(Sings)

Heigho! the lark and the owl!

One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:

Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,

Sings like the fool through darkness and light.

"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;

The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

"There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound."

The Triumph of Life

The Triumph of Life

WIFT as a spirit hastening to his

task

Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

――――

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth -
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,

To which the birds tempered their matin lay. All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray

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Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air
And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil, which he of old Took as his own, and then imposed on them: But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary

stem

Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the

deep