THE DAY-DREAM. PROLOGUE. O, LADY FLORA, let me speak: A pleasant hour has past away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay. As by the lattice you reclined, I went thro' many wayward moods To see you dreaming-and, behind, A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dream'd, until at last Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had, And see the vision that I saw, So take the broidery-frame, and add THE SLEEPING PALACE. THE varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains; Here rests the sap within the leaf, Here stays the blood along the veins. Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd, Faint murmurs from the meadows come, Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb. Soft lustre bathes the range of urns On every slanting terrace-lawn. The fountain to his place returns Deep in the garden lake withdrawn. Here droops the banner on the tower, The peacock in his laurel bower, Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs: The mantles from the golden pegs Not even of a gnat that sings. More like a picture seemeth all Than those old portraits of old kings, That watch the sleepers from the wall, Here sits the Butler with a flask Between his knees, half-drain'd; and there The wrinkled steward at his task, The maid-of-honour blooming fair: The page has caught her hand in his: The blush is fix'd upon her cheek. Till all the hundred summers pass, The beams, that thro' the Oriel shine, Make prisms in every carven glass, And beaker brimm'd with noble wine. Each baron at the banquet sleeps, All round a hedge upshoots, and shows Thorns, ivies, woodbine, misletoes, And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green Close-matted, bur and brake and briar, And glimpsing over these, just seen, High up, the topmost palace-spire. When will the hundred summers die, And thought and time be born again, And newer knowledge, drawing nigh, Bring truth that sways the soul of men? Here all things in their place remain, As all were order'd, ages since. Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain, And bring the fated fairy Prince. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. YEAR after year unto her feet, She lying on her couch alone, Across the purpled coverlet, The maiden's jet-black hair has On either side her tranced form grown, Forth streaming from a braid of pearl: The slumbrous light is rich and warm, And moves not on the rounded curl. |