Poems. Volume 1

THE POETRY OF SHELLEY

   See’st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending   Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?   Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters—Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.

THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

   A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,   That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.   The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.

THE POETRY OF KEATS

   The song of a nightingale sent thro’ a slumbrous valley,   Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,   Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passionThat wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.

VIOLETS

Violets, shy violets!   How many hearts with you compare!      Who hide themselves in thickest green,            And thence, unseen,   Ravish the enraptured air   With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!Violets, shy violets!   Human hearts to me shall be      Viewless violets in the grass,            And as I pass,   Odours and sweet imagery   Will wait on mine and gladden me!

ANGELIC LOVE

Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips   To meet its earthly mate;Heroic love that to its sphere’s eclipse   Can dare to join its fateWith one beloved devoted human heart,And share with it the passion and the smart,         The undying bliss         Of its most fleeting kiss;         The fading grace         Of its most sweet embrace:—   Angelic love, heroic love!   Whose birth can only be above,   Whose wandering must be on earth,   Whose haven where it first had birth!Love that can part with all but its own worth,   And joy in every sacrifice   That beautifies its Paradise!And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,With earnest tenderness itself consign,And creeping up deliriously entwine         Its dear delicious arms               Round the beloved being!         With fair unfolded charms,               All-trusting, and all-seeing,—Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!While to the panting heart’s dry yearning drouth   Buds the rich dewy mouth—         Tenderly uplifted,         Like two rose-leaves driftedDown in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!         Such love, such love is thine,         Such heart is mine,O thou of mortal visions most divine!

TWILIGHT MUSIC

   Know you the low pervading breeze               That softly sings   In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?   And have you marked their still degrees   Of ebbing melody, like the stringsOf a silver harp swept by a spirit’s hand      In some strange glimmering land,               ’Mid gushing springs,               And glisteningsOf waters and of planets, wild and grand!   And have you marked in that still time   The chariots of those shining cars   Brighten upon the hushing dark,               And bent to harkThat Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,   Pause in the dilating lustre               Of the spheral cluster;   Pause but to renew its sweetness, deepAs dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!   And felt, despite earth’s jarring wars,               When day is done               And dead the sun,   Still a voice divine can sing,   Still is there sympathy can bring               A whisper from the stars!Ah, with this sentience quickly will you knowHow like a tree I tremble to the tones               Of your sweet voice!               How keenly I rejoice   When in me with sweet motions slowThe spiritual music ebbs and moans—Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,Dies in the light of its own paradise,—Dies, and relives eternal from its death,Immortal melodies in each deep breath;Sweeps thro’ my being, bearing up to theeMyself, the weight of its eternity;Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,It marries music with the human lyre,Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.

REQUIEM

Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,   Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,   In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave!Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,   Dead tho’ a thousand hands stretch’d out to save.Thou cam’st to us sighing, and singing and dying,   How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?Placidly fading, and sinking and shading   At last to that shadow, the latest desert;Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.   Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,   The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,   All—all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,   Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;   And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;No last loving token of wedded love broken,   No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,   Fall’n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS

   Take thy lute and singBy the ruined castle walls,Where the torrent-foam falls,And long weeds wave:   Take thy lute and sing,O’er the grey ancestral grave!   Daughter of a King,      Tune thy string.   Sing of happy hours,In the roar of rushing time;Till all the echoes chimeTo the days gone by;   Sing of passing hoursTo the ever-present sky;—   Weep—and let the showers      Wake thy flowers.   Sing of glories gone:—No more the blazoned foldFrom the banner is unrolled;The gold sun is set.   Sing his glory gone,For thy voice may charm him yet;   Daughter of the dawn,      He is gone!   Pour forth all thy grief!Passionately sweep the chords,Wed them quivering to thy words;Wild words of wail!   Shed thy withered grief—But hold not Autumn to thy bale;   The eddy of the leaf      Must be brief!   Sing up to the night:Hard it is for streaming tearsTo read the calmness of the spheres;Coldly they shine;   Sing up to their light;They have views thou may’st divine—   Gain prophetic sight      From their light!   On the windy hillsLo, the little harebell leansOn the spire-grass that it queens,With bonnet blue;   Trusting love instilsLove and subject reverence true;   Learn what love instils      On the hills!   By the bare waysidePlacid snowdrops hang their cheeks,Softly touch’d with pale green streaks,Soon, soon, to die;   On the clothed hedgesideBands of rosy beauties vie,   In their prophesied      Summer pride.   From the snowdrop learn;Not in her pale life lives she,But in her blushing prophecy.Thus be thy hopes,   Living but to yearnUpwards to the hidden scopes;—   Even within the urn      Let them burn!   Heroes of thy race—Warriors with golden crowns,Ghostly shapes with marbled frownsStare thee to stone;   Matrons of thy racePass before thee making moan;   Full of solemn grace      Is their pace.   Piteous their despair!Piteous their looks forlorn!Terrible their ghostly scorn!Still hold thou fast;—   Heed not their despair!—Thou art thy future, not thy past;   Let them glance and glare      Thro’ the air.   Thou the ruin’s bud,Be not that moist rich-smelling weedWith its arras-sembled brede,And ruin-haunting stalk;   Thou the ruin’s bud,Be still the rose that lights the walk,   Mix thy fragrant blood      With the flood!

THE RAPE OF AURORA

Never, O never,   Since dewy sweet FloraWas ravished by Zephyr,   Was such a thing heard            In the valleys so hollow!   Till rosy Aurora,Uprising as ever,   Bright Phosphor to follow,Pale Phoebe to sever,   Was caught like a bird            To the breast of Apollo!Wildly she flutters,   And flushes all overWith passionate mutters   Of shame to the hush            Of his amorous whispers:   But O such a loverMust win when he utters,   Thro’ rosy red lispers,The pains that discover   The wishes that gush            From the torches of Hesperus.One finger just touching   The Orient chamber,Unflooded the gushing   Of light that illumed            All her lustrous unveiling.   On clouds of glow amber,Her limbs richly blushing,   She lay sweetly wailing,In odours that gloomed   On the God as he bloomed            O’er her loveliness paling.Great Pan in his covert   Beheld the rare glistening,The cry of the love-hurt,   The sigh and the kiss            Of the latest close mingling;   But love, thought he, listening,Will not do a dove hurt,   I know,—and a tingling,Latent with bliss,   Prickt thro’ him, I wis,            For the Nymph he was singling.

SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND

The silence of preluded song—Æolian silence charms the woods;Each tree a harp, whose foliaged stringsAre waiting for the master’s touchTo sweep them into storms of joy,Stands mute and whispers not; the birdsBrood dumb in their foreboding nests,Save here and there a chirp or tweet,That utters fear or anxious love,Or when the ouzel sends a swiftHalf warble, shrinking back againHis golden bill, or when aloudThe storm-cock warns the dusking hillsAnd villages and valleys round:For lo, beneath those ragged cloudsThat skirt the opening west, a streamOf yellow light and windy flameSpreads lengthening southward, and the skyBegins to gloom, and o’er the groundA moan of coming blasts creeps lowAnd rustles in the crisping grass;Till suddenly with mighty armsOutspread, that reach the horizon round,The great South-West drives o’er the earth,And loosens all his roaring robesBehind him, over heath and moor.He comes upon the neck of night,Like one that leaps a fiery steedWhose keen black haunches quivering shineWith eagerness and haste, that needsNo spur to make the dark leagues fly!Whose eyes are meteors of speed;Whose mane is as a flashing foam;Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks;—He comes, and while his growing gusts,Wild couriers of his reckless course,Are whistling from the daggered gorse,And hurrying over fern and broom,Midway, far off, he feigns to haltAnd gather in his streaming train.Now, whirring like an eagle’s wingPreparing for a wide blue flight;Now, flapping like a sail that tacksAnd chides the wet bewildered mast;Now, screaming like an anguish’d thingChased close by some down-breathing beak;Now, wailing like a breaking heart,That will not wholly break, but hopesWith hope that knows itself in vain;Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;Now, cooing like a woodland dove;Now, up again in roar and wrathHigh soaring and wide sweeping; now,With sudden fury dashing downFull-force on the awaiting woods.Long waited there, for aspens frailThat tinkle with a silver bell,To warn the Zephyr of their love,When danger is at hand, and wakeThe neighbouring boughs, surrendering allTheir prophet harmony of leaves,Had caught his earliest windward thought,And told it trembling; naked birkDown showering her dishevelled hair,And like a beauty yielding upHer fate to all the elements,Had swayed in answer; hazels close,Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,And briared brakes that line the dellsWith shaggy beetling brows, had sungShrill music, while the tattered flawsTore over them, and now the wholeTumultuous concords, seized at onceWith savage inspiration,—pine,And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,And ash, and oak, and oakling, raveAnd shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,And bend their stems, and bow their heads,And grind, and groan, and lion-likeRoar to the echo-peopled hillsAnd ravenous wilds, and crake-like cryWith harsh delight, and cave-like callWith hollow mouth, and harp-like thrillWith mighty melodies, sublime,From clumps of column’d pines that waveA lofty anthem to the sky,Fit music for a prophet’s soul—And like an ocean gathering power,And murmuring deep, while down belowReigns calm profound;—not trembling nowThe aspens, but like freshening wavesThat fall upon a shingly beach;—And round the oak a solemn rollOf organ harmony ascends,And in the upper foliage soundsA symphony of distant seas.The voice of nature is abroadThis night; she fills the air with balm;Her mystery is o’er the land;And who that hears her now and yieldsHis being to her yearning tones,And seats his soul upon her wings,And broadens o’er the wind-swept worldWith her, will gather in the flightMore knowledge of her secret, moreDelight in her beneficence,Than hours of musing, or the loreThat lives with men could ever give!Nor will it pass away when mornShall look upon the lulling leaves,And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,Dreams o’er the paths of peaceful shade;—For every elemental powerIs kindred to our hearts, and onceAcknowledged, wedded, once embraced,Once taken to the unfettered sense,Once claspt into the naked life,The union is eternal.

WILL O’ THE WISP

   Follow me, follow me,Over brake and under tree,Thro’ the bosky tanglery,         Brushwood and bramble!   Follow me, follow me,         Laugh and leap and scramble!   Follow, follow,   Hill and hollow,   Fosse and burrow,   Fen and furrow,Down into the bulrush beds,’Midst the reeds and osier heads,In the rushy soaking damps,Where the vapours pitch their camps,   Follow me, follow me,         For a midnight ramble!O! what a mighty fog,What a merry night O ho!Follow, follow, nigher, nigher—Over bank, and pond, and briar,Down into the croaking ditches,   Rotten log,   Spotted frog,   Beetle bright   With crawling light,         What a joy O ho!Deep into the purple bog—         What a joy O ho!Where like hosts of puckered witchesAll the shivering agues sitWarming hands and chafing feet,By the blue marsh-hovering oils:O the fools for all their moans!Not a forest mad with fireCould still their teeth, or warm their bones,Or loose them from their chilly coils.   What a clatter,   How they chatter!   Shrink and huddle,   All a muddle!         What a joy O ho!Down we go, down we go,         What a joy O ho!Soon shall I be down below,Plunging with a grey fat friar,Hither, thither, to and fro,Breathing mists and whisking lamps,Plashing in the shiny swamps;While my cousin Lantern Jack,With cook ears and cunning eyes,Turns him round upon his back,Daubs him oozy green and black,Sits upon his rolling size,Where he lies, where he lies,Groaning full of sack—Staring with his great round eyes!What a joy O ho!Sits upon him in the swampsBreathing mists and whisking lamps!         What a joy O ho!Such a lad is Lantern Jack,         When he rides the black nightmareThrough the fens, and puts a glareIn the friar’s track.Such a frolic lad, good lack!To turn a friar on his back,Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.Lay him sprawling, smack!Such a lad is Lantern Jack!Such a tricksy lad, good lack!         What a joy O ho!   Follow me, follow me,Where he sits, and you shall see!

SONG

Fair and false!  No dawn will greet   Thy waking beauty as of old;The little flower beneath thy feet   Is alien to thy smile so cold;The merry bird flown up to meetYoung morning from his nest i’ the wheat   Scatters his joy to wood and wold,   But scorns the arrogance of gold.False and fair!  I scarce know why,   But standing in the lonely air,And underneath the blessed sky,   I plead for thee in my despair;—For thee cut off, both heart and eyeFrom living truth; thy spring quite dry;   For thee, that heaven my thought may share,   Forget—how false! and think—how fair!

SONG

Two wedded lovers watched the rising moon,   That with her strange mysterious beauty glowing,   Over misty hills and waters flowing,Crowned the long twilight loveliness of June:   And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,   The solemn secret of fist love did wake.Above the hills the blushing orb arose;   Her shape encircled by a radiant bower,   In which the nightingale with charméd powerPoured forth enchantment o’er the dark repose:   And thus in me, and thus in me, they said,   Earth’s mists did with the sweet new spirit wed.Far up the sky with ever purer beam,   Upon the throne of night the moon was seated,   And down the valley glens the shades retreated,And silver light was on the open stream.   And thus in me, and thus in me, they sighed,   Aspiring Love has hallowed Passion’s tide.

SONG

I cannot lose thee for a day,   But like a bird with restless wingMy heart will find thee far away,   And on thy bosom fall and sing,      My nest is here, my rest is here;—   And in the lull of wind and rain,   Fresh voices make a sweet refrain,      ‘His rest is there, his nest is there.’With thee the wind and sky are fair,   But parted, both are strange and dark;And treacherous the quiet air   That holds me singing like a lark,      O shield my love, strong arm above!   Till in the hush of wind and rain,   Fresh voices make a rich refrain,      ‘The arm above will shield thy love.’

DAPHNE

Musing on the fate of Daphne,Many feelings urged my breast,For the God so keen desiring,And the Nymph so deep distrest.Never flashed thro’ sylvan valleyVisions so divinely fair!He with early ardour glowing,She with rosy anguish rare.Only still more sweet and lovelyFor those terrors on her brows,Those swift glances wild and brilliant,Those delicious panting vows.Timidly the timid shouldersShrinking from the fervid hand!Dark the tide of hair back-flowingFrom the blue-veined temples bland!Lovely, too, divine ApolloIn the speed of his pursuit;With his eye an azure lustre,And his voice a summer lute!Looking like some burnished eagleHovering o’er a fluttered bird;Not unseen of silver Naiad,And of wistful Dryad heard!Many a morn the naked beautySaw her bright reflection drownIn the flowing smooth-faced river,While the god came sheening down.Down from Pindus bright PeneusTells its muse-melodious source;Sacred is its fountained birthplace,And the Orient floods its course.Many a morn the sunny darlingSaw the rising chariot-rays,From the winding river-reaches,Mellowing in amber haze.Thro’ the flaming mountain gorgesLo, the River leaps the plain;Like a wild god-stridden courser,Tossing high its foamy mane.Then he swims thro’ laurelled sunlight,Full of all sensations sweet,Misty with his morning incense,To the mirrored maiden’s feet!Wet and bright the dinting pebblesShine where oft she paused and stood;All her dreamy warmth revolving,While the chilly waters wooed.Like to rosy-born Aurora,Glowing freshly into view,When her doubtful foot she venturesOn the first cold morning blue.White as that Thessalian lily,Fairest Tempe’s fairest flower,Lo, the tall Peneïan virginStands beneath her bathing bower.There the laurell’d wreaths o’erarchingCrown’d the dainty shuddering maid;There the dark prophetic laurelKiss’d her with its sister shade.There the young green glistening leafletsHush’d with love their breezy peal;There the little opening floweretsBlush’d beneath her vermeil heel!There among the conscious arboursSounds of soft tumultuous wail,Mysteries of love, melodious,Came upon the lyric gale!Breathings of a deep enchantment,Effluence of immortal grace,Flitted round her faltering footstep,Spread a balm about her face!Witless of the enamour’d presence,Like a dreamy lotus budFrom its drowsy stem down-drooping,Gazed she in the glowing flood.Softly sweet with fluttering presage,Felt she that ethereal sense,Drinking charms of love delirious,Reaping bliss of love intense!All the air was thrill’d with sunrise,Birds made music of her name,And the god-impregnate waterClaspt her image ere she came.Richer for that glance unconscious!Dearer for that soft dismay!And the sudden self-possession!And the smile as bright as day!Plunging ’mid her scattered tresses,With her blue invoking eyes;See her like a star descending!Like a rosebud see her rise!Like a rosebud in the morningDashing off its jewell’d dews,Ere unfolding all its fragranceIt is gathered by the muse!Beauteous in the foamy laughterBubbling round her shrinking waist,Lo! from locks and lips and eyelidsRain the glittering pearl-drops chaste!And about the maiden raptureStill the ruddy ripples play’d,Ebbing round in startled circletsWhen her arms began to wade;Flowing in like tides attractedTo the glowing crescent shine!Clasping her ambrosial whitenessLike an Autumn-tinted vine!Sinking low with love’s emotion!Levying with look and toneAll love’s rosy arts to mimicCytherea’s magic zone!Trembling up with adorationTo the crimson daisy tipBudding from the snowy bosom—Fainter than the rose-red lip!Rising in a storm of wavelets,That for shelter, feigning fright,Prest to those twin-heaving havens,Harbour’d there beneath her light;Gleaming in a whirl of eddiesRound her lucid throat and neck;Eddying in a gleam of dimplesUp against her bloomy cheek;Bribing all the breezy waterWith rich warmth, the nymph to keepIn a self-imprison’d plaisance,Tempting her from deep to deep.Till at last delirious passionThrill’d the god to wild excess,And the fervour of a momentMade divinity confess;And he stood in all his glory!But so radiant, being near,That her eyes were frozen on himIn a fascinated fear!All with orient splendour shining,All with roseate birth aglow,Gleam’d the golden god before her,With his golden crescent bow.Soon the dazzled light subsided,And he seem’d a beauteous youth,Form’d to gain the maiden’s murmurs,And to pledge the vows of truth.Ah! that thus he had continued!O, that such for her had been!Graceful with all godlike beauty,But so humanly serene!Cheeks, and mouth, and mellow ringlets,Bounteous as the mid-day beam;Pleading looks and wistful tremour,Tender as a maiden’s dream!Palms that like a bird’s throbb’d bosomPalpitate with eagerness,Lips, the bridals of the roses,Dewy sweet from the caress!Lips and limbs, and eyes and ringlets,Swaying, praying to one prayer,Like a lyre, swept by a spirit,In the still, enraptur’d air.Like a lyre in some far valley,Uttering ravishments divine!All its strings to viewless fingersYearning, modulations fine!Yearning with melodious fervour!Like a beauteous maiden flower,When the young beloved three pacesHovers from the bridal bower.Throbbing thro’ the dawning stillness!As a heart within a breast,When the young beloved is steppingRadiant to the nuptial nest.O for Daphne! gentle DaphneEver warmer by degreesWhispers full of hopes and visionsThrong her ears like honey bees!Never yet was lonely blossomWoo’d with such delicious voice!Never since hath mortal maidenDwelt on such celestial choice!Love-suffused she quivers, falters—Falters, sighs, but never speaks,All her rosy blood up-gushingOverflows her ripe young cheeks.Blushing, sweet with virgin blushes,All her loveliness a-flame,Stands she in the orient waters,Stricken o’er with speechless shame!Ah! but lovelier, ever lovelier,As more deep the colour glows,And the honey-laden lilyChanges to the fragrant rose.While the god with meek embraces,Whispering all his sacred charms,Softly folds her, gently holds her,In his white encircling arms!But, O Dian! veil not whollyThy pale crescent from the morn!Vanish not, O virgin goddess,With that look of pallid scorn!Still thy pure protecting influenceShed from those fair watchful eyes!—Lo! her angry orb has vanished,And the bright sun thrones the skies!Voicelessly the forest VirginVanished! but one look she gave—Keen as Niobean arrowThro’ the maiden’s heart it drave.Thus toward that throning bosomWhere all earth is warmed,—each spotNourished with autumnal blessings—Icy chill was Daphne caught.Icy chill! but swift revulsionAll her gentler self renewed,Even as icy Winter quickensWith bud-opening warmth imbued.Even as a torpid brooklet,That to the night-gleaming moonFlashed in turn the frozen glances,Melts upon the breast of noon.But no more—O never, never,Turns she to that bosom bright,Swiftly all her senses counsel,All her nerves are strung to flight.O’er the brows of radiant PindusRolls a shadow dark and cold,And a sound of lamentationIssues from its mournful fold.Voice of the far-sighted Muses!Cry of keen foreboding song!Every cleft of startled TempeTingles with it sharp and long.Over bourn and bosk and dingle,Over rivers, over rills,Runs the sad subservient EchoToward the dim blue distant hills!And another and another!’Tis a cry more wild than all;And the hills with muffled voicesAnswer ‘Daphne!’ to the call.And another and another!’Tis a cry so wildly sweet,That her charmed heart turns rebelTo the instinct of her feet;And she pauses for an instant;But his arms have scarcely slidRound her waist in cestian girdles,And his low voluptuous lidLifted pleading, and the honeyOf his mouth for hers athirst,Ruby glistening, raised for moisture—Like a bud that waits to burstIn the sweet espousing showers—And his tongue has scarce begunWith its inarticulate burthen,And the clouds scarce show the sunAs it pierces thro’ a creviceOf the mass that closed it o’er,When again the horror flashes—And she turns to flight once more!And again o’er radiant PindusRolls the shadow dark and cold,And the sound of lamentationIssues from its sable fold!And again the light winds chide herAs she darts from his embrace—And again the far-voiced echoesSpeak their tidings of the chase.Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,O’er the glimmering sands she speeds;Wildly now as in the furzesFrom the piercing spikes she bleeds.Deeply and with direful anguish,As above each crimson dropPassion checks the god Apollo,And love bids him weep and stop.—He above each drop of crimsonShadowing—like the laurel leafThat above himself will shadow—Sheds a fadeless look of grief.Then with love’s remorseful discord,With its own desire at war,Sighing turns, while dimly fleetingDaphne flies the chase afar.But all nature is against her!Pan, with all his sylvan troop,Thro’ the vista’d woodland valleysBlocks her course with cry and whoop!In the twilights of the thicketsTrees bend down their gnarled boughs,Wild green leaves and low curved branchesHold her hair and beat her brows.Many a brake of brushwood covert,Where cold darkness slumbers mute,Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,Slides a hand to clutch her foot.Glens and glades of lushest verdureToil her in their tawny mesh,Wilder-woofed ways and alleysLock her struggling limbs in leash.Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,Knot themselves to make her trip;Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretchingPut a bridle on her lip;Many a winding lane betrays her,Many a sudden bosky shoot,And her knee makes many a stumbleO’er some hidden damp old root,Whose quaint face peers green and dusky’Mongst the matted growth of plants,While she rises wild and weltering,Speeding on with many pants.Tangles of the wild red strawberrySpread their freckled trammels frail;In the pathway creeping bramblesCatch her in their thorny trail.All the widely sweeping greenswardShifts and swims from knoll to knoll;Grey rough-fingered oak and elm woodPush her by from bole to bole.Groves of lemon, groves of citron,Tall high-foliaged plane and palm,Bloomy myrtle, light-blue olive,Wave her back with gusts of balm.Languid jasmine, scrambling briony,Walls of close-festooning braid,Fling themselves about her, minglingWith her wafted looks, waylaid.Twisting bindweed, honey’d woodbine,Cling to her, while, red and blue,On her rounded form ripe berriesDash and die in gory dew.Running ivies dark and lingeringRound her light limbs drag and twine;Round her waist with languorous tendrilsReels and wreathes the juicy vine;Reining in the flying creatureWith its arms about her mouth;Bursting all its mellowing bunchesTo seduce her husky drouth;Crowning her with amorous clusters;Pouring down her sloping backFresh-born wines in glittering rillets,Following her in crimson track.Buried, drenched in dewy foliage,Thus she glimmers from the dawn,Watched by every forest creature,Fleet-foot Oread, frolic Faun.Silver-sandalled ArethusaNot more swiftly fled the sands,Fled the plains and fled the sunlights,Fled the murmuring ocean strands.O, that now the earth would open!O, that now the shades would hide!O, that now the gods would shelter!Caverns lead and seas divide!Not more faint soft-lowing IoPanted in those starry eyes,When the sleepless midnight meadowsPiteously implored the skies!Still her breathless flight she urgesBy the sanctuary stream,And the god with golden swiftnessFollows like an eastern beam.Her the close bewildering greeneryDarkens with its duskiest green,—Him each little leaflet welcomes,Flushing with an orient sheen.Thus he nears, and now all TempeRings with his melodious cry,Avenues and blue expansesBeam in his large lustrous eye!All the branches start to music!As if from a secret springThousands of sweet bills are bubblingIn the nest and on the wing.Gleams and shines the glassy riverAnd rich valleys every one;But of all the throbbing beautyBrightest! singled by the sun!Ivy round her glimmering ancle,Vine about her glowing brow,Never sure was bride so beauteous,Daphne, chosen nymph, as thou!Thus he nears! and now she feels himBreathing hot on every limb;And he hears her own quick pantings—Ah! that they might be for him.O, that like the flower he tramples,Bending from his golden tread,Full of fair celestial ardours,She would bow her bridal head.O, that like the flower she presses,Nodding from her lily touch,Light as in the harmless breezes,She would know the god for such!See! the golden arms are round her—To the air she grasps and clings!See! his glowing arms have wound her—To the sky she shrieks and springs!See! the flushing chace of TempeTrembles with Olympian air—See! green sprigs and buds are shootingFrom those white raised arms of prayer!In the earth her feet are rooting!—Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,Hair and lips and stretching fingers,Fade away—and fadeless rise.And the god whose fervent raptureClasps her finds his close embraceFull of palpitating branches,And new leaves that bud apace,Bound his wonder-stricken forehead;—While in ebbing measures slowSounds of softly dying pulsesPause and quiver, pause and go;Go, and come again, and flutterOn the verge of life,—then flee!All the white ambrosial beautyIs a lustrous Laurel Tree!Still with the great panting love-chaseAll its running sap is warmed;—But from head to foot the virginIs transfigured and transformed.Changed!—yet the green Dryad natureIs instinct with human ties,And above its anguish’d loverBreathes pathetic sympathies;Sympathies of love and sorrow;Joy in her divine escape;Breathing through her bursting foliageComfort to his bending shape.Vainly now the floating NaiadsSeek to pierce the laurel maze,Nought but laurel meets their glances,Laurel glistens as they gaze.Nought but bright prophetic laurel!Laurel over eyes and brows,Over limbs and over bosom,Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!And in vain the listening DryadShells her hand against her ear!—All is silence—save the echoTravelling in the distance drear.