160

TO HELEN.

TO HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are holy land!

E. A. Poe.

SERENADE.

THERE be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like thee:

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep,
Whose breast is gently heaving
As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee
To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken;

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

P. B. Shelley.

MUSIC.

WHEN lovely sounds about my ears
Like winds in Eden's tree-tops rise,
And make me, though my spirit hears,
For very luxury close my eyes:
Let none but friends be round about,

Who love the soothing joy like me,
That so the charm be felt throughout,
And all be harmony.

And when we reach the close divine,
Then let the hand of her I love
Come with its gentle palm on mine,

As soft as snow, or lighting dove;
And let, by stealth, that more than friend
Look sweetness in my opening eyes;
For only so such dreams should end,

Or wake in Paradise.

L. Hunt.

BUGLE SONG.

THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits, old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

A. Tennyson.

164

ECHOES.

ECHOES.

How sweet the answer Echo makes

To Music at night

When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,

And far away o'er lawns and lakes

Goes answering light!

Yet Love hath echoes truer far

And far more sweet

Than e'er, beneath the moonlight's star,

Of horn or lute or soft guitar

The songs repeat.

'Tis when the sigh,-in youth sincere

And only then,

The sigh that's breathed for one to hear

Is by that one, that only Dear

Breathed back again.

T. Moore.