And they were music till he flung them down,
     Used! used!  Hear now the discord-loving clown
     Puff his gross spirit in them, worse than death! 
     I do not know myself without thee more: 
     In this unholy battle I grow base: 
     If the same soul be under the same face,
     Speak, and a taste of that old time restore!

     IX

     He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles
     So masterfully rude, that he would grieve
     To see the helpless delicate thing receive
     His guardianship through certain dark defiles. 
     Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too? 
     But still he spared her.  Once:  ‘Have you no fear?’
     He said:  ’twas dusk; she in his grasp; none near. 
     She laughed:  ‘No, surely; am I not with you?’
     And uttering that soft starry ‘you,’ she leaned
     Her gentle body near him, looking up;
     And from her eyes, as from a poison-cup,
     He drank until the flittering eyelids screened. 
     Devilish malignant witch! and oh, young beam
     Of heaven’s circle-glory!  Here thy shape
     To squeeze like an intoxicating grape —
     I might, and yet thou goest safe, supreme.

     X

     But where began the change; and what’s my crime? 
     The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned,
     Chafes at his sentence.  Shall I, unsustained,
     Drag on Love’s nerveless body thro’ all time? 
     I must have slept, since now I wake.  Prepare,
     You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: 
     Not, like hard life, of laws.  In Love’s deep woods,
     I dreamt of loyal Life:- the offence is there! 
     Love’s jealous woods about the sun are curled;
     At least, the sun far brighter there did beam. —
     My crime is, that the puppet of a dream,
     I plotted to be worthy of the world. 
     Oh, had I with my darling helped to mince
     The facts of life, you still had seen me go
     With hindward feather and with forward toe,
     Her much-adored delightful Fairy Prince!

     XI

     Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee
     Hums by us with the honey of the Spring,
     And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing
     Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we. 
     Or is it now? or was it then? for now,
     As then, the larks from running rings pour showers: 
     The golden foot of May is on the flowers,
     And friendly shadows dance upon her brow. 
     What’s this, when Nature swears there is no change
     To challenge eyesight?  Now, as then, the grace
     Of heaven seems holding earth in its embrace. 
     Nor eyes, nor heart, has she to feel it strange? 
     Look, woman, in the West.  There wilt thou see
     An amber cradle near the sun’s decline: 
     Within it, featured even in death divine,
     Is lying a dead infant, slain by thee.