SPENSER'S “FAERIE QUEENE”

Like some clear well of water in the waste,

Some magic well beside the weary miles,

This beauty is. I turn aside and taste

The cool Lethean drink. Suddenly smiles

A leafy world upon me,— peristyles

Of flickering shade! The hush is only stirred

Where silver runlets brighten down the aisles,

From pool to pool rehearsing one low word

Answered at drowsy intervals by a lonely bird.

Along the rustling arches and through vast

Dim caverns of green solitude are rolled

The wintry leaves of all the withered past,

One confraternity of common mould.

From summers perished, autumn's tarnished gold

Long blown to dust in many a fallen glade

Is reared this rumorous temple million-boled,

This shrine of peace, this whispering colonnade

Trembling from court to court with restless sun and shade.

And here a while may weary Fancy turn

And loiter by the rote of guttural streams.

Brushing the skirts of silence, the stirred fern

Breathes softly “hush” and “hush” — a sound that seems

Only the fluttering sigh of deepest dreams.

Here comes no sound or sight of fevered things...

No sight or sound. Green-gold the daylight beams,

And deep in the heart of dusk a far bird sings

Faint as the feathered beat of her own wavering wings.

Calm singer in the chambers of the dawn,

Our hearts are weary singing in the heat

When all thy dewy matin hopes are gone

And all thy raptures, prophesyings sweet,

And fair, false dreams are flying in defeat.

O thou, the poet's poet, from thy sky

Of ancient morning look thou down and greet

Thy brothers of the noon with gentle eye.

Lift them from out the dust. Forlorn and low they lie!

Heart-easing poet, sing to us like bells

Across wide waters paven by the stains

Of sunset; like a vagrant breeze that swells

And rises lingering, fails and grows and wanes

Along a listening wood; like April rains

In which the anemones of dream are born.

And though you cannot save us from the pains

Of life,— the heat, the insensate noise, the scorn,—

Here may we find our rose, forget a while the thorn.