The wandering airs they faint Beloved as thou art! Oh lift me from the grass! STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. THE Sun is warm, the sky is clear, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's. I see the Deep's untrampled floor With green and purple seaweeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: I sit upon the sands alone, The lightning of the noon-tide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion. Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Smiling they live and call life pleasure; - Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Some might lament that I were cold, They might lament--for I am one Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. December, 1818. AUTUMN : A DIRGE. THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and grey, Let your light sisters play Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. HYMN OF APOLLO. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 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. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, Are portions of one power, which is mine. I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven. For grief that I depart they weep and frown: What look is more delightful than the smile I am the eye with which the Universe FROM the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizard below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus* was, Listening to my sweet pipings. Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the prize in music. M |