The splendour falls on castle walls Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. IV. THERE sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, If that hypothesis of theirs be sound' Said Ida; let us down and rest:' and we Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. But when we planted level feet, and dipt Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in, There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank Our elbows on a tripod in the midst A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. Then she 'Let some one sing to us: lightlier move The minutes fledged with music:' and a maid, Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, "Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge ; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. “Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. "Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; O Death in Life, the days that are no more." She ended with such passion that the tear, She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl Lost in her bosom: but with some disdain Answer'd the Princess If indeed there haunt About the moulder'd lodges of the Past So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men, Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool And so pace by but thine are fancies hatch'd In silken-folded idleness; nor is it Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, But trim our sails, and let old bygones be, While down the streams that float us each and all To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, Their cancell❜d Babels: tho' the rough kex break The starr'd mosaic, and the wild goat hang Upon the shaft, and the wild figtree split Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear A trumpet in the distance pealing news Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 'Know you no song of your own land,' she said, But deals with the other distance and the hues Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine.' |