The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley :: :: University of Virginia Library

He rests and moves not with the moving woods.
The sleet-winds cannot bite him from his dream,
Nor region thunder tho' it grind the hills
Command an eyelash tremble. Rest and dream
More awful than the clench of maniac hands,
Here in the sweeping hiss that shreds the pines,
Here by the driven mere's wild suck and foam,
That soughs in shudder under pendulous lips
Of turfy rivage, tearing. Not the voice

Of the sweet year moving her buds at noon,
Nor that full fervour of the spring's desire,
Fluttering the foliaged quires, could half unseal
The trancing darkness of those muffled eyes.

Where is that army now, the pageant war,
Whereat the vaulted hills, in cope and crag
Seeming to shake, drew clamour like a fear
On many a chiding echo? Where are these
That seem'd so calm, so strong in their array?

Wide on the downs by wrinkled tarn and edge
Of ghastly moon-light, each in shatter'd mail,
The dead men lie, clench'd hands and earnest eyes,
Out under night, they have forgot their fame.
And fall by fall the mountain crystal sheds
A tainted glimmer on from rill to mere.
The rainy winds flap past and cease again.
The stain'd moon rolls and ceases. Shelterless
The raven screaming reels upon the night.
It seems the sacred dawn should come no more,
No more should clothe the desecrated hills,
Serenest, on their crests with timid haze
Or rosy glory from the secret sun.

Dead are his heroes all, but not their King:
His burning wound yet holds him from the seat
Of heroes and the precincts of their rest.
His soul on shadows of unresting thought
Flits to his bride in anguish—where is she?

There is a palace builded on a mere,
And mere-waves sound about it, sweet or shrill
As lends the season impulse: and old trees
Are sequel to the voices of the waves
Behind it: and beyond it heaven is clomb
Of some aerial glacier, native rest
To pausing thunders when the vale is spread
Trembling in trembling vapour fed with sun.
A nest for ancient kings to take repose
Between the mountains, musing dreams of power.

Her lattice gave across the restless floor
Of nightly waters paved with faintest gales
In shaken lines of splendour and sweet gleam.
The moon was very sweet between the trees.
The island sedges whisper'd idle dreams,
And wakeful fountains wrestled deep in flowers.

Whereon she gazed ambrosial from her rest,
In parted lawns and samite canopies,
Tangled in moonlight, Danäe-like, a queen.
There is no guess of sorrow in her eyes,
As leaning radiant towards the mellow night
She hears a bugle throb—