It little profits that an idle king
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
O Attic shape! Fair attidude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun.
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.
For Narcissus-X has written, and having written moves along.
It matters little, meter, but the sense is in the song.
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