Lines On Seeing A Lock Of Milton’s Hair
Chief of organic Numbers! Old Scholar of the Spheres! Thy spirit never slumbers, But rolls about our ears For ever and for ever. O, what a mad endeavour Worketh he Who, to thy sacred and ennobled hearse, Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse And Melody! How heavenward thou soundedst Live Temple of sweet noise; And discord unconfoundedst: Giving delight new joys, And Pleasure nobler pinions – O where are thy Dominions! Lend thine ear To a young delian oath – aye, by thy soul, By all that from thy mortal Lips did roll; And by the Kernel of thine earthly Love, Beauty, in things on earth and things above, When every childish fashion Has vanish’d from my rhyme Will I grey-gone in passion Give to an after-time Hymning and harmony Of thee, and of thy Words and of thy Life: But vain is now the bruning and the strife – Pangs are in vain – until I grow high-rife With Old Philosophy And mad with glimpses at futurity! For many years my offerings must be hush’d: When I do speak I’ll think upon this hour, Because I feel my forehead hot and flush’d, Even at the simplest vassal of thy Power, – A Lock of thy bright hair! Sudden it came, And I was startled when I heard thy name Coupled so unaware – Yet, at the moment, temperate was my blood: Methought I had beheld it from the flood.
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