THE GOLDEN SILENCE WHAT though I sing no other song? One echo from the mountain air, One ocean murmur, glad and free, One sign that nothing grand or fair In all this world was lost to me. I will not wake the sleeping lyre; I will not strain the chords of thought; The sweetest fruit of all desire Comes its own way, and comes unsought. Though all the bards of earth were dead, And all their music passed away, What Nature wishes should be said She'll find the rightful voice to say! Her heart is in the shimmering leaf, She speaks, in forms that cannot die. The mountain peaks that shine afar, Are living signs of all we are, William Winter [1836 DAWN AND DARK PHOEBUS, arise, SONG And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed, Give life to this dark world which lieth dead; In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And, emperor-like, decore With diadem of pearl thy temples fair: Chase hence the ugly night, Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light. This is that happy morn, That day, long-wished day, Of all my life so dark, (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn, And fates not hope betray,) Which, only white, deserves A diamond for ever should it mark. This is the morn should bring unto this grove My Love, to hear and recompense my love. Fair king, who all preserves, But show thy blushing beams, And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see, than those which by Peneus' streams Did once thy heart surprise. Nay, suns, which shine as clear As thou, when two thou didst to Rome appear. Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise: If that ye, winds, would hear A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre, Your stormy chiding stay; Let Zephyr only breathe, And with her tresses play, Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death. Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels: And everything save her, who all should grace. William Drummond [1585-1649] 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 gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 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 Prelude 1267 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: I am the eye with which the Universe Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] PRELUDE From "The New Day " THE night was dark, though sometimes a faint star The night was dark and still the dawn seemed far, Slowly, within the East, there grew a light The herald of a greater. The pale white and up the height The gray sea grew Turned slowly to pale rose, By one who in his hand a lamp doth hold More bright the East became, the ocean turned Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] DAWN ON THE HEADLAND DAWN-and a magical stillness: on earth, quiescence profound; On the waters a vast Content, as of hunger appeased and stayed; In the heavens a silence that seems not mere privation of sound, But a thing with form and body, a thing to be touched and weighed! Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the cosmic wheel, In the hot collision of Forces, and clangor of boundless Strife, Mid the sound of the speed of the worlds, the rushing worlds, and the peal Of the thunder of Life. William Watson [1858 THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN WHAT Would it mean for you and me If dawn should come no more! |