And sweet shall your welcome be: O hither, come hither, and be our lords For merry brides are we: We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words: O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten With pleasure and love and jubilee: O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten When the sharp clear twang of the golden cords Runs up the ridged sea. Who can light on as happy a shore All the world o’er, all the world o’er? Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner, fly no more. [1] Bight is properly the coil of a rope; it then came to mean a bend, and so a corner or bay. The same phrase occurs in the _Voyage of Maledune_, v.: “and flung them in bight and bay”. The Deserted House First printed in 1830, omitted in all the editions till 1848 when it was restored. The poem is of course allegorical, and is very much in the vein of many poems in Anglo-Saxon poetry. 1 Life and Thought have gone away Side by side, Leaving door and windows wide: 2 All within is dark as night: In the windows is no light; And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before. 3 Close the door, the shutters close, Or thro’[1] the windows we shall see The nakedness and vacancy Of the dark deserted house. 4 Come away: no more of mirth Is here or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth, And shall fall again to ground. 5 Come away: for Life and Thought Here no longer dwell; But in a city glorious— A great and distant city—have bought A mansion incorruptible. Would they could have stayed with us! [1] 1848 and 1851. Through. The Dying Swan First printed in 1830. The superstition here assumed is so familiar from the Classics as well as from modern tradition that it scarcely needs illustration or commentary. But see Plato, _Phaedrus_, xxxi., and Shakespeare, _King John_, v., 7. 1 The plain was grassy, wild and bare, Wide, wild, and open to the air, Which had built up everywhere An under-roof of doleful gray.[1] With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan, And[2] loudly did lament. It was the middle of the day. Ever the weary wind went on, And took the reed-tops as it went. 2 Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, Shone out their crowning snows. One willow over the water[3] wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was[4] the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far thro’[5] the marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow. 3