COME DOWN, O MAID

by: Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

      OME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
      What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
      In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
      But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
      To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
      To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
      And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
      For Love is of the valley, come thou down
      And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
      Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
      Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
      Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
      With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
      Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
      Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
      That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
      To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
      But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
      To find him in the valley; let the wild
      Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
      The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
      Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke
      That like a broken purpose waste in air:
      So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
      Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
      Arise to thee; the children call, and I
      Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
      Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
      Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
      The moan of doves is immemorial elms,
      And murmuring of innumberable bees.

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