SELECTIONS IN ENGLISH POETRY
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange :
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold 120
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy, .
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things,
Js there confusion in the little isle ?
Let what is broken so remain. 125
The Gods are hard to reconcile:
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath, 130
Sore task to hearts worn out with many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII.
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelids still, l^
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine— 140
To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
Thro* many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.
VIII.
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak; 145
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All^day the wind breathes low with mellower tone :
202