“Here let us lie, and wanderings be at rest!”
  Midmost a cedar grove high sacrifice
Needs then be made, that gods be manifest;
  And while the smoke spread in long twilit skies,
“Here let us lie, and wanderings be at rest,”
  Would old men breathe repeated between sighs. 
“In this green world and cool,” would mothers say,
“Rest we, nor with thin babes yet longer stray.”

—­So stealing from the mind of the old King
  Exhausted, into the sleeping young man’s brain
Crept the same dream and lifted on new wing
  And took from his swift passions a new stain,
Sanguine and azure, and first fluttering
  Rose then on easy vans that bore again
The sleeper past his common thought’s confine:—­
So borne, so soaring, in that air divine,

He saw his people stayed, their journeys ended.... 
  There should they, no more fretful, dwell for ever
In the full-nourished pasture where untended
  Herds multiplied, and famine threatened never,
And where high border-hills glittered with splendid
  Sparse-covered veins washed by the hill-born river. 
So stead by stead arose, and men there moved
Satisfied, and no more vain longings roved.

Again the silver plough gleamed in the sod,
  And seed from old fields slept in furrows new. 
Then when Spring’s rain and sun together trod
  And interweaved swift steps the meadow through,
Old rites revived; they bore the shapen god
  With green stalks and first-budded boughs, and drew
Together youth and age.  And sowers leapt
High o’er the seed in earth’s cold bosom wrapt:—­

So in the golden-hued and burning hours
  Of harvest, leapt on high the full-eared corn. 
Friendly to pious hands those imaged Powers
  Of rain and sun.  And when the grain was borne
By oxen trailing tangled straws and flowers,
  With leaves and dying blossoms on each horn,
Friendly the gods commingling in the shades
Of moon and torch and smoke-delaying glades.

Fell slowly sunset; the starred evening cool
  Drooped round as mid his people the king rode,
Blessing and blessed, and in the faithful pool
  Of their old loves his clear reflection glowed
Like summer’s golden moon:—­in wise and fool,
  Noble and mean, accustomed reverence showed
Clear-shining; so he reached the unbarred hall
Where lamps, lords, servitors flashed festival,

Remembering old journeys and their end. 
  Bright-throned he sat there, with those lords around
Snow-polled, co-eval, as with friends their friend
  Feasting.  Arose at length the awaited sound
Of bardic chanting, bidding their thoughts descend
  Into the chamber where the Past lay bound,
Wanting but music’s finger; so upspringing,
The Past stormed all their minds in that loud singing.

And strangers, furred and tawny, seated there,
  Far travellers from the sunrise, looking on
The feasting and the splendour, and with ear
  Uncertain listening to the solemn tone
Of most dear Memory, envied all and sware
  A sudden fealty.  But the bard sang on
While silver beakers brimmed untouched; and darkened
The proud remembering eyes of men that hearkened.