Beneath the Ortygian shore;

Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more.

SONG OF PROSERPINE,

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE
PLAIN OF ENNA

I

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom, Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud blossom,

and

Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

II

If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers

Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

HYMN OF APOLLO

I

II

Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire;
the caves

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's

blue dome,

Are filled with my bright presence, and
the air

Leaves the green earth to my embraces
bare.

111

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which
I kill

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as
I lie,

I

stand at noon upon the peak of
Heaven,

Curtained with star-inwoven tapes-
tries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my
dim eyes,-
Waken me when their Mother, the gray

Dawn,

Tells them that dreams and that the What look is more delightful than the
moon is gone.
smile

With which I soothe them from the
western isle?

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.

IV

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.

V

Then with unwilling steps I wander
down

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and
frown:

VI

I walk over the mountains and the I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;

waves,

All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine are mine, All light of art or nature;-to my song, Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN

I

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 lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was
Listening to my sweet pipings.

11

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and

III

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 QUESTION

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,-

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, Its mother's face with heaven's collected

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets

Apollo,

tears,

With envy of my sweet pipings. When the low wind, its playmate's voice,

it hears.

Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth

III

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cowbind and the moonlight-
coloured May,

Singing how down the vale of Menalus | And cherry-blossoms, and white cups,
I pursued a maiden and clasp'd a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom and then we
bleed:

whose wine

Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

And starry river buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

First Spirit

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep See, the bounds of the air are shaken

With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

Night is coming!

green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober
sheen.

The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the
plain-

Night is coming!

V

Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their
natural bowers

Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the

Hours

come,

That I might there present it!--oh! to whom?

Within my hand, and then, elate With the calm within and the light and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had

THE TWO SPIRITS: AN

ALLEGORY

Second Spirit

The deathless stars are bright above;

If I would cross the shade of night, Within my heart is the lamp of love, And that is day!

And the moon will smile with gentle light

On my golden plumes where'er they

move;

The meteors will linger round my flight,

And make night day.

Second Spirit

I

see the light, and I hear the sound; I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,

around

Which makes night day: And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,

Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,
My moon-like flight thou then may'st

mark

On high, far away.

Some say there is a precipice

Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice
'Mid Alpine mountains;

And that the languid storm pursuing
That winged shape, for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye re-
newing

Its aëry fountains.

Some say when nights are dry and clear,
And the death-dews sleep on the
morass,

Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
Which make night day:
And a silver shape like his early love
doth pass

Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant

grass,

He finds night day.

ODE TO NAPLES 1

EPODE I a

I STOOD within the city disinterred; 2 And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls

The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals

Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook The listening soul in my suspended blood;

And where the Baian ocean
Welters with airlike motion,

Of spirits passing through the streets; Within, above, around its bowers of

and heard

I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke

I felt, but heard not:-through white columns glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure:

Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre

Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure

Were to spare Death, had never made

erasure;

The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,

But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there

Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,

Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine

Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE II a

Then gentle winds arose
With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-
odour keen;

starry green,

Moving the sea-flowers in those purple

caves

Even as the ever stormless atmosphere

Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the

waves

Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air

No storm can overwhelm;
I sailed, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves
Of the dead kings of Melody.3
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow

Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime
There streamed a sunlight vapour,
like the standard
Of some ethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,

1 The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baia with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected Over the oracular woods and divine sea with the scene of this animating event.

3 Homer and Virgil.

2 Pompeii.

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered