Rose and vine and olive and deep ivy-bloom entwining [_Str. 3._ Close the goodliest grave that e'er they closeliest might entwine Keep the wind from wasting and the sun from too strong shining Where the sound and light of sweetest songs still float and shine. Here the music seems to illume the shade, the light to whisper Song, the flowers to put not odours only forth, but words Sweeter far than fragrance: here the wandering wreaths twine crisper Far, and louder far exults the note of all wild birds. Thoughts that change us, joys that crown and sorrows that enthrone us, Passions that enrobe us with a clearer air than ours, Move and breathe as living things beheld round white Colonus, Audibler than melodies and visibler than flowers. Love, in fight unconquered, Love, with spoils of great men laden, Never sang so sweet from throat of woman or of dove: Love, whose bed by night is in the soft cheeks of a maiden, And his march is over seas, and low roofs lack not Love; Nor may one of all that live, ephemeral or eternal, Fly nor hide from Love; but whoso clasps him fast goes mad. Never since the first-born year with flowers first-born grew vernal Such a song made listening hearts of lovers glad or sad. Never sounded note so radiant at the rayless portal Opening wide on the all-concealing lowland of the dead As the music mingling, when her doomsday marked her mortal, From her own and old men's voices round the bride's way shed, Round the grave her bride-house, hewn for endless habitation, Where, shut out from sunshine, with no bridegroom by, she slept; But beloved of all her dark and fateful generation, But with all time's tears and praise besprinkled and bewept: Well-beloved of outcast father and self-slaughtered mother, Born, yet unpolluted, of their blind incestuous bed; Best-beloved of him for whose dead sake she died, her brother, Hallowing by her own life's gift her own born brother's head;