wild alarm,
Tossing on the tossing ocean,
Where the tusked seahorse walloweth
In a stripe of grassgreen calm,
At noon-tide beneath the lea;
And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth
His foamfountains in the sea.
Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
This is lovelier and sweeter,
Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater!
We will eat the Lotos, sweet
As the yellow honeycomb,
In the valley some, and some
On the ancient heights divine;
And no more roam,
On the loud hoar foam,
To the melancholy home
At the limit of the brine,
The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.
We'll lift no more the shattered oar,
No more unfurl the straining sail;
With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale
We will abide in the golden vale
Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail;
We will not wander more.
Hark! how sweet the horned ewes bleat
On the solitary steeps,
And the merry lizard leaps,
And the foam-white waters pour;
And the dark pine weeps,
And the lithe vine creeps,
And the heavy melon sleeps
On the level of the shore:
Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander more,
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the ocean, and rowing with the oar,
Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will return no more.

XXXIX

=A Dream of Fair Women=

[In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses,
suppressed after 1842. These Fitz Gerald considered made 'a perfect
poem by themselves.']

As when a man, that sails in a balloon,
Downlooking sees the solid shining ground
Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,
Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:

And takes his flags and waves them to the mob
That shout below, all faces turned to where
Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,
Filled with a finer air:

So, lifted high, the poet at his will
Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,
Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still,
Self-poised, nor fears to fall.

Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.
While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory,
Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name
Whose glory will not die.

=Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals=
=1833-1868=

XL

=Cambridge=

[This poem is written in pencil on the fly-leaf of a