Later Lays and Lyrics :: :: University of Virginia Library

I am not lonely in my quiet room,
Though nought of mortal shape is near me now,
While wanes my taper in the deepening gloom,
And drops af studious toil are on my brow;
Against my window chafes the leafless bough,
Drear sign that birds and flowers no more delight,
And, sweeter than young Love's first, whispered vow,
Æolian voices quaver while I write,
As if they sung the dirge of melancholy night.

II.

On the arched gateway, near my office door,
With head erect a carven, couchant hound
Seems shivering in the blast of winter hoar,
And watching for his master, homeward bound;—
Flecked by the starlight is the frozen ground
As if the dead were parting with their shrouds;
The drifting snow gives out a muffled sound,
Like din remote of mighty, mustering crowds,
While through the fields of Heaven float stormy, airborne clouds.

III.

Dimly illumined is the pictured wall
Where flitting shadows hurry to and fro;

On painted forms, and scenes my glances fall,
While back returns a dream of Long Ago;
I see loved streams, with music in their flow,
Within whose waves in youth I cast the line,
And woods where, hunting, spared were fawn and doe
Through love for babe and wife, no longer mine,
Translated to a land where reigneth Love Divine.

IV.

Quaint books are on the shelves, well thumbed and old,
Chaucer our morning star—and Spencer, king
Of a weird realm, with purple draped and gold,
Sitting enthroned in an enchanted ring;
Immortals, breathing an eternal spring,
“Rare Ben,” “Sweet Will,” and others, world-renowned,
Back the grand age of Albion's Virgin bring;
Writers that walked, by Cam and Isis, gowned,
And bards, neglected now, of yore with laurel crowned.

V.

The master-spirits of the Solemn Past
Still in their works are living, breathing here,
But how can one whose soul is overcast
Con o'er the lettered tomes of bard and seer?
From far-off shores a mystic voice I hear
That calls on me to finish tasks begun,
With the stern warning—“lo! the goal is near!
Soon will thy darkened thread of life be spun,
And chaplet for thy brow, when marble-cold, be won.”