Underneath, the leaves unsodden
Where the infant frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;

And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit, which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,
Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky:
Be it love, light, harmony,
Odour, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister

Half the crimson light she brings
From the sunset's radiant springs;
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like winged winds had borne
To that silent isle, which lies
'Mid remembered agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being),
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be
In the sea of life and agony;
Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folded wings they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it

To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt,
In a dell 'mid lawny hills,
Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,

And the light and smell divine
Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
We may live so happy there,
That the spirits of the air,
Envying us, may e'en entice
To our healing Paradise
The polluting multitude;

But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies,

And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood:
They, not it, would change; and soon
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.

HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries, From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,

Waken me when their Mother, the grey 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 [the air Are filled with my bright presence, and 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 e'en imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might,

Until diminished by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers

With their ethereal colours; 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

With which I soothe them from the western isle?

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

All prophecy, all medicines 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,

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.

WITHIN the silent centre of the earth
My mansion is; where I lived ensphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the
world;

Infinite depths of unknown elements
Massed into one impenetrable mask;
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron,
And as a veil in which I walk through heaven
I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves,
and clouds,

And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
In the dark space of interstellar air.

LIBERTY.

THE fiery mountains answer each other; Their thunderings are echoed from zone

to zone;

Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoiled by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting. What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a Winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.
Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overawed,
Fancy, high-commissioned:-send her;
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of Summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it:-thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reaped corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn.
And, in the same moment-hark!
'Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm

When the bee-hive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering, While the Autumn breezes sing.

O sweet Fancy! let her loose; Everything is spoiled by use: Where's the cheek that doth not fade, Too much gazed at? Where's the maid Whose lip mature is ever new? Where's the eye, however blue, Doth not weary? Where's the face One would meet in every place? Where's the voice, however soft, One would hear so very oft? At a touch sweet pleasure melteth Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. Let, then, wingèd Fancy find Thee a mistress to thy mind: Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter, Ere the God of Torment taught her How to frown and how to chide; With a waist and with a side White as Hebe's, when her zone Slipped its golden clasp, and down Fell her kirtle to her feet, While she held the goblet sweet, And Jove grew languid.-Break the mesh Of the Fancy's silken leash; Quickly break her prison-string, And such joys as these she 'll bringLet the wingèd Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.

-:0:

FELICIA HEMANS.

1793-1835.

THE VOICE OF SPRING.

I COME, I come! ye have called me long. I come o'er the mountains with light and song!

Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,

By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves, opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the south, and the chestnut flowers

By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,

And the ancient graves, and the fallen fanes, Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains; But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom, To speak of the ruin or the tomb.

I know whence the shadow comes o'er you now,

Ye have strewn the dust on the sunny brow, Ye have given the lovely to earth's embrace, She hath taken the fairest of beauty's race, With their laughing eyes and their festal crown, [down.

They are gone from amongst you in silence

They are gone from amongst you, the young and fair,

[hair; Ye have lost the gleam of their shining But I know of a land where there falls no blight, [light.

I shall find them there, with their eyes of Where Death 'midst the blooms of the morn may dwell,

I tarry no longer-farewell, farewell!