If to such fairies years must come, May yours fall soft and slow As, shaken by a bee’s low hum, The rose-leaves waver, sweetly dumb, Down to their mates below! THE DISCOVERY. I watched a moorland torrent run Down through the drift itself had made, Golden as honey in the sun, Of darkest amber in the shade. In this wild glen at last, methought, The magic’s secret I surprise; Here Celia’s guardian fairy caught The changeful splendors of her eyes. All else grows tame, the sky’s one blue, The one long languish of the rose, But these, beyond prevision new, Shall charm and startle to the close. WITH A SEASHELL. Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, Might with Dian’s ear make bold, Seek my Lady’s; if thou win To that portal, shut from sin, Where commissioned angels' swords Startle back unholy words, Thou a miracle shalt see Wrought by it and wrought in thee; Thou, the dumb one, shalt recover Speech of poet, speech of lover. If she deign to lift you there, Murmur what I may not dare; In that archway, pearly-pink As the Dawn’s untrodden brink, Murmur, “Excellent and good, Beauty’s best in every mood, Never common, never tame, Changeful fair as windward flame”-- Nay, I maunder; this she hears Every day with mocking ears, With a brow not sudden-stained With the flush of bliss restrained, With no tremor of the pulse More than feels the dreaming dulse In the midmost ocean’s caves, When a tempest heaps the waves. Thou must woo her in a phrase Mystic as the opal’s blaze, Which pure maids alone can see When their lovers constant be. I with thee a secret share, Half a hope, and half a prayer, Though no reach of mortal skill Ever told it all, or will; Say, “He bids me--nothing more-- Tell you what you guessed before!” THE SECRET. I have a fancy: how shall I bring it Home to all mortals wherever they be? Say it or sing it? Shoe it or wing it, So it may outrun or outfly ME, Merest cocoon-web whence it broke free? Only one secret can save from disaster, Only one magic is that of the Master: Set it to music; give it a tune,-- Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze brings you, Tune the wild columbines nod to in June! This is the secret: so simple, you see! Easy as loving, easy as kissing, Easy as--well, let me ponder--as missing, Known, since the world was, by scarce two or three. IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE. FITZ ADAM’S STORY. [The greater part of this poem was written many years ago as part of a larger one, to be called “The Nooning,” made up of tales in verse, some of them grave, some comic. It gives me a sad pleasure to remember that I was encouraged in this project by my friend the late Arthur Hugh Clough.]