Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,
Seem kneaded into one aërial mass

Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,

Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,
And you can see its little lips are moving,
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
lone. 'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.
Pan. And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming heaven and earth united now,
Vast beams like spoke of some invisible wheel
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,
Filling the abyss with sunlike lightnings,

And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;

Infinite mine of adamant and gold,

Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,

And caverns on crystalline columns poured
With vegetable silver overspread;

Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs

Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,

Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on

And make appear the melancholy ruins

Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;

Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels

Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,

Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!

The wrecks beside of many a city vast,

Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
Huddled in grey annihilation, split,

Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
The anatomies of unknown winged things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust

To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jagged alligator, and the might

Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapt deluge round it like a cloke, and they
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God

Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried,
Be not! And like my words they were no more.

THE EARTH.

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vaporous exultation not to be confined!

Ha ha! the animation of delight

Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.

THE MOON.

Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,

Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody
Through me, through me!

THE EARTH.

Ha ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.

The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,
Who all our green and azure universe

Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending
A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones,

And splinter and knead down my children's bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending.

Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,

Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,

My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire; My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom

Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,

Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire.

How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup

Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
And froin beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, love

Bursts in like light on caves cloven by thunder-ball.

THE MOON.

The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth

My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!

Gazing on thee I feel, I know

Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, And living shapes upon my bosom move:

Music is in the sea and air,

Winged clouds soar here and there,

Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: "Tis love, all love!

THE EARTH.

It interpenetrates my granite mass,

Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass,
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;

Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,

They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.

And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:

With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,

Leave man, who was a many sided mirror, Which could distort to many a shape of error, This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love; Which over all his kind as the sun's heaven

Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even

Darting from starry depths radiance and light, doth move.

Leave man, even as a leprous child is left,

Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured; Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile

It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.

Man, oh, not men! a chain of linked thought,
Of love and might to be divided not,

Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze

Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,

Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;

Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,

A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,

Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm

Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm, Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;

Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;

Language is a perpetual orphic song,

Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng

Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

THE MOON.

The shadow of white death has past
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,

Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep.

THE EARTH.

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half infrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, And wanders up the vault of the blue day, Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

THE MOON.

Thou art folded, thou art lying

In the light which is undying

Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH.

I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,

Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

THE MOON.

As in the soft and sweet eclipse,

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,

High hearts are calm, aud brightest eyes are dull;

So when thy shadow falls on me,

Then am I mute and still, by thee

Covered; of thy love, orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full !

Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour,
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
1, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mænad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up

In the weird Cadmæan forest.
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow

Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or a cameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,
As a violet's gentle eye

Gazes on the azure sky

Until its hue grows like what it beholds,

As a grey and watery mist

Glows like solid amethyst

Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,

When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow.

THE EARTH.

And the weak day weeps

That it should be so.

Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light

Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm:

Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.

Pan. I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,

Out of the stream of sound.

Ione.

Ah me! sweet sister,

The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,

Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew

Snaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.