Conspiring with him how to load and

bless

With fruit the vines that round the

thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage

trees.

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the

core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding

more.

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never

cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook ; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.

While barred clouds bloom the softdying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue:

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats

mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft [croft:

The red-breast whistles from a gardenAnd gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

September, 1819. 1820.

HYPERION

A FRAGMENT

BOOK I,

DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of

morn,

Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,

Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more

By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her

As when, upon a tranced summernight,

Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods,

Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,

Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,

Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,

As if the ebbing air had but one wave; So came these words and went; the while in tears

She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground,

Just where her falling hair might be outspread

A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. One moon, with alteration slow, had shed

Her silver seasons four upon the night, And still these two were postured motionless,

Like natural sculpture in cathedral cav

ern;

The frozen God still couchant on the earth,

And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom

gone,

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place.

And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,

As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard

Shook horrid with such aspen-malady: O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face; Look up, and let me see our doom in it; Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice

Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow,

Naked and bare of its great diadem, Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power

To make me desolate? whence came the strength?

How was it nurtur'd to such bursting forth,

While Fate seem'd strangled in my

nervous grasp?

But it is so; and I am smother'd up, And buried from all godlike exercise Of influence benign on planets pale,

Of admonitions to the winds and seas, Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,

And all those acts which Deity supreme Doth ease its heart of love in.-I am gone Away from my own bosom : I have left My strong identity, my real self, Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit

Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!

Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round

Upon all space space starr'd, and lorn of light;

Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;

Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if

This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,

O Saturn! come away, and give them heart:

I know the covert, for thence came I hither."

Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went

With backward footing through the shade a space :

He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way

Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist

Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest.

Meanwhile in other realms big tears

were shed,