Pisa. Like friends once parted From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; In the azure sky, When they love but live no more. 1. THE HYMN OF APOLLO. HE 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. 2. 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, 3. 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 4. I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal 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. 5. 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. 6. I am the eye with which the universe Beholds itself, and knows itself divine; F HYMN OF PAN. ROM the forests and highlands From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb The wind in the reeds and the rushes, Liquid Peneus was flowing, The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, I sang of the dancing stars, And of heaven, and the Giant wars, Singing how down the vale of Mænalus It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed. 1. I THE QUESTION. DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. 2. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets- Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth— Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears 3. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the Day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray; And flowers, azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 4. And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white, And starry river-buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, With moonlight beams of their own watery light; 5. Methought that of these visionary flowers |