A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,
Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff;
The mariners join hymn with those on land.
Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake,
Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake
From some old magic-like Urganda’s Sword.
O Phœbus! that I had thy sacred word
To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise,
Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!
A mossy place, a Merlin’s Hall, a dream;
You know the clear Lake, and the little Isles,
The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills,
All which elsewhere are but half animate;
There do they look alive to love and hate,
To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound
Above some giant, pulsing underground.
Built by a banished Santon of Chaldee:
The other part, two thousand years from him,
Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;
Then there’s a little wing, far from the Sun,
Built by a Lapland Witch turn’d maudlin Nun;
And many other juts of aged stone
Founded with many a mason- devil’s groan.
The windows as if latch’d by Fays and Elves,
And from them comes a silver flash of light,
As from the westward of a Summer’s night;
Or like a beauteous woman’s large blue eyes
Gone mad thro’ olden songs and poesies.
A golden Galley all in silken trim!
Three rows of oars are lightening, moment whiles
Into the verd’rous bosoms of those isles;
Towards the shade, under the Castle wall,
It comes in silence,—now ’tis hidden all.
The Clarion sounds, and from a Postern-gate
An echo of sweet music doth create
A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring—
He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,
To all his friends, and they believe him not.
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul’s day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle,—but my flag is not unfurl’d
On the Admiral-staff,—and to philosophise
I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;
Or is it that imagination brought
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin’d,
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,
Cannot refer to any standard law
Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn,—
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.
And cannot speak it: the first page I read
Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breaker; ’twas a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam
Along the flat brown sand; I was at home
And should have been most happy,—but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every maw
The greater on the less feeds evermore.—
But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.
Still am I sick of it, and though, to-day,
I’ve gather’d young spring-leaves, and flowers gay
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,—
The Shark at savage prey,—the Hawk at pounce,—
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,
Ravening a Worm,—Away, ye horrid moods!
Moods of one’s mind! You know I hate them well.
You know I’d sooner be a clapping Bell
To some Kamschatkan Missionary Church,
Than with these horrid moods be left i’ the lurch.
Dawlish Fair
And over the Bourne to Dawlish,
Where ginger-bread wives have a scanty sale,
And ginger-bread nuts are smallish.
Fragment
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