Day rose, and still he sang, And all his stanchless song, As something falling unaware, Fell out of the tall trees he sang among, My soul lies out like a basking hound,- Along my life my length I lay, I fill to-morrow and yesterday, I am warm with the suns that have long since set, I am warm with the summers that are not yet, And like one who dreams and dozes Softly afloat on a sunny sea, Two worlds are whispering over me, And there blows a wind of roses From the backward shore to the shore before, The nevermore with the evermore Above me mingles and closes; As my soul lies out like the basking hound, I see a blooming world around, Years of sweet primroses, Springs to be, and springs for me O, to lie a-dream, a-dream, To feel I may dream and to know you deem My work is done forever, And the palpitating fever, That gains and loses, loses and gains, And beats the hurrying blood on the brunt of a thousand pains, Cooled at once by that blood-let Upon the parapet; And all the tedious taskèd toil of the difficult long endeavor Solved and quit by no more fine Than these limbs of mine, Spanned and measured once for all By that right-hand I lost, Bought up at so light a cost As one bloody fall On the soldier's bed, And three days on the ruined wall Among the thirstless dead. O, to think my name is crost From duty's muster-roll; That I may slumber though the clarion call, And live the joy of an embodied soul Free as a liberated ghost. O, to feel a life of deed Was emptied out to feed That fire of pain that burned so brief awhile,- That fire from which I come, as the dead come Forth from the irreparable tomb, Or as a martyr on his funeral pile And steps from earth to God. O, to think, through good or ill, A single self reposes, The nevermore with the evermore Above me mingles and closes; As my soul lies out like the basking hound, I see a blooming world around, Years of sweet primroses, Springs of fresh primroses, Springs to be, and springs for me Of distant dim primroses. O, to lie a-dream, a-dream, To feel I may dream and to know you deem My work is done forever, And the palpitating fever, That gains and loses, loses and gains, And she, Perhaps, O even she May look as she looked when I knew her Ere my boyhood dared to woo her. I will not seek nor sue her, For I'm neither fonder nor truer Than when she slighted my lovelorn youth, And, in spite of her lovers and lands, As a child that holds by his mother, And ruddy and silent stands In the ruddy and silent daisies, I'll lift my eyes unto her, And I shall not be denied. And you will love her, brother dear, And perhaps next year you 'll bring me here All through the balmy April tide, And she will trip like spring by my side, And be all the birds to my ear. And here all three we'll sit in the sun, In golden glimmers that rise and rise, Springs to be, and springs for me DIVIDED. SYDNEY DOBELL. I. AN empty sky, a world of heather, Crowds of bees are giddy with clover, Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet: Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet. Flusheth the rise with her purple favor, We two walk till the purple dieth, And short dry grass under foot is brown, |