The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors thro' the night,
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
Under the waters of the earth again.

FIRST FAUN.

If such live thus, have others other lives,
Under pink blossoms or within the bells
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or in the sunlight of the spherèd dew ?

SECOND FAUN.

Aye, many more which we may well divine.
But, should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of fate, and chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer
Our solitary twilights, and which charm

To silence the unenvying nightingales.

Classic Poems of Nature.

HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

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,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

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,
Until diminished by the reign of night.

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,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown :
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle ?

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
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.

1820.

HYMN OF PAN.

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.

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 of Heaven-and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,—

And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus !

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:

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.

1820.

THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE.

AT the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapt in sweet wild melodies-
Like an exhalation wreathing
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Æolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life breathing [limbs] did flow
In the harmony divine

Of an ever-lengthening line
Which enwrapt her perfect form
With a beauty clear and warm.