By slow approaches, than by single act

Of immolation, any phase of death,

We were as prompt to spring against the pikes,

Or down the fiery galf as talk of it,

To compass our dear sister's liberties.'

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear;
And up we came to where the river sloped
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods,
And danced the colour, and, below, stuck out

The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said,

'As these rude bones to us, are we to her

That will be.' 'Dare we dream of that,' I ask'd,

'Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, That practice betters?' 'How,' she cried, you love

The metaphysics! read and earn our prize,

A golden broach: beneath an emerald plane

Sits Diotima, teaching him that died

Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life;

She rapt upon her subject, he on her:

L

There leaning deep in brake down we sank Our allows on a tripod in the mist

A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd

Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.

Then she Let some one sing to us: lightlier move

The minutes fledged with music:' and a maid,

Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang.

66

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge ;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

M

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

"Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more."

She ended with such passion that the tear, She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl Lost in her bosom: but with some disdain

Answer'd the Princess 'If indeed there haunt

About the moulder'd lodges of the Past

So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men,

Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool

And so pace by: but thine are fancies hatch'd

In silken-folded idleness; nor is it

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost,

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be,

While down the streams that float us each and all

To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice,

Throne after throne, and molten on the waste

Becomes a cloud: for all things serve their time Toward that great year of equal mights and rights,

Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end

Found golden let the past be past; let be

Their cancell'd Babels: tho' the rough kex break

The starr'd mosaic, and the wild goat hang

Upon the shaft, and the wild figtree split

Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear

A trumpet in the distance pealing news

Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns

Above the unrisen morrow: then to me;

'Know you no song of your own land,' she said, 'Not such as moans about the retrospect,

But deals with the other distance and the hues

Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine.'

Then I remember'd one myself had made,

What time I watch'd the swallow winging south

From mine own land, part made long since, and part

Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far

As I could ape their treble, did I sing.