XIV

LAST WORD:  TO THE COLONIES

Brothers beyond the Atlantic’s loud expanse;
And you that rear the innumerable fleece
Far southward ’mid the ocean named of peace;
Britons that past the Indian wave advance
Our name and spirit and world-predominance;
And you our kin that reap the earth’s increase
Where crawls that long-backed mountain till it cease
Crown’d with the headland of bright esperance:—­
Remote compatriots wheresoe’er ye dwell,
By your prompt voices ringing clear and true
We know that with our England all is well: 
Young is she yet, her world-task but begun! 
By you we know her safe, and know by you
Her veins are million but her heart is one.

EPIGRAMS

’Tis human fortune’s happiest height to be
  A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;
Second in order of felicity
  I hold it, to have walk’d with such a soul.

* * * * *

The statue—­Buonarroti said—­doth wait,
Thrall’d in the block, for me to emancipate. 
The poem—­saith the poet—­wanders free
Till I betray it to captivity.

* * * * *

To keep in sight Perfection, and adore
  The vision, is the artist’s best delight;
His bitterest pang, that he can ne’er do more
  Than keep her long’d-for loveliness in sight.

* * * * *

If Nature be a phantasm, as thou say’st,
  A splendid fiction and prodigious dream,
To reach the real and true I’ll make no haste,
  More than content with worlds that only seem.

* * * * *

The Poet gathers fruit from every tree, Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles he.  Pluck’d by his hand, the basest weed that grows Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose.

* * * * *

Brook, from whose bridge the wandering idler peers
  To watch thy small fish dart or cool floor shine,
I would that bridge whose arches all are years
  Spann’d not a less transparent wave than thine!

* * * * *

To Art we go as to a well, athirst,
  And see our shadow ’gainst its mimic skies,
But in its depth must plunge and be immersed
  To clasp the naiad Truth where low she lies.

* * * * *

In youth the artist voweth lover’s vows To Art, in manhood maketh her his spouse.  Well if her charms yet hold for him such joy As when he craved some boon and she was coy!

* * * * *

Immured in sense, with fivefold bonds confined,
  Rest we content if whispers from the stars
In waftings of the incalculable wind
  Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars.