Out of the city, far away
⁠⁠With spring to-day! —
Where copses tufted with primrose
⁠⁠Give me repose,
Wood-sorrel and wild violet
⁠⁠Soothe my soul's fret,
The pure delicious vernal air
⁠⁠Blows away care,
The birds' reiterated songs
⁠⁠Heal fancied wrongs.

Down the rejoicing brook my grief
⁠⁠Drifts like a leaf,
And on its gently murmuring flow
⁠⁠Cares glide and go;
The bud-besprinkled boughs and hedges,
⁠⁠The sprouting sedges
Waving beside the water's brink,
⁠⁠Come like cool drink
To fever'd lips, like fresh soft mead
⁠⁠To kine that feed.

Much happier than the kine, I bed
⁠⁠My dreaming head
In grass; I see far mountains blue,
⁠⁠Like heav'n in view,
Green world and sunny sky above
⁠⁠Alive with love;
All, all, however came they there,
⁠⁠Divinely fair.

Is this the better oracle,
⁠⁠Or what streets tell?
O base confusion, falsehood, strife,
⁠⁠Man puts in life!
Sink, thou life-measurer! — I can say
⁠⁠"I've lived a day;"
And memory holds it now in keeping,
⁠⁠Awake or sleeping.

I plucked some rose-leaves from a full-blown flower,
⁠And came to me this thought, that though bereft
⁠Of treasures sweet, yet are some rose-leaves left,
Though but a tithe of our loved former dower.
And when I passed again, the garden bower
⁠Was strewn with petals which the faint wind bore
⁠From off the unpicked stem; a fragrance o'er
The crimson forms crept slow in death's last hour.
So, gentle lady, when in beauty's prime
⁠I heeded not thy excellences rare,
But fondly thought that all-decaying time
⁠Could never dim thy lustrous beauty fair,
Yet death's fell hand, strewing thy early bloom,
Hath made a heaven of the darkest tomb.

One hundred years the mill has stood:
One hundred years the dashing flood
Has turned the wheel with roaring sound,
Through foaming waters, round and round.

One hundred years: and overhead
The same broad roof of blue is spread;
And in the meadows, bright and green,
The miller's children still are seen.

And thus the world is still the same:
The sunset clouds are turned to flame;
And while we live, and when we die,
The lark still carols in the sky.

And others rise to fill our place;
We sleep, and others run the race:
And earth beneath and skies above
Are still the same; and God is love.

His spirit haunts the olive-laden banks,
⁠The cypressed village-belfry in decay,
The marble hills whose silvery whiteness flanks
⁠The vale he loved: all seems the former day
When he began in art's warm hand to thaw
⁠The frosted rock, and petrify the beam
That round his chisel swerved until he saw
⁠The spirit's beauty o'er the features gleam.

And yon old sunset, that with rosy dyes
⁠Fades in the marble hollows, tells anew
Of Twilight's nodding brows and closing eyes, -
⁠As when the statue from their depths he drew
Which now in drowsy marble seems to wait,
⁠Ere it go down, the waking of the dead, -
That simmers in half-sleep, as there it sate
⁠When lifted dozing from its ancient bed.

There he first listened to the ringing note
⁠That seemed in harmony with art to breathe
Out of the marble which the mallet smote,
⁠As though a siren quickened underneath.
There he first dreamed how all forms fair below
⁠In yonder virgin cemetery lay,
Their beauty crusted over, like the snow
⁠Eternal with the snow of yesterday.

He sees the wrestlers, the last gasping throe,
⁠The pent-up strength, the all-resisting strain;
Yet, ere the victor strike that vengeful blow,
⁠The rigid arm he grasps must snap in twain.
He sees Laocoon climb the serpent-wave
⁠That plunges o'er him with a tempest's might,
Hurrying his sons to the engulphing grave
⁠That whirls them helpless from his suffering sight.