With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephisian vale? Listen, Eugenia! How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain! MATTHEW Arnold. MUSIC. O LULL me, lull me, charming air! That hath an ear? Down let him lie, And slumbering die, And change his soul for harmony. JOHN DRYDEN. THE PIPER. PIPING down the valleys wild, And he, laughing, said to me: "Pipe a song about a lamb." So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear. "Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer." So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. Piper, sit thee down and write, In a book, that all may read." So he vanished from my sight, And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen; And I stained the water clear; And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. WILLIAM BLAKE. THE AWAKENING OF ENDYMION. LONE upon a mountain, the pine-trees wailing round him, Sleep, mystic sleep, for many a year has bound him, Yet his beauty, like a statue's, pale and fair, is undecayed. When will he awaken? When will he awaken? a loud voice hath been crying Winds, woods, and waves found echoes for replying, Asked the midnight's silver queen. Never mortal eye has looked upon his sleeping; Parents, kindred, comrades, have mourned for him as dead; By day the gathered clouds have had him in their keeping, And at night the solemn shadows round his rest are shed. When will he awaken? Long has been the cry of faithful Love's imploring; Own themselves vanquished by much-enduring Love? Asks the midnight's weary queen. THE AWAKENING OF ENDYMION. Beautiful the sleep that she has watched untiring, Softened by a woman's meek and loving sigh. He has been dreaming of old heroic stories, He has grown conscious of life's ancestral glories, When sages and when kings first upheld the mind's control. When will he awaken? Asks the midnight's stately queen. Lo, the appointed midnight! the present hour is fated! It is Endymion's planet that rises on the air; Soft amid the pines is a sound as if of singing, Tones that seem the lute's from the breathing flowers depart; Not a wind that wanders o'er Mount Latmus but is bringing Music that is murmured from Nature's inmost heart. Soon he will awaken To his and midnight's queen. Lovely is the green earth-she knows the hour is holy; Light like their own is dawning sweet and slowly O'er the fair and sculptured forchead of that yet dreaming boy. Soon he will awaken. THE AWAKENING OF ENDYMION. Red as the red rose toward the morning turning, Warms the youth's lip to the watcher's near his own; While the dark eyes open-bright, intense, and burning With a life more glorious than, ere they closed, was known. Yes, he has awakened For the midnight's happy queen! What is this old history, but a lesson given, How true love still conquers by the deep strength of truth; How all the impulses, whose native home is heaven, Sanctify the visions of hope, and faith, and youth? 'Tis for such they waken. When every worldly thought is utterly forsaken, Like that youth to night's fair queen! LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON. |