A palmer’s kiss on thy familiar marge, My oriel city, whence the soul hath sight Of passional yesterdays, all gold and large, Arising to enrich our narrow night: Though others bless thee, who so blest before Hath pastured, from the violent time apart, And laved in supersensual light the heart Alone with thy magnificent No More? Sweet court of roses now, sweet camp of bees! The hills that lean to thy white bed at dawn, Hear, for the clash of raging dynasties, Laughter of boys about a branchy lawn. Hast thou a stain? Let ivy cover all; Nor seem of greatness disinhabited, While spirits in their wonted splendour tread From close to close, by Wolvesey’s idle wall. Bright fins against thy lucid water leap, And nigh thy towers the nesting wood-dove dwell; Be lenient winter, and long moons, and sleep Upon thee, but on me the sharp Farewell. Happy art thou, O clad and crowned with rest! Happy the shepherd (would that I were he!) Whose early way is step for step with thee, Whose old brow fades on thine immortal breast. ON THE CENOTAPH OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL IN SAINT GEORGE’S CHAPEL. No young and exiled dust beneath is laid In sole entail of high inheritance, Though once compassion softly came, and made A sleep at Windsor for the Son of France: And sleep so long hath kept his image clear Of pain’s pollution, and the Zulu spear, It seems his piteous self at last that lies In prayer’s old heart built to the island skies, Low as the sifted snow is, and meek as Paradise. Thus passeth all ye dream of might and grace! Wherefore, beside the stones that cry it loud, Let every musing spirit pause to trace The cloud-burst of that Empire like a cloud; And, looking on these stainless brows, proclaim Peace unto Corsica’s portentous name, And peace to her, who in a sculptured boy, Mould of her martyred beauty and her joy, Reads here the end of Helen, the end of Helen’s Troy. OF JOAN’S YOUTH. I would unto my fair restore A simple thing: The flushing cheek she had before! Out-velveting No more, no more, By Severn shore, The carmine grape, the moth’s auroral wing. Ah, say how winds in flooded grass Unmoor the rose; Or guileful ways the salmon pass To sea, disclose; For so, alas, With Love, alas, With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes. PASSING THE MINSTER. Praise to thine awful beauty, praise And peace, O warden of my ways! Bid o’er the brow to thee I raise, Eternal unction fall. Nobly and equally thou must Take adoration of my dust, And unto altitudes august Thy low-born lover call. Bless me; forget me not: a lone Clear _Amen_ through thine arches blown, A heartstring of that Hope, a stone Fixed also in that Wall. THE YEW-TREE.