HYMN OF APOLLO. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 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 Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might, 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, For grief that I depart they weep and frown: What look is more delightful than the smile I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine; 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 cicale above in the lime, was, Listening to my sweet pipings. Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 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. M Within the surface of the fleeting river It trembles, but it never fades away; You, being changed, will find it then as now. The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains, From cloud and from crag, Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks Streaming among the streams;— Her steps paved with green Which slopes to the western gleams: She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook; And opened a chasm In the rocks;-with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder The bars of the springs below: The beard and the hair Seen through the torrent's sweep, As he followed the light To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended, Her billows unblended With the brackish Dorian stream: Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind,-- As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones, Through the coral woods Over heaps of unvalued stones: Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a net-work of coloured light; And under the caves, Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night:- And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sun-rise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; Through the woods helow And the meadows of Asphodel; |