Know'st thou the cliffs round which the white clouds sail: With thee, with thee, To that far shore, belovèd, I would flee! Goethe 216 THE CLIME OF THE EAST 1 NOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine: And the voice of the nightingale never is mute: And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye; Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, 'Tis the clime of the East; 'tis the land of the Sun- Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell. Lord Byron 1 From The Bride of Abydos. 217. A A GARDEN 1 SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night. And the Spring arose on the garden fair, But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, The snowdrop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, 1 The opening stanzas of The Sensitive Plant. And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, It was felt like an odor within the sense; And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, And all rare blossoms from every clime And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, 218 Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells And flowrets which, drooping as day drooped too, A FORSAKEN GARDEN Na coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, IN At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, Through branches and briers if a man make way The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels In a round where life seems barren as death. Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? They are loveless now as the grass above them, Or the wave. |