27

THE Snow lies sprinkled on the beach,
And whitens all the marshy lea:
The sad gulls wail adown the gale,
The day is dark and black the sea.

Shorn of their crests the blighted waves
With driven foam the offing fleck:
The ebb is low and barely laves
The red rust of the giant wreck.

On such a stony, breaking beach
My childhood chanced and chose to be:
'Twas here I played, and musing made
My friend the melancholy sea.

He from his dim enchanted caves
With shuddering roar and onrush wild
Fell down in sacrificial waves
At feet of his exulting child.

Unto a spirit too light for fear
His wrath was mirth, his wail was glee :-
My heart is now too fixed to bow
Tho' all his tempests howl at me:

For to the gain life's summer saves,
My solemn joy's increasing store,
The tossing of his mournful waves
Makes sweetest music evermore.

28

My spirit kisseth thine,
My spirit embraceth thee:
I feel thy being twine
Her graces over me,

In the life-kindling fold

Of God's breath; where on high,
In furthest space untold

Like a lost world I lie :

And o'er my dreaming plains
Lightens, most pale and fair,
A moon that never wanes;
Or more, if I compare,

Like what the shepherd sees
On late mid-winter dawns,
When thro' the branchèd trees,
O'er the white-frosted lawns,

The huge unclouded sun,
Surprising the world whist,
Is all uprisen thereon,
Golden with melting mist.

29

ARIEL, O,-my angel, my own,-
Whither away then art thou flown
Beyond my spirit's dominion?

That makest my heart run over with rhyme,
Renewing at will my youth for a time,
My servant, my pretty minion.

Now indeed I have cause to mourn,
Now thou returnest scorn for scorn:

Leave me not to my folly :

For when thou art with me is none so gay As I, and none when thou'rt away

Was ever so melancholy.

30

LAUS DEO

LET praise devote thy work, and skill employ
Thy whole mind, and thy heart be lost in joy.
Well-doing bringeth pride, this constant thought
Humility, that thy best done is nought.
Man doeth nothing well, be it great or small,
Save to praise God; but that hath saved all:
For God requires no more than thou hast done,
And takes thy work to bless it for his own.

BOOK V

DEDICATED TO M. G. K.

I

THE WINNOWERS

BETWIXT two billows of the downs
The little hamlet lies,

And nothing sees but the bald crowns
Of the hills, and the blue skies.

Clustering beneath the long descent
And grey slopes of the wold,
The red roofs nestle, oversprent
With lichen yellow as gold.

We found it in the mid-day sun
Basking, what time of year
The thrush his singing has begun,
Ere the first leaves appear.

High from his load a woodman pitched His faggots on the stack:

Knee-deep in straw the cattle twitched Sweet hay from crib and rack:

And from the barn hard by was borne A steady muffled din,

By which we knew that threshèd corn Was winnowing, and went in.

The sunbeams on the motey air
Streamed through the open door,
And on the brown arms moving bare,
And the grain upon the floor.

One turns the crank, one stoops to feed
The hopper, lest it lack,

One in the bushel scoops the seed,

One stands to hold the sack.

We watched the good grain rattle down,
And the awns fly in the draught;
To see us both so pensive grown
The honest labourers laughed :

Merry they were, because the wheat
Was clean and plump and good,
Pleasant to hand and eye, and meet
For market and for food.

It chanced we from the city were,
And had not gat us free

In spirit from the store and stir
Of its immensity:

But here we found ourselves again.

Where humble harvests bring
After much toil but little grain,

'Tis merry winnowing.

2

THE AFFLICTION OF RICHARD

LOVE not too much.

But how,

When thou hast made me such,

And dost thy gifts bestow,

How can I love too much?