160
Or hops are picking:  or at prime
Of March he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,
Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves, 170
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft
The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
Out of a myriad noises soft,
Into a tone that can endure
Amid the noise of a July noon
When all God’s creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it, happy as Waring then,
Having first within his ken 180
What a man might do with men: 
And far too glad, in the even-glow,
To mix with the world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so—­
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand. 
Oh Waring, what’s to really be? 
A clear stage and a crowd to see! 
Some Garrick, say, out shall not he 190
The heart of Hamlet’s mystery pluck? 
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius—­am I right?—­shall tuck
His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife! 
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life! 
Some one shall somehow run a muck
With this old world for want of strife
Sound asleep.  Contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring!  Who’s alive? 200
Our men scarce seem in earnest now. 
Distinguished names!—­but ’tis, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children.  Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest! 
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II

I

“When I last saw Waring . . .” 
(How all turned to him who spoke! 210
You saw Waring?  Truth or joke? 
In land-travel or sea-faring?)

II

“We were sailing by Triest
Where a day or two we harboured: 
A sunset was in the West,
When, looking over the vessel’s side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard. 
And as a sea-duck flies and swims
At once, so came the light craft up, 220
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o’er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar’s)