HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

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.

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,
Until diminished by the reign of night.

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.
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown:

What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe

Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophesy, all medicine, are mine,
All light of art or nature ;-to my song,
Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

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 bees on the bells of thyme,
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

The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal Earth,

And of Heaven-and the giant wars,

And Love, and Death, and Birth,-
And then I changed my pipings,—

Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

THE BOAT

ON THE SERCHIO.

OUR boat is asleep in Serchio's stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
The helm sways idly, hither and thither;

Dominic, the boat-man, has brought the mast,
And the oars, and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there,
To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree,
The owl and the bat fled drowsily.

Day had kindled the dewy woods

And the rocks above and the stream below,
And the vapours in their multitudes,
And the Apennine's shroud of summer snow,
And cloathed with light of aery gold
The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.

Day had awakened all things that be,

The lark and the thrush and the swallow free;
And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe,
And the matin-bell and the mountain bee:
Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy corn;
Glow-worms went out on the river's brim,
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim :

The beetle forgot to wind his horn,

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun,
Night's dreams and terrors, every one,
Fied from the brains which are their prey,
From the lamp's death to the morning ray:

All rose to do the task He set to each,
Who shaped us to his ends and not our own;
The million rose to learn, and one to teach
What none yet ever knew or can be known;

And many rose

Whose woe was such that fear became desire; Melchior and Lionel were not among those;

They from the throng of men had stepped aside,
And made their home under the green hill side.
It was that hill, whose intervening brow
Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye,
Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
Like a wide lake of green fertility,

With streams and fields and marshes bare,
Divides from the far Apennines-which lie
Islanded in the immeasurable air.

"What think you, as she lies in her green cove, Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?

If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
That she was dreaming of our idleness,
And of the miles of watery way

We should have led her by this time of day.”

"Never mind," said Lionel,

"Give care to the winds, they can bear it well About you poplar tops; and see

The white clouds are driving merrily,

And the stars we miss this morn will light
More willingly our return to-night.—

List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair;
How it scatters Dominic's long black hair,
Singing of us, and our lazy motions,
If I can guess a boat's emotions.—"

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
The living breath is fresh behind,

As, with dews and sunrise fed,

Comes the laughing morning wind ;-
The sails are full, the boat makes head
Against the Serchio's torrent fierce,
Then flags with intermitting course,