Once, when the sun-burst flew 
its banner above broad seas and eastern hills, 
my casement knew 
that morning in her wondrous isle of youth distils 
perpetual balm, and tidings trumpeted 
of Eden air 
winsome and quick, round many a wilding grace, unwed, 
clad only in glad hair, 
bade fancy soar 
far and aloft along that limitless ecstasy 
of crystal, towards some shore 
where life were crown'd amidst a halcyon sea. 
Now ? desolate, despairful (lamentable retreat! 
wreck'd wheels and spars!), 
streaming from irresistible defeat 
the broken field of stars: 
and all our hope they bore, the appointed word 
and that unbroken song 
that should resolve our suffering dark in peace, deferr'd 
? how long? 

The window is wide and lo! beyond its bars 
dim fields of fading stars 
and cavern tracts, whence the great store of tears 
that Beauty all the years 
hath wept in wanderings of the eyeless dark, 
remembering the long cark 
whereunder we, her care, are silent bow'd, 
invades with numbing shroud 
this dwindling realm of listless avatars. 
Dim fields of fading stars, 
and shall yet ye with amaranth rapture burn 
and maiden grace return 
sprung soft and sudden on the fainting night, 
rose passioning to white; 
or must our task remain and hopeless art 
that sickeneth the heart 
from yon dull embers to evoke the ghost 
of the first garden lost, 
sad necromancers we? Then let the blast, 
that waked you ancient, cast 
into the deeps your useless lagging dearth, 
O blazon'd shame of Earth, 
who then might hail the last oblivion, 
knowing you doomward blown 
before the advance of night's relentless cars, 
dim fields of fading stars!


40-'O white wind, numbing the world'


O WHITE wind, numbing the world 
to a mask of suffering hate! 
and thy goblin pipes have skirl?d 
all night, at my broken gate. 
 
O heart, be hidden and kept 
in a half-light colour?d and warm, 
and call on thy dreams that have slept 
to charm thee from hate and harm. 
 
They are gone, for I might not keep; 
my sense is beaten and dinn?d; 
there is no peace but a grey sleep 
in the pause of the wind.