TH MERLIN.—I. HY trivial harp will never please Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, No jingling serenader's art, Nor tinkle of piano strings, Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs. The kingly bard Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder, which conveys Chiming with the forest tone, When boughs buffet boughs in the wood; Chiming with the gasp and moan Of the ice-imprisoned flood; With the pulse of manly hearts; With the din of city arts; With the cannonade of wars; With the marches of the brave, And prayers of might from martyrs' cave. Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, For his rhyme. "Pass in, pass in," the angels say, "In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise." Blameless master of the games, And march their feet, And their members are combined. By Sybarites beguiled, He shall no task decline; Merlin's mighty line Extremes of nature reconciled- He shall not seek to weave, Wait his returning strength. Bird, that from the nadir's floor To the zenith's top can soar, The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length. Nor profane affect to hit Or compass that, by meddling wit, Which only the propitious mind Publishes when 'tis inclined. There are open hours When the God's will sallies free, And the dull idiot might see The flowing fortunes of a thousand years; Sudden, at unawares, Self-moved, fly-to the doors, MERLIN.-II. HE rhyme of the poet TH Modulates the king's affairs; Balance-loving Nature Made all things in pairs. To every foot its antipode; Each colour with its counter glowed; Flavour gladly blends with flavour; Light's far furnace shines, Forging double stars, Glittering twins and trines. The animals are sick with love, Lovesick. with rhyme; Each with all propitious Time Into chorus wove. Like the dancers' ordered band, Or else alternated; Adding by their mutual gage, Short-lived wandering to and fro, Most like to bachelors, With no posterity to make the lie afraid, The self-same tuneful muse; Who with even matches odd, Fills the just period, And finishes the song. Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, B BACCHUS. RING me wine, but wine which never grew Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through Suffered no savour of the earth to scape. Let its grapes the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more rich delight. We buy ashes for bread; Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled Wine of wine, Blood of the world, Form of forms, and mould of statures, That I intoxicated, And by the draught assimilated, May float at pleasure through all natures; The bird-language rightly spell, And that which roses say so well. Wine that is shed Like the torrents of the sun Up the horizon walls, Or like the Atlantic streams, which run Water and bread, Food which needs no transmuting, Food which teach and reason can. Wine which Music is, Music and wine are one, That I, drinking this, Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; And the poor grass shall plot and plan Quickened so, will I unlock Every crypt of every rock. I thank the joyful juice |