The which they breathed within those lucent domes, FIRST FAUN. If such live thus, have others other lives, SECOND FAUN. Aye, many more which we may well divine. To silence the unenvying nightingales. Classic Poems of Nature. HYMN OF APOLLO. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 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, 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, I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers With their ætherial 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, For grief that I depart they weep and frown : I am the eye with which the Universe All prophecy, all medicine are mine, 1820. HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 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 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 then I changed my pipings,— It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed: All wept, as I think both ye now would, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 1820. THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE. AT the creation of the Earth Of an ever-lengthening line |