Go, Verse, nor let the grass of tarrying grow
Beneath thy feet iambic.  Southward go
O’er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until
Thou reach the summit of a suburb hill
To lettered fame not unfamiliar:  there
Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair,
Who dwelleth in a world of old romance,
Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce. 
Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago,
By northern stream and mountain, and where blow
Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day
One half thy fabric fain would rase away;
But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse,
Forgive thy better and forget thy worse. 
Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among
More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;—­
In Shakespeare’s shadow thou shalt find a home,
Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome,
Or awed by Dante’s wintry presence be,
Or won by Goethe’s regal suavity,
Or with those masters hardly less adored
Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford;
And—­like a mortal rapt from men’s abodes
Into some skyey fastness of the gods—­
Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine
Mayst for a moment dream thyself divine.

THE RAVEN’S SHADOW

Seabird, elemental sprite,
  Moulded of the sun and spray—­
Raven, dreary flake of night
  Drifting in the eye of day—­
What in common have ye two,
Meeting ’twixt the blue and blue?

Thou to eastward carriest
  The keen savour of the foam,—­
Thou dost bear unto the west
  Fragrance from thy woody home,
Where perchance a house is thine
Odorous of the oozy pine.

Eastward thee thy proper cares,
  Things of mighty moment, call;
Thee to westward thine affairs
  Summon, weighty matters all: 
I, where land and sea contest,
Watch you eastward, watch you west,

Till, in snares of fancy caught,
  Mystically changed ye seem,
And the bird becomes a thought,
  And the thought becomes a dream,
And the dream, outspread on high,
Lords it o’er the abject sky.

Surely I have known before
  Phantoms of the shapes ye be—­
Haunters of another shore
  ’Leaguered by another sea. 
There my wanderings night and morn
Reconcile me to the bourn.

There the bird of happy wings
  Wafts the ocean-news I crave;
Rumours of an isle he brings
  Gemlike on the golden wave: 
But the baleful beak and plume
Scatter immelodious gloom.

Though the flow’rs be faultless made,
  Perfectly to live and die—­
Though the bright clouds bloom and fade
  Flow’rlike ’midst a meadowy sky—­
Where this raven roams forlorn
Veins of midnight flaw the morn.

He not less will croak and croak
  As he ever caws and caws,
Till the starry dance he broke,
  Till the sphery paean pause,
And the universal chime
Falter out of tune and time.