ENDY MION.

BOOK II.

ENDYMION.

BOOK II.

O SOVEREIGN power of love! O grief! O balm !
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,

One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,

One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks—all dimly fades

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Into some backward corner of the brain;

Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain

The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.

Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!

Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds

Along the pebbled shore of memory!
Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be

Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified

To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,

And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.

But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly

About the great Athenian admiral's mast?

What care, though striding Alexander past
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers
The glutted Cyclops, what care ?-Juliet leaning
Amid her window-flowers, sighing,—weaning

Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,

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Doth more avail than these: the silver flow

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Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,

Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,