HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing Speeded with my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, *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. I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dædal Earth, And Love, and Death, and Birth,— And then I changed my pipings,— It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed: THE QUESTION. I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its 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 blue bells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets 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, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May, With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white, And starry river buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, With moonlight beams of their own watery light; Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way THE TWO SPIRITS. AN ALLEGORY. FIRST SPIRIT. O THOU, who plumed with strong desire Bright are the regions of the air, SECOND SPIRIT. The deathless stars are bright above: And the moon will smile with gentle light FIRST SPIRIT. But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken The red swift clouds of the hurricane Yon declining sun have overtaken, The clash of the hail sweeps over the plainNight is coming! SECOND SPIRIT. I see the light, and I hear the sound; And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Some say there is a precipice Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin And that the languid storm, pursuing Some say when nights are dry and clear, And a silver shape like his early love doth pass |