LINES

Go, Verse, nor let the grass of tarrying grow

Beneath thy feet iambic. Southward go

O'er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until

Thou reach the summit of a suburb hill

To lettered fame not unfamiliar: there

Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair,

Who dwelleth in a world of old romance,

Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce.

Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago,

By northern stream and mountain, and where blow

Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day

One half thy fabric fain would rase away;

But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse,

Forgive thy better and forget thy worse.

Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among

More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;—

In Shakespeare's shadow thou shalt find a home,

Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome,

Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be,

Or won by Goethe's regal suavity,

Or with those masters hardly less adored

Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford;

And — like a mortal rapt from men's abodes

Into some skyey fastness of the gods —

Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine

Mayst for a moment dream thyself divine.