From spring gathering up beneath, Whose mild winds shake the elder brake, And the wandering herdsmen know That the white-thorn soon will blow : Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace, When they struggle to increase, Are to us as soft winds be To shepherd boys, the prophecy Which begins and ends in thee.

to N e. Where are the spirits fled !

pAnth EA. Only a sense Remains of them, like the omnipotence Of nusic, when the inspired voice and lute Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,

PRoxieth Eus. How fair these air-born shapes and yet I feel Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far, Asia! who, when my being overflow'd, Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust. All things are still: alas ! how heavily This quiet morning weighs upon my heart; Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief, If slumber were denied not. I would fain Be what it is my destiny to be, The saviour and the strength of suffering man, Or sink into the original gulf of things: There is no agony, and no solace left; Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more. PANT in EA. Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when The shadow of thy spirit falls on her? proxi eth Eus. I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest. PANThe A. Deeply, in truth; but the eastern star looks white, And Asia waits in that far Indian vale The scene of her sad exile; rugged once And desolate and frozen, like this ravine; But now invested with fair flowers and herbs, And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow Among the woods and waters, from the ether Of her transforming presence, which would fade If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell !

Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.

ACT II. SC E N E i. Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. Asia, alone.

A SIA. From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended: Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes, And beatings haunt the desolated heart,

Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring !
0 child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life.
This is the season, this the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
Too long desired, too long delaying, come !
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl'
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains: through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
'T is lost' and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
The roseate sun-light quivers: hear I not
The AEolian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn 7

PANTHEA enters.

I feel, I see Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears, Like stars half quench'd in mists of silver dew. Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest The shadow of that soul by which I live, How late thou art the sphered sun had climb'd The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before The printless air felt thy belated plumes. PANThe A. Pardon, great Sister but my wings were faint With the delight of a remember'd dream, As are the noon-tide plumes of summer winds Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep Peacefully, and awake refresh'd and calm Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity, Both love and woe familiar to my heart As they had grown to thine : crewhile I slept Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean Within dim bowers of green and purple moss, Our young Ione's soft and milky arms Lock'd then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair, While my shut eyes and cheek were press'd within The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom : But not as now, since I am made the wind Which fails beneath the music that I bear Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved Into the sense with which love talks, my rest Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours Too full of care and pain. ASIA.

Lift up thine eyes,

And let me read thy dream.
PANTHEA.

As I have said
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs

Ms - az was co-o-o-o: ; and as terros
of thoug-i were so-y gaol-erd. I could bear
His wooze. whose accents ordere they died
Like footsteps of weak neody: thy name
Among the many soon is alonel beard
of what might be articulate; though still
I listend through the night when sound was none-
Ione wakend then, and said to me:
• Cans: thou divine what troubles me to-night?
i. always knew what i desired before.
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek :
I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
And mingled it with thine : for when just now
we kiss'd, I felt within thy parted lips
The sweet air that sustain'd me, and the warmth
Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
Quiver'd between our intertwining arms.-
I answer'd not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
Ast A.
Thou speakest, but thy words

Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel, blown anew;
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite :
And the gloom divine is all around;
And underneath is the mossy ground.

semicroRUs it. There the voluptuous nightingales, Are awake through all the broad noon-day, When one with bliss or sadness fails, And through the windless ivy-boughs, Sick with sweet love, droops dying away On its mate's music-panting bosom; Another from the swinging blossom, Watching to catch the languid close Of the last strain, then lifts on high The wings of the weak melody, Till some new strain of feeling bear The song, and all the woods are mute; When there is heard through the dim air The rush of wings, and rising there Like many a lake-surrounding flute, Sounds overflow the listener's brain So sweet, that joy is almost pain.

semichorus 1. There those enchanted eddies play Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, By Demogorgon's mighty law, With melting rapture, or sweet awe, All spirits on that secret way; As inland boats are driven to Ocean Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw; And first there comes a gentle sound To those in talk or slumber bound, And wakes the destined soft emotion, Attracts, impels them : those who saw Say from the breathing earth behind There streams a plume-uplifting wind Which drives them on their path, while they Believe their own swift wings and feet The sweet desires within obey: And so they float upon their way, Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, The storm of sound is driven along, Suck'd up and hurrying as they fleet Behind, its gathering billows meet And to the fatal mountain bear Like clouds amid the yielding air.

First paun. Canst thou imagine where those spirits live

Which make such delicate music in the woods?
We haunt within the least frequented caves
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
Where may they hide themselves?
second FAUN.
"t is hard to tell:
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
The bubbles, which enchantment of the sun
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noon-tide kindles through the woven leaves;
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors through 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 slowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or on the sunlight of the sphered 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 dooms.
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.

PANT in EA. Hither the sound has borne us—to the realm Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm, Whence the oracular vapour is hurl’d up Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth, And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy, That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain To deep intoxication; and uplift, Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe! The voice which is contagion to the world.

Ast A.

Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee.
Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
As a lake, paving in the morning sky,
With azure waves which burst in silver light,
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on

Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves.
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
From icy spires of sun-like radiance thing
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,
From some Atlantic islet scatter'd up,
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops,
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awaken'd avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gather'd there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosen'd, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
p-ANTHEA.
Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
Round foodless men wreck'd on some oozy isle.
ASIA.
The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain
Grows dizzy; I see thin shapes within the mist.
PANTHEA.
A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns
An azure fire within its golden locks!
Another and another: hark they speak!

SoNG of spidits. To the deep, to the deep, &

Down, down Through the shade of sleep, Through the cloudy strife Of Death and of Life; Through the veil and the bar Of things which seem and are, Even to the steps of the remotest throne,

Down, down!

While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!
As the fawn draws the hound,
As the lightning the vapour,
As a weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time both ; to-day, to-morrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!

Through the grey, void abysm,
Down, down
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is one pervading, one alone,

Down, down