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And a heaven where yet heaven could | Which pierce the sense, and live within

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We encircle the ocean and mountains of
earth,

And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.

Chorus of Hours and Spirits.
Break the dance, and scatter the song,
Let some depart, and some remain,
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet
strong,

The clouds that are heavy with love's
sweet rain.

Ha! they are gone!
Yet feel you no delight

Panthea.
Ione.
From the past sweetness?

Panthea. As the bare green hill
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny

water

To the unpavilioned sky!

Ione. New notes arise. sound?

Even whilst we speak

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In which the mother of the months is borne

By ebbing night into her western cave, When she upsprings from interlunar dreams,

O'er which is curved an orblike canopy Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods

Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil,

Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;

What is that awful Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and

gold,

Such as the genii of the thunderstorm Pile on the floor of the illumined sea When the sun rushes under it; they roll And move and grow as with an inward wind;

Within it sits a wingèd infant, white Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,

Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost, Its limbs gleam white, through the windflowing folds

Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl. Its hair is white, the brightness of white light

Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,

Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl

Over each other with a thousand motions, Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning, And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,

Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on, Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,

Intelligible words and music wild. With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb

Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes Grinds the bright brook into an azure

are heavens

Of liquid darkness, which the Deity Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured

From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,

Tempering the cold and radiant air around,

mist

Of elemental subtlety, like light;
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams
Round its intense yet self-conflicting
speed,

Seem kneaded into one aërial mass

With fire that is not brightness; in its Which drowns the sense. Within the

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Over its wheeled clouds, which as they The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,

roll

Over the grass, and flowers, and waves,

wake sounds,

Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.

And you can see its little lips are

moving,

Amid the changing light of their own smiles,

Panthea. And from the other open- Like one who talks of what he loves

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Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass Like swords of azure fire, or golden

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Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings, And serpents, bony chains, twisted And perpendicular now, and now trans

verse,

Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,

Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;

Infinite mine of adamant and gold, Valueless stones, and unimagined gems, And caverns on crystalline columns poised

With vegetable silver overspread;

around

The iron crags, or within heaps of dust To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs

Had crushed the iron crags; and over these

The jagged alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which

once

Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,

Wells of unfathomed fire, and water | And weed-overgrown continents of earth, Increased and multiplied like summer

springs Whence the great sea, even as a child

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worms

On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe

Wrapt deluge round it like a cloke, and they

Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God

Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried,

Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, Be not! and spears,

And gorgon-headed targes, and the

wheels

Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry Of trophies, standards, and armorial

beasts,

And like my words they were

no more.

The Earth.

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,

Round which death laughed, sepulchred The vaporous exultation not to be con

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This true fair world of things, a sea A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,

reflecting love;

Which over all his kind as the sun's

heaven

Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene,
and even

Darting from starry depths radiance and
life, doth move,

Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,

Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft

Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;

Then when it wanders home with

rosy smile,

Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose

helm

Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,

Forcing life's wildest shores to own its
sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength.
Through the cold mass

Of marble and of colour his dreams
pass;

Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear; Language is a perpetual orphic song, Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng

Unconscious, and its mother fears Of thoughts and forms, which else sense

awhile

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control, Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;

Familiar acts are beautiful through love;

Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove

Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,

less and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's

utmost deep

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As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold

A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,

And selfish cares, its trembling And crystalline, till it becomes a winged

satellites,

mist,

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