I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noontide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Curtain'd with star-inwoven tapestries,

I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine; All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine are mine, All light of art or nature;-to my song Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

FROM the forests and highlands
We come, we 'come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the lime,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus* was.
And the lizards below in the grass,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay

In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

The light of the dying day,

*This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tinolus for the prize in music.

Speeded by my sweet pipings,

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal Earth,
And of Heaven-and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,-

And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasp'd a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

THE BOAT

ON THE SERCHIO.

OUR boat is asleep in Serchio's stream,
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
The helm sways idly, hither and thither;
Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,
And the oars and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,
Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
And the thin white moon lay withering there;
To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree,
The owl and the bat fled drowsily.
Day had kindled the dewy woods,
And the rocks above and the stream below,
And the vapors in their multitudes,

And the Apennine shroud of summer snow,
And clothed with light of aery gold
The mists in their eastern caves uproll'd.

Day had awaken'd all things that be,
The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,
And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe,
And the matin-bell and the mountain bee:
Fire-flies were quench'd on the dewy corn,
Glow-worms went out on the river's brim,
Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
The beetle forgot to wind his horn,

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun,
Night's dreams and terrors, every one,
Fled from the brains which are their prey,
From the lamp's death to the morning ray.

They from the throng of men had stepp'd aside,
And made their home under the green hill side
It was that hill, whose intervening brow
Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye,
Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
Like a wide lake of green fertility,

With streams and fields and marshes bare,
Divides from the far Apennines-which lie
Islanded in the immeasurable air.

"What think you, as she lies in her green cove Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?

If morning dreams are true, why I should gues
That she was dreaming of our idleness,
And of the miles of watery way

We should have led her by this time of day?”

Never mind," said Lionel, "Give care to the winds, they can bear it well About yon poplar tops; and see,

The white clouds are driving merrily,
And the stars we miss this morn will light
More willingly our return to-night.-
List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair;
How it scatters Dominic's long black hair,
Singing of us, and our lazy motions,
If I can guess a boat's emotions.-"

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
The living breath is fresh behind,
As with dews and sunrise fed,
Comes the laughing morning wind ;-
The sails are full, the boat makes head
Against the Serchio's torrent fierce,
Then flags with intermitting course,
And hangs upon the wave, [
Which fervid from its mountain source
Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,-
Swift as fire, tempestuously

It sweeps into the affrighted sea;
In morning's smile its eddies coil,
Its billows sparkle, toss and boil,
Torturing all its quiet light
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 that lovers love Living in what it sought; as if this spasm Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling But the clear stream in full enthusiasm Pours itself on the plain, until wandering, Down one clear path of effluence crystalline Sends its clear 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 fir, It rushes to the Ocean. July, 1821.

THE ZUCCA.* I

SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expiring And infant Winter laugh'd upon the land

* Pumpkin.

Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted
In evening for the Day, whose car has roll'd
Over the horizon's wave, with looks of light
Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.
IX.

The mitigated influences of air

And light revived the plant, and from it grew
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
Full as a cup with the vine's burning dew,
O'erflowed with golden colors; an atmosphere
Of vital warmth infolded it anew,
And every impulse sent to every part
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.

THEY were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had razed their love-which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.

And so they grew together, like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather-the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love,—and who e'er loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,

Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardors of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture;
He faints, dissolved into a sense of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above,
But thou art Love itself-ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit.--Such emotion
Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May
Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding-day.

A BRIDAL SONG.

THE golden gates of sleep unbar

Where strength and beauty met together, Kindle their image like a star

In a sea of glassy weather.
Night, with all thy stars look down,-
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,-
Never smiled the inconstant moon

On a pair so true.

Let eyes not see their own delight;—
Haste, swi Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn,-ere it be long.

Oh joy! oh fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

THE SUNSET.

THERE late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and youth contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail, like the trances of a summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walk'd along the pathway of the field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadow'd o'er,

But to the west was open to the sky.

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers,
And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight lay
On the brown massy woods-and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead.-
"Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth,

That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep-but when the morning came,
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on-in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
Her eye-lashes were worn away with tears,
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;-
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so pale:
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering
veins

And weak articulations might be seen
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vex'd ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!