Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
One sabbath deep and wide—
A light
upon the shining sea—
The Bridegroom with his bride!
THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes
across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow,
bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from
cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer,
echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to
soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes,
answer, dying, dying, dying.
NOW sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor
winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danaëe to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself,
my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd
sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To
glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the
valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand
in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares
to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find
him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky
doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles
yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling
water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await
thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every
sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,
The moan
of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
COME into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden,
Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the
roses blown.
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the
light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light,
and to die.
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