Thou busy bee! Thou happy murm'ring bee!
How would I follow on thy viewless course,
To clover dell, or lusher linden tree,
And lose within thy honey's charmed source
All that I am, of hope or fondest dream--
To be as thou a honeyed spirit wild,
No more, no more from golden worth astray
For what may fairer seem,
But drinking still, with spirit undefiled,
The heavy secrets of the summer day.
No fruitless season mocks thee with its frown,
No dross within thy waxen treasure dome,
No dark remorse may ever weigh thee down,
But laughing Nature bids thee lightly roam
From scene to scene wherever joy may be.
Not aimless wand'ring on from gloom to gloom,
But with a purpose greater than thy days--
Yet art thou wholly free
To go, to come, to sleep in folded bloom:
No custom bids thee name thy wondrous ways.
Within thy far and olden Orient vales,
Sweet houris nursed and watched thee long ago.
And thou hast heard the soft and lowly couched tales,
Of lovers luting all the heart's sweet woe
Without the harem's amorous oriels;
And guarded sighs of maidens veiled and pining;
And demon lovers wailing sad nights long
Within the wildest dells;
Or, Sprite of Roses! couched in velvet lining,
Sad thorn struck nightingales' low dying song.
Old caravans have plundered all thy treasure,
To feed the dark-eyed beauty of the Nile--
Thou hast not pined, nor lost thy queenly pleasure,
But out of ruins wrought new domes the while.
But lo! they robbed thy rosy land of thee;
Ah then! how blushed the spirit of the west!
That welcomed thee his wild-wood spirit bride,
To flee, to flee, to flee!
What spread of burning wings! What golden quest
For panting bliss in flow'ry fields untried!
Sweet critic of the fairest and the sweetest,
Thou hast not paused to mar the honey less--
And who knows where thy winged soul is fleetest?
What holidays thou hast of happiness
To drink the viewless honey of the air?
I saw thee on the golden rod at noon,
At evening by the frail anemone--
Which beauty charmed thee there?
Didst ease thy heart, or golden weighted shoon,
Within thy far and murm'rous hearted tree?
Away! away! farewell thou winged sprite!
From dale to dale, from hill to farthest hill.
The radiant blue hath melted round thy flight,
But, like an Ariel dream, I see thee still,
Where thou hast vanished, yet not wholly gone.
And I must sing thee of a treasure dome
Of drossless gold, which thou hast filled unwitting.
Then too to wander on,
Like thee as fain to pause, as fain to roam,
Forever pausing and forever flitting.