[3] 1830. Three-times-three; though noted as an _erratum_ for amorously.
When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.
When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.
Thy tuwhits are lull’d I wot, Thy tuwhoos of yesternight, Which upon the dark afloat, So took echo with delight, So took echo with delight, That her voice untuneful grown, Wears all day a fainter tone.
I would mock thy chaunt anew; But I cannot mimick it; Not a whit of thy tuwhoo, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, With a lengthen’d loud halloo, Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o.
With this poem should be compared the description of Harun al Rashid’s Garden of Gladness in the story of Nur-al-din Ali and the damsel Anis al Talis in the Thirty-Sixth Night. The style appears to have been modelled on Coleridge’s _Kubla Khan_ and _Lewti_, and the influence of Coleridge is very perceptible throughout the poem.
When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow’d back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat’s shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman was I and sworn, For it was in the golden prime[1] Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Anight my shallop, rustling thro’[2] The low and bloomed foliage, drove The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove The citron-shadows in the blue: By garden porches on the brim, The costly doors flung open wide, Gold glittering thro’[3] lamplight dim, And broider’d sofas[4] on each side: In sooth it was a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Often, where clear-stemm’d platans guard The outlet, did I turn away The boat-head down a broad canal From the main river sluiced, where all The sloping of the moon-lit sward Was damask-work, and deep inlay Of braided blooms[5] unmown, which crept Adown to where the waters slept. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.