Love’s Labor Lost

This royal gate, thou quivered sprite, Shall ope to thee no more! Mere Hymen’s torch is quenched and cold, His burning lay is o’er. The potentate, whose sceptre bright This goodly realm obeys, An anchoret in scholar’s weeds Has vowed to pass his days.

His palace is an academe, As hushed as summer noon; No festal sound is heard therein, Beneath the sun or moon. The palace-yard with rankest weeds Is thickly overgrown, And moss begins to carpet o’er Each long untrodden stone.

Bees swarm within the rifted walls, And store their golden dew; The livelong day with drowsy hum They cleave the ether blue. The yellow beams of summer sleep In silence on the floors; A muffled tread is sometimes heard Along the corridors.

Within a vast and shady room, With antique volumes piled, In studious mood the monarch sits, From passion’s lures exiled. A skylight in the roof is made, Through which at night are seen The ancient stars in clusters bright, Amid the blue serene.

Around the king three famous lords, Bound by the self-same vow, In silence sit, and o’er the scrolls Of starry Plato bow. Above them gaze from lofty stands The high-browed kings of thought, Their furrowed lineaments divine In placid marble wrought.

Beyond the blazoned window lies A far-stretched prospect grand; Lakes, emerald lawns, and rustling woods O’erlooking all the land. There in the sunshine, to and fro Slow stalks a solemn wight, Attended by a tiny page, A pert and saucy sprite.

A blue pavilion farther on Is pitched beneath the trees; Begirt by tents, whose pennons float And dally with the breeze. A bevy fair of dark-eyed girls Beneath their folds abide; Unto the vows of yonder lords What fortune will betide!

Sometimes they scour the flowery meads, On nimble palfreys white; Sometimes they dance beneath the shade Through all the balmy night. Their merry songs, their jocund notes, Are borne from grove to grove; Fill up your ears with molten wax, Ye enemies of love!

Short was the siege those damsels laid— The king has gone away, In lonely woods his lady’s wrath By penance to allay. The famous lords, who round him sat, Each, at his maid’s command, Attend a year the couch of death, Ere he can win her hand.