"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath! Hob-and-nob with brother Death! "Thou art mazed, the night is long, "Youthful hopes, by scores, to all, Unto me my maudlin gall And my mockeries of the world. "Fill the cup, and fill the can! Mingle madness, mingle scorn! Dregs of life, and lees of man : Yet we will not die forlorn." 5. The voice grew faint: there came a further change: Another said: "The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame." And one : "He had not wholly quench'd his power; A little grain of conscience made him sour." At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" COME not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie THE EAGLE. FRAGMENT. HE clasps the crag with hooked hands; The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; MOVE eastward, happy earth, and leave Yon orange sunset waning slow: From fringes of the faded eve, O, happy planet, eastward go; Till over thy dark shoulder glow Thy silver sister-world, and rise To glass herself in dewy eyes That watch me from the glen below. Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borne, BREAK, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. |