:

Pass the happy news,

Blush it thro' the West;

Till the red man dance

By his red cedar tree,

And the red man's babe

Leap, beyond the sea.

Blush from West to East,

Blush from East to West,

Till the West is East,

Blush it thro' the West.

Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South,

Roses are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth.

XVIII.

1.

I HAVE led her home, my love, my only friend.

There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood

And sweetly, on and on

Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for end,

Full to the banks, close on the promised good.

None like her, none.

2.

Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk

Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk,

And shook my heart to think she comes once more;

But even then I heard her close the door,

The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.

3.

There is none like her, none.

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious

East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,

Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

And looking to the South, and fed

With honey'd rain and delicate air,

And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,

And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;

And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great

Forefathers of the thornless garden, there

Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she

came.

4.

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway,

And you fair stars that crown a happy day

Go in and out as if at merry play,

Who am no more so all forlorn,

As when it seem'd far better to be born

To labour and the mattock-harden'd hand,

Than nursed at ease and brought to understand

A sad astrology, the boundless plan

That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,

Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand
His nothingness into man.

5.

But now shine on, and what care I,

Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl

The countercharm of space and hollow sky,

And do accept my madness, and would die

To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

6.

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give
More life to Love than is or ever was

In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;

It seems that I am happy, that to me

A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,

A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

7.

Not die; but live a life of truest breath,
And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs.

O, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs,
Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death ?
Make answer, Maud my bliss,

Maud made my Maud by that long lover's kiss,