1. A voice by the cedar tree, In the meadow under the Hall! She is singing an air that is known to me, A passionate ballad gallant and gay, A martial song like a trumpet's call! Singing alone in the morning of life, In the happy morning of life and of May, Singing of men that in battle array, Ready in heart and ready in hand, March with banner and bugle and fife To the death, for their native land. 2. Maud with her exquisite face. And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky, And feet like sunny gems on an English green, Maud in the light of her youth and her grace, Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die, Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean, And myself so languid and base. 3. Silence, beautiful voice! Be still, for you only trouble the mind With a joy in which I cannot rejoice, A glory I shall not find. Still! I will hear you no more, For your sweetness hardly leaves me a choice But to move to the meadow and fall before Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore, Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind, Not her, not her, but a voice. VI. 1. Morning arises stormy and pale, No sun, but a wannish glare In fold upon fold of hueless cloud, And the budded peaks of the wood are bow'd Caught and cuff'd by the gale: I had fancied it would be fair. 2. Whom but Maud should I meet Last night, when the sunset burn'd On the blossom'd gable-ends At the head of the village street, Whom but Maud should I meet? And she touch'd my hand with a smile so sweet She made me divine amends For a courtesy not return'd. 3. And thus a delicate spark Of glowing and growing light Thro' the livelong hours of the dark Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams, Ready to burst in a colour'd flame; Till at last when the morning came In a cloud, it faded, and seems But an ashen-gray delight. 4. What if with her sunny hair, And smile as sunny as cold, She meant to weave me a snare Of some coquettish deceit, Cleopatra-like as of old To entangle me when we met, To have her lion roll in a silken net And fawn at a victor's feet. 5. Ah, what shall I be at fifty Should Nature keep me alive, If I find the world so bitter When I am but twenty-five? Yet, if she were not a cheat, If Maud were all that she seem'd, And her smile were all that I dream'd, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet. 6. What if tho' her eye seem'd full Of a kind intent to me, What if that dandy-despot, he, That jewell'd mass of millinery, That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull Smelling of musk and of insolence, Her brother, from whom I keep aloof, Who wants the finer politic sense To mask, tho' but in his own behoof, With a glassy smile his brutal scorn-- What if he had told her yestermorn How prettily for his own sweet sake A face of tenderness might be feign'd, And a moist mirage in desert eyes, That so, when the rotten hustings shake In another month to his brazen lies, A wretched vote may be gain'd.