Bright as love is the vault above, but lovelier lightens the wave below.

Rosy grey, or as fiery spray full-plumed, or greener than emerald, gleams

Plot by plot as the skies allot for each its glory, divine as dreams

Lit with fire of appeased desire which sounds the secret of all that seems;

Dreams that show what we fain would know, and know not save by the grace of sleep,

Sleep whose hands have removed the bands that eyes long waking and fain to weep

Feel fast bound on them—light around them strange, and darkness above them steep.

Yet no vision that heals division of love from love, and renews awhile

Life and breath in the lips where death has quenched the spirit of speech and smile,

Shows on earth, or in heaven's mid mirth, where no fears enter or doubts defile,

Aught more fair than the radiant air and water here by the twilight wed,

Here made one by the waning sun whose last love quickens to rosebright red

Half the crown of the soft high down that rears to northward its wood-girt head.

[Pg 147]

There, when day is at height of sway, men's eyes who stand, as we oft have stood,

High where towers with its world of flowers the golden spinny that flanks the wood,

See before and around them shore and seaboard glad as their gifts are good.

Higher and higher to the north aspire the green smooth-swelling unending downs;

East and west on the brave earth's breast glow girdle-jewels of gleaming towns;

Southward shining, the lands declining subside in peace that the sea's light crowns.

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