The sails are full, the boat makes head And hangs upon the wave, and stems Which fervid from its mountain source It sweeps into the affrighted sea. Into columns fierce and bright. The Serchio, twisting forth Between the marble barriers which it clove At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm The wave that died the death which lovers love, Living in what it sought. As if this spasm Had not yet passed, the toppling mountains cling. But the clear stream in full enthusiasm Pours itself on the plain; then, wandering Down one clear path of effluence crystalline, Sends its superfluous waves that they may fling At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine. Then, through the pestilential deserts wild Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine, It rushes to the ocean. July, 1821. VI. MUSIC. I. I PANT for the music which is divine; 2. Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound The dissolving strain, through every vein, 3. As a scent of a violet withered up, Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, And mist there was none its thirst to slakeAnd the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue: 4. As one who drinks from a charmèd cup Of foaming and sparkling and murmuring. wine, Whom a mighty enchantress, filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine. 1821. VII. EVENING. PONTE AL MARE, PISA. I. THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep; Over the quivering surface of the stream, 2. There is no dew on the dry grass to-night, Nor damp within the shadow of the trees; The wind is intermitting, dry, and light; And in the inconstant motion of the breeze The dust and straws are driven up and down, And whirled about the pavement of the town. 3. Within the surface of the fleeting river It trembles, but it never fades away. You, being changed, will find it then as now. 4. The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut 1821. VIII. THE WOODMAN AND THE A WOODMAN, whose rough heart was out of tune (I think such hearts yet never came to good), Hated to hear, under the stars or moon, One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody. And as a vale is watered by a flood, Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie Like clouds above the flower from which they rose The singing of that happy nightingale In this sweet forest, from the golden close Of evening till the star of dawn may fail, Was interfused upon the silentness. The folded roses and the violets pale Heard her within their slumbers; the abyss Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear Of the night-cradled Earth; the loneliness Of the circumfluous waters. Every sphere, And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, And every wind of the mute atmosphere, And every beast stretched in its rugged cave, And bird lulled on its mossy bough, every And every silver moth fresh from the grave Which is its cradle (ever from below Aspiring, like one who loves too fair, too far, To be consumed within the purest glow |