Beneath the Ortygian shore;

Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; Like spirits that lie

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; In the azure sky

the caves When they love but live no more.

Are filled with my bright presence, and

the air SONG OF PROSERPINE,

Leaves the green earth to my embraces

bare. WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which

I kill

Deceit, that loves the night and fears SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,

the day; Thou from whose immortal bosom, All men who do or even imagine ill Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Fly me, and from the glory of my Leaf and blade, and bud and

ray blossom,

Good minds and open actions take new Breathe thine influence most divine

might, On thine own child, Proserpine. Until diminished by the reign of night.

I

Il with mists of evening dew

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the Thou dost nourish these young

flowers flowers

With their ethereal colours; the Till they grow, in scent and hue,

Moon's globe Fairest children of the hours,

And the pure stars in their eternal Breathe thine influence most divine

bowers On thine own child, Proserpine.

Are cinctured with my power as with

a robe;

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven HYMN OF APOLLO

may shine, Are portions of one power, which is

mine. The sleepless Hours who watch me as

I lie, Curtained with star-inwoven tapes. I stand at noon upon the peak of tries,

Heaven, From the broad moonlight of the sky, Then with unwilling steps I wander Fanning the busy dreams from my down

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even; Waken me when their Mother, the gray

For grief that I depart they weep and Dawn,

frown: 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 ? Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,

VI I walk over the mountains and the I am the eye with which the Universe waves,

Beholds itself and knows itself divine;

dim eyes,

II

All harmony of instrument or verse, All wept, as I think both ye now would,

All prophecy, all medicine are mine, Il envy or age had not frozen your blood, All light of art or nature ;--to my song,

At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. Victory and praise in their own right belong

THE QUESTION

11

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the The light of the dying day,

earth, Speeded by my sweet pipings. The constellated flower that never sets; The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at And the Nymphs of the woods and whose birth waves,

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

flower that wetsAnd the brink of the dewy caves, Like a child, half in tenderness and And all that did then attend and follow

mirthWere silent with love, as you now, Its mother's face with heaven's collected Apollo,

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

it hears. III I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal Earth, And in the warm hedge grew lush And of Heaven-and the giant wars,

eglantine, And Love, and Death, and Birth,- 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: whose wine Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! Was the bright dew, yet drained not It breaks in our bosom and then we by the day; bleed:

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

III

IV

With its dark buds and leaves, wan

Second Spirit dering astray;

The deathless stars are bright above; And flowers azure, black, and streaked

If I would cross the shade of night, with gold,

Within my heart is the lamp of love, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And that is day!

And the moon will smile with gentle And nearer to the river's trembling edge

light There grew broad flag-flowers, purple On my golden plumes where'er they prankt with white,

move; And starry river buds among the sedge,

The meteors will linger round my And floating water-lilies, broad and fight, bright,

And make night day. Which lit the oak that overhung the

First Spirit hedge With moonlight beams of their own But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken watery light;

Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep See, the bounds of the air are shakengreen

Night is coming! As soothed the dazzled eye with sober The red swift clouds of the hurricane sheen.

Yon declining sun have overtaken,

The clash of the hail sweeps over the Methought that of these visionary flowers plainI made a nosegay, bound in such a way

Night is coming! That the same hues, which in their natural bowers

Second Spirit Were mingled oropposed, the like array I see the light, and I hear the sound; Kept these imprisoned children of the I'll sail on the flood of the tempest Hours

dark, Within my hand, - and then, elate with the calm within and the light

around I hastened to the spot whence I had

Which makes night day : come,

And thou, when the gloom is deep That I might there present it !-oh! to and stark, whom?

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

mark
THE TWO SPIRITS : AN

On high, far away.
ALLEGORY
First Spirit

Some say there is a precipice
O THOU, who plumed with strong desire Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin

Wouldst float above the earth, beware! | O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire

'Mid Alpine mountains; Night is coming !

And that the languid storm pursuing Bright are the regions of the air, That winged shape, for ever fies And among the winds and beams

Round those hoar branches, aye reIt were delight to wander there

newing Night is coming!

Its aëry fountains.

and gay,

Some say when nights are dry and clear, The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and And the death-dews sleep on the pine, morass,

Like winter leaves o'ergrown by Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,

moulded snow, Which make night day:

Seemed only not to move and grow And a silver shape like his early love | Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,

Power divine And when he awakes on the fragrant

Which then lulled all things, brooded grass,

He finds night day.

doth pass

upon mine.

EPODE II a

EPODE I a

caves

waves

ODE TO NAPLES I

Then gentle winds arose

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountainI stood within the city disinterred;2

odour keen; And heard the autumnal leaves like

And where the Baian ocean light footfalls

Welters with airlike motion, Of spirits passing through the streets; Within, above, around its bowers of and heard

starry green, The Mountain's slumberous voice at

Moving the sea-flowers in those purple intervals Thrill through those roofless halls;

Even as the ever stormless atmosThe oracular thunder penetrating shook

phere The listening soul in my suspended

Floats o'er the Elysian realm, blood;

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke

Of sunlight, whose swist pinnace of I felt, but heard not :-through white

dewy air
columns glowed

No storm can overwhelm;
The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood,

I sailed, where ever flows
A plane of light between two Heavens

Under the calm Serene of azure :

A spirit of deep emotion Around me gleamed many a bright From the unknown graves sepulchre

Of the dead kings of Melody.3 Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm pleasure

The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare Were to spare Death, had never made its depths over Elysium, where the prow erasure;

Made the invisible water white as snow; But every living lineament was clear

From that Typhæan mount, Inarime As in the sculptor's thought; and there

There streamed a sunlight vapour, i The Author has connected many recollec

like the standard tions of his visit to Pompeii and Baix with the

Of some ethereal host; enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the

Whilst from all the coast, proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque

Louder and louder, gathering round, and descriptive imagery to the introductory