Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis tried him to the chase;
Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-fac’d suitor ‘gins to woo him.
Thou hidden love of God, whose height, Whose depth unfathom’d no man knows, I see from far thy beauteous light, Inly I sigh for thy repose; My heart is pain’d, nor can it be At rest, till it finds rest in thee.
Thy secret voice invites me still, The sweetness of thy yoke to prove: And fain I would: but tho’ my will Seem fix’d, yet wide my passions rove; Yet hindrances strew all the way; I aim at thee, yet from thee stray.
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round, At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods, Danced like a wither'd leaf before the hall. And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand, And from the crown thereof a carcanet Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday, Came Tristram, saying, "Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?"
For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once Far down beneath a winding wall of rock Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead. From roots like some black coil of carven snakes, Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro' mid air
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:
"I found Him in the shining of the stars, I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. O me! for why is all around us here
So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "The sequel of to-day unsolders all
I.1. Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign: Now rolling down the steep amain, Headlong, impetuous, see it pour: The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man— So glorious in his beauty and thy choice, Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd To his great heart none other than a God!
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