BOOK ONE DREAMING SPIRES

Bright memories of young poetic pleasure

In free companionship, the loving stress

Of all life-beauty, lull’d in studious leisure,

When every Muse was jocund with excess

Of fine delight and tremulous happiness;

The breath of an indolent unbridled June,

When delicate thought fell from the dreamy moon:

But now strange care, sorrow, and grief oppress.

Robert Bridges.