PART III.

89

AWAKE.

RISE up, rise up, O dreamer!
The eastern sky is red;

The trumpet's note is calling,
The storm is overhead.

Out of the myrtle mazes
Rise up and come away,
And leave thy charmèd slumbers

At breaking of the day.

Come down, come down, O dreamer!

From thy aerial height,

Thy solitary strongholds

And mountains of delight.

Down in the trodden highway

Goes to and fro the crowd; About the market-places

The tumult waxes loud.

The gates of sleep slide open,
And past them lies a strand
That seems like one remembered,
The last of English land.

Where bent before our coming,

And smoothed beneath our tread, The gold of gorse, the waxen heath, The wild bog-myrtle bed;

Bowed crisp and close and even

As for a dancing floor,

With fresh crushed odours speeding The fleet feet evermore.

But in the world of waking
Whoso the straight path goes

Will find it steep and narrow,
With iron gates that close.

And there the feet pass bleeding,
O'er flint and thorn and brier,
And burning desert phantoms

But mock the parched desire.

And every breath is battle,
And every step a fall;
And less than loss of all things
Shall win no way at all.

And all around are pressing,
Darkness behind, before,

Souls low and heavy-laden,
In struggle sad and sore.

These are thine own, thy nearest, For this brief human space ;— Break not thy bonds before-time, Nor spurn the earth-bound place.

And if awhile thy dreaming

Did seem to bear thee far, Rejoice it was but seeming, While here thy brethren are.