And last the master-bowman, he Would cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who, but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free From point to point with power and grace, And music in the bounds of law, To those conclusions when we saw The God within him light his face, And seem to lift the form, and glow In azure orbits heavenly-wise; And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo. LXXXVI. Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Rings Eden through the budded quicks, O tell me where the senses mix, O tell me where the passions meet, Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ Thy spirits in the dusking leaf, And in the midmost heart of grief Thy passion clasps a secret joy: And I--my harp would prelude woe-- I cannot all command the strings; The glory of the sum of things Will flash along the chords and go. LXXXVII. Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright: And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore; How often, hither wandering down, My Arthur found your shadows fair, And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town: He brought an eye for all he saw; He mixt in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusky purlieus of the law. O joy to him in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark, To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking through the heat: O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowing pears! O bliss, when all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poets on the lawn: Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung, Or here she brought the harp and flung A ballad to the brightening moon: Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, Beyond the bounding hill to stray, And break the livelong summer day With banquet in the distant woods; Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, Discuss’d the books to love or hate, Or touch’d the changes of the state, Or threaded some Socratic dream; But if I praised the busy town, He loved to rail against it still, For ‘ground in yonder social mill We rub each other’s angles down, And merge’ he said ‘in form and gloss The picturesque of man and man.’ We talk’d: the stream beneath us ran, The wine-flask lying couch’d in moss, Or cool’d within the glooming wave And last, returning from afar, Before the crimson-circled star Had fall’n into her father’s grave,