So hairy apes in three white beds,
  And nightcaps, one and nine,
On moonlit pillows lay three heads
  Bemused with dwarfish wine.

A tomb of coral, the dirge of bee,
  The grey apes’ guttural groan
For Alliolyle, for Lallerie,
  For thee, O Muziomone!

SLEEPING BEAUTY

The scent of bramble fills the air,
  Amid her folded sheets she lies,
The gold of evening in her hair,
  The blue of morn shut in her eyes.

How many a changing moon hath lit
  The unchanging roses of her face! 
Her mirror ever broods on it
  In silver stillness of the days.

Oft flits the moth on filmy wings
  Into his solitary lair;
Shrill evensong the cricket sings
  From some still shadow in her hair.

In heat, in snow, in wind, in flood,
  She sleeps in lovely loneliness,
Half-folded like an April bud
  On winter-haunted trees.

THE HORN

Hark! is that a horn I hear,
  In cloudland winding sweet—­
And bell-like clash of bridle-rein,
  And silver-shod light feet?

Is it the elfin laughter
  Of fairies riding faint and high,
Beneath the branches of the moon,
  Straying through the starry sky?

Is it in the globed dew
  Such sweet melodies may fall? 
Wood and valley—­all are still,
  Hushed the shepherd’s call.

CAPTAIN LEAN

Out of the East a hurricane
  Swept down on Captain Lean—­
That mariner and gentleman
  Will never again be seen.

He sailed his ship against the foes
  Of his own country dear,
But now in the trough of the billows
  An aimless course doth steer.

Powder was violets to his nostrils,
  Sweet the din of the fighting-line,
Now he is flotsam on the seas,
  And his bones are bleached with brine.

The stars move up along the sky,
  The moon she shines so bright,
And in that solitude the foam
  Sparkles unearthly white.

This is the tomb of Captain Lean,
  Would a straiter please his soul? 
I trow he sleeps in peace,
  Howsoever the billows roll!

THE PORTRAIT OF A WARRIOR

His brow is seamed with line and scar;
  His cheek is red and dark as wine;
The fires as of a Northern star
  Beneath his cap of sable shine.

His right hand, bared of leathern glove,
  Hangs open like an iron gin,
You stoop to see his pulses move,
  To hear the blood sweep out and in.

He looks some king, so solitary
  In earnest thought he seems to stand,
As if across a lonely sea
  He gazed impatient of the land.

Out of the noisy centuries
  The foolish and the fearful fade;
Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes,
  Time hath not dimmed, nor death dismayed.