To Christ our Lord_
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CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal-con, in his ridingOf the rolling level underneath him steady air, andstridingHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wingIn his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:the hurl and glidingRebuffed the big wind. My heart in hidingStirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of thething! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, hereBuckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, abillionTimes told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough downsillionShine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion. _13Pied Beauty_ GLORY be to God for dappled things--For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, andplough;And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange;Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise him. _14Hurrahing in Harvest_ SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, thestooks riseAround; up above, what wind-walks! what lovelybehaviourOf silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavierMeal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies? I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,Down all that glory in the heavens to glean ourSaviour;And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you aRapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies? And the azurous hung hills are his world-wieldingshoulderMajestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!--These things, these things were here and but thebeholderWanting; which two when they once meet,The heart rears wings bold and bolderAnd hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him offunder his feet. _15Caged Skylark_ As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cageMan's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house,dwells--That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cellsOr wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage. Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest--Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,But his own nest, wild nest, no prison. Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressedFor a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen. _16In the Valley of the Elwy_ I REMEMBER a house where all were goodTo me, God knows, deserving no such thing:Comforting smell breathed at very entering,Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.That cordial air made those kind people a hoodAll over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wingWill, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should. Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;Only the inmate does not correspond:God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,Being mighty a master, being a father and fond. _17The Loss of the Eurydice
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