3 Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
4 Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives ;
But, though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
GEORGE HERBERT: 1593-1632.
THE LAND OF DREAMS.
1 A MIGHTY realm is the Land of Dreams,
With steeps that hang in the twilight sky,
And weltering oceans and trailing streams,
That gleam where the dusky valleys lie.
2 But over its shadowy border flow
Sweet rays from the world of endless morn,
And the nearer mountains catch the glow,
And flowers in the nearer fields are born.
3 The souls of the happy dead repair,
From their bowers of light, to that bordering land,
And walk in the fainter glory there
With the souls of the living hand in hand.
4 One calm sweet smile, in that shadowy sphere,
From eyes that open on Earth no more,
One warning word from a voice once dear,
How they rise in the memory o'er and o'er!
5 Far off from those hills that shine with day,
And fields that bloom in the heavenly gales,
The Land of Dreams goes stretching away
To dimmer mountains and darker vales.
6 There lie the chambers of guilty delight;
There walk the spectres of guilty fear;
And soft low voices, that float through the night,
Are whispering sin in the helpless ear.
7 Dear maid, in thy girlhood's opening flower,
Scarce wean'd from thy love of childish play!
The tears on whose cheeks are but the shower
That freshens the blooms of early May!
8 Thine eyes are closed, and over thy brow
Pass thoughtful shadows and joyous gleams;
And I know, by thy moving lips, that now
Thy spirit strays in the Land of Dreams.
9 Light-hearted maiden, O, heed thy feet!
O, keep where the beam of Paradise falls!
And only wander where thou mayst meet
The blessed ones from its shining walls.
10 So shalt thou come from the Land of Dreams
With love and peace to this world of strife;
And the light which over that border streams
Shall lie on the path of thy daily life.
WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS.
1 DEAR friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony
The many never learn,
2 Kindred in soul of him who found
In simple flower and leaf and stone
Or lends one star-gleam to the night
Of clouded Melancholy.
2 Away with weary cares and themes !
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams!
Leave free once more the land which teems
With wonders and romances !
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes,
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies
Beneath the quaintly-masking guise
Of wild and wizard fancies.
3 Lo! once again our feet we set
On still green wood-paths, twilight wet,
By lonely brooks, whose waters fret
The roots of spectral beeches;
Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er
Home's whitewash'd wall and painted floor,
And young eyes widening to the lore
Of fairy-folks and witches.
4 Dear heart! the legend is not vain
Which lights that holy hearth again,
And, calling back from care and pain,
And death's funereal sadness,
Draws round its old familiar blaze
The clustering groups of happier days,
And lends to sober manhood's gaze
A glimpse of childish gladness.
5 And, knowing how my life hath been
A weary work of tongue and pen,
A long, harsh strife with strong-will'd men,
Thou wilt not chide my turning
To con, at times, an idle rhyme,
To pluck a flower from childhood's clime,
Or listen, at Life's noonday chime,
For the sweet bells of Morning!
THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.
1 We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.
2 Not far away we saw the port,
The strange, old-fashion'd, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.
3 We sat and talk'd until the night,
Descending, fill'd the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.
4 We spake of many a vanish'd scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;
5 And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;
6 The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
7 The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seem'd to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
8 Oft died the words upon our lips,
And suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap and then expire.
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