THE MAGE. When I shall sing my songs the world will hear, -Which hears not these,-I shall be white with age, My beard on breast great as befits a mage So skilled; but song is young, and in no drear Tome-crammed, lamp-litten chamber shall mine fear To pine ascetic. Where the woods are deep, Of breeze and bloom, gaze, but my art revere ! In characters vermilion, azure, gold, With bird, starred flower, and peering dragon-fly Limned in the lines; and secrets shall be told Of greatest Pan, and lives of wood-nymphs shy, Blabbed by my goat-foot servitor overbold. WISE PASSIVENESS. Think you I choose or that or this to sing? I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream Dreaming among green fields its summer dream, Which takes whate'er the gracious hours will bring Into its quiet bosom; not a thing Too common, since perhaps you see it there Who else had never seen it, though as fair As on the world's first morn; a fluttering Of idle butterflies; or the deft seeds THE SINGER'S PLEA. Why do I sing? I know not why, my friend ; A royal largess to the sea roll down, And on those liberal highways nations send Their tributes to the world,-stored corn and wine, And dyes to make a presence-chamber shine. THE TRESPASSER. Trespassers will be prosecuted,—so Announced the inhospitable notice-board; Come in, in, in, come in, now rich and low, I swear by ring of Canace I heard. "Sure," said I, "this is no brown-breasted bird, But some fair princess, lost an age ago Through stepdame's cursed spell, till the saints brought her Who but myself, the knight foredoomed of grace." Alas! poor knight, in all that cockney place You found no magic, save one radiant sight, The huge, obstreperous house-keeper's grand daughter, A child with eyes of pure ethereal light. RITUALISM. This is high ritual and a holy day; I think from Palestrina the wind chooses That movement in the firs; one sits and muses Is holy, God himself being bread and wine. |