Page:Maud, and other poems.djvu/78

58 Forefathers of the thornless garden, there Shadowing the snow-limb' d Eve from whom she came.

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, And you fair stars that crown a happy day Go in and out as if at merry play, Who am no more so all forlorn, As when it seem'd far better to be born To labour and the mattock-harden'd hand, Than nursed at ease and brought to understand A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man.

But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl