CHORIC SONG. 1. There is sweet music here that softer falls Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And through the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. 2. Why are we weighed upon with heaviness, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings, “There is no joy but calm !” Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? 3. Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, 4. Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease! 5. How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whispered speech; Eating the Lotos, day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, To lend our hearts and spirits wholly Heaped over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! 6. Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change; Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile : Long labor unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out with many wars, 7. But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly,) With half-dropt eyelids still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave through the thick-twined vineTo watch the emerald-colored water falling Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine. 8. The Lotos blooms below the barren peak: Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotosdust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foamfountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined kind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world; Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. I. I READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade, II. Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath The spacious times of great Elizabeth III. And, for a while, the knowledge of his art Hold swollen clouds from raining, though my heart, |