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,

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,

Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walk'd with inward glory crown'd-

Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround-

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure:

To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is gone, Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, Insults with this untimely moan; They might lament-for I am one

Whom men love not, and yet regret, Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

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 fill'd with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.

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
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminish'd by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers, With their ethereal colors; 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.

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: What look is more delightful than the smile

To his dwelling;

Come, months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray,
Let your light sisters play-

Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

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,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus* was,
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 Tmolus for the prize in music.

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.

All rose to do the task He set to each,
Who shaped us to his ends and not our own;
The million rose to learn, and one to teach
What none yet ever knew or can be known;

And many rose Whose woe was such that fear became desire Melchior and Lionel were not among those;

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 fuil 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.