A Fragment
HE clasps the crag with hookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
|
I.
the Plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was...
|
Part I.
on either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky,
And through the field the roads run by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow...
|
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,...
|
From “Idyls of the King”
TURN, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we...
|
I.
“courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land;
“This morning wave shall roll us shoreward soon.”
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that...
|
It little profits that, an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink...
|
From “Idyls of the King”
Dedication
THESE to His Memory—since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself—I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears—
These Idyls.
And indeed He seems to me...
|
[Written at the request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil’s death, B.C. 19.]
I.
ROMAN Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre; ...
|
Victor in poesy! Victor in romance!
Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears!
French of the French and lord of human tears!
Child-lover, bard, whose fame-lit laurels glance,
Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance
Beyond our strait their...
|
|
|
