorne?

O fate! conspir'd to powre your worst on mee,
O rigorous rigour, which doth all confound!
With cruell hands yee haue cut down the tree,
And fruit and flowre dispersed on the ground.
A litle space of earth my loue doth bound;
That beautie which did raise it to the skie,
Turn'd in neglected dust, now low doth lie,
Deafe to my plaints, and senslesse of my wound.
Ah! did I liue for this, ah! did I loue?
For this and was it shee did so excell?
That ere shee well life's sweet-sowre ioyes did proue,

At Salem was the law. The holy land
Its orient terrace by the ocean reared
And thereon walked the Holy One, at cool
Of the world's morn; there visible state He kept:
At Salem was the law on stone inscribed:
But over all the world, within man's heart
The unwritten law abode, from earliest time
Upon our being stampt, nor wholly lost:
Men saw it, loved it, praised — and disobeyed.
Therefore the conscience, whose applausive voice
Their march triumphant should have led with joy
To all perfection, from a desert pealed

Those eyes, those sparkling saphires of delight,
Which thousand thousand hearts did set on fire,
Which made that eye, of heauen that brings the light,
Oft jealous, staye amaz'd them to admire;
That liuing snow, those crimson roses bright,
Those pearles, those rubies, which did breede desire,
Those lockes of gold, that purple faire of Tyre,
Are wrapt, aye mee! vp in eternall night.
What hast thou more to vaunt of, wretched world,
Sith shee, who cursed thee made blest, is gone?
Thine euer-burning lamps, rounds euer whorld,

It chanced that in the dubious dusk of sleep
I seemed to attain that realm where mortals throw
All gross mortality earthward ere they go
Forth as frail spirits amid death's hollow deep.
All folly and sin was here that life may reap,
All desperate fear and hope, all joy or woe;
And here all precious crowns the exalted know,
Lay gathered in superb tumultuous heap!

Stooping toward these, I marked with silent awe
Their ponderous gold, or gems that beamed like day,
Or lovelier laurel that grand brows had worn;

My life, till these rich hours of precious gage,
Was like that drowsy palace, vine-o'ergrown,
Where down long shadowy corridors lay strown
The slumbering shapes of seneschal or page,
Where griffon-crested oriels, dim with age,
Viewed briery terraces and lawns unmown,
And where from solemn towers of massive stone
Drooped the dull silks of mouldering bannerage.

But now the enchanted halls break sleep's control,
With murmurous change, at fate's predestined stroke,
And while my fluttering pulses throb or fail,