Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream - by these Three queens with crowns of gold and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge," And to the barge they came. There those three queens Put forth their hands, and took the king, and wept. But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood; for all his face And drunk delight of battle with my peers, As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me A bringer of new things: and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire This is my son, mine own Telemachus, Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd and wrought, and thought with me, — That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads, you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. Not unbecoming men that strove with Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. BREAK, BREAK, BREAK BREAK, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. LYRICS From THE PRINCESS SWEET and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Blow him again to me: While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. |