Her women, and Sir Tristram's aged hound,
Are there the sole companions to be found.
But these she loves; and noisier life than this
She would find ill to bear, weak as she is.
She has her children too, and night and day

Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play,
The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore,
The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails,
These are to her dear as to them; the tales
With which this day the children she beguiled
She gleaned from Breton grandames, when a child,
In every hut along this sea-coast wild;

She herself loves them still, and, when they are told,
Can forget all to hear them, as of old.

CADMUS AND HARMONIA

Far, far from here,

The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
Among the green Illyrian hills; and there
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
And by the sea, and in the brakes,

The grass is cool, the sea-side air

Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers
More virginal and sweet than ours.

And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes,
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia,

Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore,

In breathless quiet, after all their ills;

Nor do they see their country, nor the place Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, Nor the unhappy palace of their race,

Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more.

There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes.
They had stay'd long enough to see,
In Thebes, the billow of calamity
Over their own dear children roll'd,
Curse upon curse, pang upon pang,

For years, they sitting helpless in their home,
A grey old man and woman; yet of old
The Gods had to their marriage come,
And at the banquet all the Muses sang.

Therefore they did not end their days
In sight of blood; but were rapt, far away,
To where the west wind plays,

And murmurs of the Adriatic come

To those untrodden mountain-lawns; and there,
Placed safely in changed forms, the pair
Wholly forget their first sad life, and home,
And all that Theban woe, and stray

For ever through the glens, placid and dumb.

DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm to-night,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,

Listen!

You hear the grating roar

Of pebbles, which the waves draw back, and fling
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd,

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us, like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as in a darkling plain,

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A SUMMER NIGHT

In the deserted, moon-blanch'd street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world;-but see,

A break between the housetops shows

The moon! and, lost behind her, fading dim

Into the dewy dark obscurity

Down at the far horizon's rim,

Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!

And to my mind the thought

Is on a sudden brought

Of a past night, and a far different scene.

Headlands stood out into the moon-lit deep
As clearly as at noon;

The spring-tide's brimming flow

Heaved dazzlingly between ;

Houses, with long white sweep,

Girdled the glistening bay;

Behind, through the soft air,

The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.

That night was far more fair

But the same restless pacings to and fro,

And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,

And the same bright calm moon.

And the calm moonlight seems to say:

Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,

Which neither deadens into rest,

Nor ever feels the fiery glow

That whirls the spirit from itself away.
But fluctuates to and fro,

Never by passion quite possess'd

And never quite benumb'd by the world's sway ?—

And I, I know not if to pray

Still to be what I am, or yield and be

Like all the other men I see.

For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where the sun's hot eye,

With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall.
And as, year after year,

Fresh products of their barren labour fall
From their tired hands, and rest

Never yet comes more near,

Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;

And while they try to stem

The waves of mournful thought by which they are

prest,

Death in their prison reaches them,

Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

And the rest, a few,

Escape their prison and depart

On the wide ocean of life anew.

There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart

Listeth, will sail;

Nor doth he know how there prevail,

Despotic on that sea,

Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.

Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr'd

By thwarting signs, and braves

The freshening wind and blackening waves.

And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen