I need not any hearing tire,
By telling how the sea-born goddess pined For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind
Him all in all unto her doting self.
Who would not be so prison'd? but, fond elf,
He was content to let her amorous plea
Faint through his careless arms; content to see An unseized heaven dying at his feet; Content, O fool! to make a cold retreat, When on the pleasant grass such love, love-lorn, Lay sorrowing; when every tear was born Of diverse passion; when her lips and eyes Were closed in sullen moisture, and quick sighs Came vex'd and pettish through her nostrils small.
Hush! no exclaim-yet, justly might'st thou call Curses upon his head.-I was half glad, But my poor mistress went distract and mad, When the boar tusk'd him: so away she flew To Jove's high throne, and by her plainings drew Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard; Whereon, it was decreed he should be rear'd Each summer-time to life. Lo! this is he, That same Adonis, safe in the privacy Of this still region all his winter-sleep.
Ay, sleep; for when our love-sick queen did weep Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower Heal'd up the wound, and, with a balmy power, Medicined death to a lengthen'd drowsiness: The which she fills with visions, and doth dress In all this quiet luxury; and hath set
Us young immortals, without any let,
To watch his slumber through. 'Tis well nigh pass'd, Even to a moment's filling up, and fast
She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through
The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew
Embower'd sports in Cytherea's isle.
O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death, Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds
In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth,
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx-do thou now, By thy love's milky brow!
By all the trembling mazes that she ran, Hear us, great Pan!
O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,
What time thou wanderest at eventide
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow-girted bees Their golden honeycombs; our village leas Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn; The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year All its completions-be quickly near,
By every wind that nods the mountain pine, O forester divine!
Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit; Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, And gather up all fancifullest shells For thee to tumble into Naiad's cells, And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping; Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping, The while they pelt each other on the crown With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown— By all the echoes that about thee ring, Hear us, O satyr king!
O Hearkener to the loud-clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, When snouted wild boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow grounds, And wither drearily on barren moors: Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledge-see, Great son of Dryope,
The many that are come to pay their vows With leaves about their brows!
Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourn of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth, Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between;
An unknown-but no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, And giving out a shout most heaven-rending, Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan, Upon thy Mount Lycean!
O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm! All records, saving thine, come cool and calm, And shadowy, through the mist of passed years: For others, good or bad, hatred and tears Have become indolent; but touching thine, One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine, One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze, Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades, Struggling, and blood, and shrieks-all dimly fades Into some backward corner of the brain; Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat! Swart planet in the universe of deeds!
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shore of memory; Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified
To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,
And golden-keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly About the great Athenian admiral's mast? What care, though striding Alexander past The Indus with his Macedonian numbers? Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers The glutted Cyclops, what care?—Juliet leaning Amid her window-flowers,-sighing,-weaning
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow, Doth more avail than these: the silver flow Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, Are things to brood on with more ardency Than the death-day of empires.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: "Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,- That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret,
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
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