Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air Bloom the year long! Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams: Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, For all our art. Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then, As night is withdrawn From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May, Dream, while the innumerable choir of day Welcome the dawn. 13 A song of my heart, as the sun peered o’er the sea, Was born at morning to me: And out of my treasure-house it chose A melody, that arose Of all fair sounds that I love, remembered together In one; and I knew not whether From waves of rustling wheat it was, Recoveringly that pass: Or a hum of bees in the queenly robes of the lime: Or a descant in pairing time Of warbling birds: or watery bells Of rivulets in the hills: Or whether on blazing downs a high lark’s hymn Alone in the azure dim: Or a sough of pines, when the midnight wold Is solitary and cold: Or a lapping river-ripple all day chiding The bow of my wherry gliding Down Thames, between his flowery shores Re-echoing to the oars: Or anthem notes, wherever in archèd quires The unheeded music twires, And, centuries by, to the stony shade Flies following and to fade: Or a homely prattle of children’s voices gay ’Mong garden joys at play: Or a sundown chaunting of solemn rooks: Or memory of my books, Which hold the words that poets in many a tongue To the irksome world have sung: Or the voice, my happy lover, of thee Now separated from me. A ruby of fire in the burning sleep of my brain Long hid my thought had lain, Forgotten dreams of a thousand days Ingathering to its rays, The light of life in darkness tempering long; Till now a perfect song, A jewel of jewels it leapt above To the coronal of my love. 14 FOUNDER’S DAY. A SECULAR ODE ON THE NINTH JUBILEE OF ETON COLLEGE Christ and his Mother, heavenly maid, Mary, in whose fair name was laid Eton’s corner, bless our youth With truth, and purity, mother of truth!