Or that great huntsman with the golden gear;

Ravished in hours like these
Before thy universal shrine

To feel the invoked presence hovering near,
He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours

Spent on the roads of wandering solitude
Have set their sober impress on his brow,

And he, with harmonies of wind and wood
And torrent and the tread of mountain showers,

Has mingled many a dedicative vow
That holds him, till thy last delight be known,

Bound in thy service and in thine alone.
I, too, among the visionary throng

Who choose to follow where thy pathway leads,
Have sold my patrimony for a song,

And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds.
From that first image of beloved walls,

Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees,
Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls,

Tingeing a child's fantastic reveries
With radiance so fair it seems to be

Of heavens just lost the lingering evidence
From that first dawn of roseate infancy,

So long beneath thy tender influence
My breast has thrilled. As oft for one brief second

The veil through which those infinite offers beckoned
Has seemed to tremble, letting through

Some swift intolerable view
Of vistas past the sense of mortal seeing,

So oft, as one whose stricken eyes might see
In ferny dells the rustic deity,

I stood, like him, possessed, and all my being,
Flooded an instant with unwonted light,

Quivered with cosmic passion; whether then
On woody pass or glistening mountain-height

I walked in fellowship with winds and clouds,
Whether in cities and the throngs of men,

A curious saunterer through friendly crowds,
Enamored of the glance in passing eyes,

Unuttered salutations, mute replies, --
In every character where light of thine

Has shed on earthly things the hue of things divine
I sought eternal Loveliness, and seeking,

If ever transport crossed my brow bespeaking
Such fire as a prophetic heart might feel

Where simple worship blends in fervent zeal,
It was the faith that only love of thee

Needed in human hearts for Earth to see
Surpassed the vision poets have held dear

Of joy diffused in most communion here;
That whomsoe'er thy visitations warmed,

Lover of thee in all thy rays informed,
Needed no difficulter discipline

To seek his right to happiness within
Than, sensible of Nature's loveliness,

To yield him to the generous impulses
By such a sentiment evoked. The thought,

Bright Spirit, whose illuminings I sought,
That thou unto thy worshipper might be

An all-sufficient law, abode with me,
Importing something more than unsubstantial dreams

To vigils by lone shores and walks by murmuring streams.
Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot.

Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves.
How swift were disillusion, were it not

That thou art steadfast where all else deceives!
Solace and Inspiration, Power divine

That by some mysticsympathy of thine,
When least it waits and most hath need of thee,

Can startle the dull spirit suddenly
With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, --

Long as the light of fulgent evenings,
When from warm showers the pearly shades disband

And sunset opens o'er the humid land,
Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, --

Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes
Hung on far isle or vanishing mountain-crest,

Fields of remoteenchantment can suggest
So sweet to wander in it matters nought,

They hold no place but in impassioned thought,
Long as one draught from a clear sky may be

A scented luxury;
Be thou my worship, thou my sole desire,

Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyre
Aeolian for thine every breath to stir;

Oft when her full-blown periods recur,
To see the birth of day's transparent moon

Far from cramped walls may fading afternoon
Find me expectant on some rising lawn;

Often depressed in dewy grass at dawn,
Me, from sweet slumberunderneath green boughs,

Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse,
Afoot when the great sun in amber floods

Pours horizontal through the steaming woods
And windless fumes from early chimneys start

And many a cock-crow cheers the traveller's heart
Eager for aught the coming day afford

In hills untopped and valleys unexplored.
Give me the white road into the world's ends,

Lover of roadsidehazard, roadside friends,
Loiterer oft by upland farms to gaze

On ample prospects, lost in glimmering haze
At noon, or where down odorous dales twilit,

Filled with low thundering of the mountain stream,
Over the plain where blue seas border it

The torrid coast-towns gleam.
I have fared too far to turn back now; my breast

Burns with the lust for splendors unrevealed,
Stars of midsummer, clouds out of the west,

Pallid horizons, winds that valley and field
Laden with joy, be ye my refuge still!

What though distress and poverty assail!
Though other voices chide, yours never will.

The grace of a blue sky can never fail.
Powers that my childhood with a spell so sweet,

My youth with visions of such glory nursed,
Ye have beheld, nor ever seen my feet

On any venture set, but 'twas the thirst
For Beauty willed them, yea, whatever be

The faults I wanted wings to rise above;
I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly

I have been loyal to the love of Love!
The Deserted Garden

I know a village in a far-off land
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain

With tinted walls a space on either hand
And fed by many an olive-darkened lane

The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band
Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,

Winds off to that dim corner of the skies
Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.