Fragment of “The Castle Builder.”

5

10

TO-NIGHT I'll have my friar-let me think
About my room,- I'll have it in the pink;
It should be rich and sombre, and the moon,
Just in its mid-life in the midst of June,
Should look thro' four large windows and display
Clear, but for gold-fish vases in the way,
Their glassy diamonding on Turkish floor ;
The tapers keep aside, an hour and more,
To see what else the moon alone can show;
While the night breeze doth softly let us know
My terrace is well bower'd with oranges.
Upon the floor the dullest spirit sees
A guitar-ribband and a lady's glove
Beside a crumple-leaved tale of love;
A tambour-frame, with Venus sleeping there,
All finish'd but some ringlets of her hair ;
A viol, bow-strings torn, cross-wise upon
A glorious folio of Anacreon;
A skull upon a mat of roses lying,
Ink'd purple with a song concerning dying ;
An hour-glass on the turn, amid the trails
Of passion-flower ;-just in time there sails
A cloud across the moon,—the lights bring in !
And see what more my phantasy can win.

15

20

This follows the preceding fragment in the first volume of the Life, Letters &c.

It is a gorgeous room, but somewhat sad;

25 The draperies are so, as tho' they had Been made for Cleopatra's winding-sheet; And opposite the stedfast eye doth meet A spacious looking-glass, upon whose face, In letters raven-sombre, you may trace

30 Old “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin.” Greek busts and statuary have ever been Held, by the finest spirits, fitter far Than vase grotesque and Siamesian jar; Therefore 'tis sure a want of Attic taste

35 That I should rather love a Gothic waste Of eyesight on cinque-coloured potter's clay, Than on the marble fairness of old Greece. My table-coverlits of Jason's fleece And black Numidian sheep-wool should be wrought, 40 Gold, black, and heavy, from the Lama brought. My ebon sofas should delicious be With down from Leda's cygnet progeny. My pictures all Salvator's, save a few Of Titian's portraiture, and one, though new, Of Haydon's in its fresh magnificence. My wine-O good ! 'tis here at my desire, And I must sit to supper with my friar.

45

FRAGMENT.

“ Under the flag
Of each his faction, they to battle bring
Their embryo atoms."-- MILTON.

5

1ο

WELCOME joy, and welcome sorrow,

Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather ;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,

I do love you both together!

I love to mark sad faces in fair weather ;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder ;

Fair and foul I love together.
Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder ;
Visage sage at pantomime;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing ;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses pale;

15

20

This is the fourth of the undated fragments at the end of Volume I of the Life.

25

Sombre Saturn, Momus hale ;-
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;
Oh the sweetness of the pain !
Muses bright, and muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil;
Let me see; and let me write
Of the day, and of the night-
Both together let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heart-ache!
Let my bower be of yew,
Interwreath'd with myrtles new;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass-tomb.

30

SONNET.

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charactry,

Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain ; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look

upon Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love ;—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

thee more,

This sonnet, of which there is a fair manuscript dated 1817 in Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion, was printed among the Literary Remains in the second volume of the Life, Letters &c. (1848). The text as given above accords entirely with the manuscript.