Be my chamber tapestried Close, but soundless, glorified When the sunbeams come here- Bring a shadow green and still Bring fantastic cloudlets home Ranged for sculptures round the room, Naïads, without sources, Some be birds of paradise, Some, Olympian horses. Bring the dews the birds shake off From our England's field and moor, Bring them calm and white in, Whence to form a mirror pure For Love's self delighting. Bring a gray cloud from the east Bring the red cloud from the sun, Poet's thought,-not poet's sigh. 'Las, they come together! Gone! except the moonlit cloud Let them! Wipe such visionings The sun may darken, heaven be bowed, Here, in my soul,-that moonlit-cloud E. B. Browning. CCVI. SYMBOLS. WATCHED a rosebud very long Brought on by dew and sun and shower, Then, when I thought it should be strong, And fell at evensong. I watched a nest from day to day, Or tired, and flew away. Then in my wrath I broke the bough But the dead branch spoke from the sod, C. Rossetti. CCVII. THE ANGELIC WORSHIP, (FROM 'PARADise lost.' BOOK III.) O sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all Loud as from numbers without number, sweet The eternal regions: lowly reverent Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft shading the fount of life, And where the river of bliss through midst of Heaven Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream : With these that never fade the spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams; Then, crowned again, their golden harps they took, J. Milton. * Amarant, incorruptible; a purple flower which never fades. CCVIII. THE NOBLE NATURE. T is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere : A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night— It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measure life may perfect be. B. Jonson. CCIX. CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE. OW happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill! Whose passions not his masters are, Who envies none that chance doth raise, Who hath his life from rumours freed, |