Ere the Ferryman from the coast of spirits Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither, Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it For thy desolate father, for thy sister, Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter. IX Jaffa ended, Cos begun Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one Fit to trample out the sun: Who shall think thine ardors are But a cinder in a jar? X Me, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping, Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping! XI As wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, And mars the golden breakers in the bay, Hurtful and sweet from heaven forever blows Sad thought that roughens all our quiet day; And elder poets envy while they weep Ion, whom first the gods to covert brought, Here under inland olives laid asleep, Most wise, most happy, having done with thought. XII Cows in the narrowing August marshes, Cows in a stretch of water Motionless, Neck on neck overlapped and drooping; These in their troubled and dumb communion, Thou on the steep bank yonder, Pastora! No more ever to lead and love them, No more ever. Thine innocent mourners Pass thy tree in the evening Heavily, Hearing another herd-girl calling. XIII Praise thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee. LONDON: TWELVE SONNETS _On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ THABOR of England! since my light is short And faint, O rather by the sun anew Of timeless passion set my dial true, That with thy saints and thee I may consort, And wafted in the calm Chaucerian port Of poets, seem a little sail long due, And be as one the call of memory drew Unto the saddle void since Agincourt! Not now for secular love’s unquiet lease Receive my soul, who rapt in thee erewhile Hath broken tryst with transitory things; But seal with her a marriage and a peace Eternal, on thine Edward’s holy isle, Above the stormy sea of ended kings. [Illustration] _Fog_ LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, Thro’ palsied streets the fatal shadows flow, And in their sharp disastrous undertow Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky. The towery vista sinks upon the eye, As if it heard the Hebrew bugles blow, Black and dissolved; nor could the founders know How what was built so bright should daily die. Thy mood with man’s is broken and blent in, City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown The primitive light in which thy life began; Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin, Greater and elder yet the love of man Full in thy look, tho’ the dark visor ’s down. [Illustration] _St. Peter-ad-Vincula_