THE CLOUD. In the seas and fountains that shine with morn, Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres, To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim! WILLIAM C. BRYANT. I The Cloud. BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain; And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder; 7 Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead. As, on the jag of a mountain crag Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle, alit, one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest, That orbéd maiden with white fire laden, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, THE CLOUD. When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch, through which I march When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, The sphere-fire above, its soft colors wove, I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when, with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air— I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and upbuild it again. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. I* 9 T The Northern Lights. O claim the Arctic came the sun They froze beneath the light of stars; BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR. That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher, From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale, purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, THE SKYLARK. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows Until we hardly sec, we feel that it is there. II All the earth and air From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. What thou art we know not ; What is most like thee? From rainbow-clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden, In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: |