I love Love though he has wings, But, above all other things, Spirit, I love thee Thou art love and life! O come, Make once more my heart thy home! 1820. ΤΟ I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden, My spirit is too deeply laden Ever to burthen thine. I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, Thou needest not fear mine; Innocent is the heart's devotion 1820. SONG OF PROSERPINE WHILST GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, Thou from whose immortal bosom If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers 45 5 Till they grow, in scent and hue 1820. AUTUMN 10 A DIRGE THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying; And the year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, From November to May, 5 In your saddest array; Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 10 The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling. Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray; Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. THE QUESTION I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring . Its 5 green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth; The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 10 15 Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the Day; 20 And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. And nearer to the river's trembling edge 25 There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white; And starry river-buds among the sedge; And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; 30 And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers 35 Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours Within my hand,— and then, elate and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it! - O, to whom? 40 1820. HYMN OF APOLLO THE sleepless Hours who watch me, as I lie Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,- Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 5 My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves 10 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 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 15 Good minds and open actions take new might, I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; 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 With which I soothe them from the western isle? 30 I am the eye with which the universe to my song Victory and praise in their own right belong. 35 1820. 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, 5 |