13. "Come Thou! But lead out of the inmost cave To judge with solemn truth Life's ill-apportioned lot,— Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee)- By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears?"-The solemn harmony 19. Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their rain; As a brief insect dies with dying day; My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,— As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. I. ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,- Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks, Streaming among the streams; Her steps paved with green Which slopes to the western gleams: She went, ever singing In murmurs as soft as sleep. 2. 3. 4. The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook. In the rocks:-with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder The bars of the springs below. Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh save me! Oh guide me! For he grasps me now by the hair!" To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream. Like a gloomy stain Alpheus rushed behind,— As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones; Over heaps of unvalued stones; Which amid the streams Weave a network of coloured light; And under the caves Where the shadowy waves 5. Are as green as the forest's night: And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. From their cradles steep Beneath the Ortygian shore, Like spirits that lie In the azure sky, When they love but live no more. Pisa. HYMN OF APOLLO. 1. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 2. Then I arise, and, climbing heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ;— My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence; and the air Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare. 3. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; All men who do or even imagine ill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might, 4. I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; For grief that I depart they weep and frown. 6. I am the eye with which the universe Beholds itself, and knows itself divine; All prophecy, all medicine, are mine. HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Liquid Peneus was flowing, The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love,-as you now, Apollo, And of heaven, and the Giant wars, It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed. THE QUESTION. I. I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way. Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. 2. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears 3. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the Day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray; And flowers, azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 4. And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white, And starry river-buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 5. Methought that of these visionary flowers |