Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones; Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Which amid the streams Weave a network of coloured light; Where the shadowy waves : Are as green as the forest's night :- And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; Beneath the Ortygian shore ; Like spirits that lie In the azure sky When they love but live no more. SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE 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 Fairest children of the hours, 346 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, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; 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 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 Good minds and open actions take new might, Until diminished by the reign of night. I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine. 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? I am the eye with which the Universe HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands We come, we come; Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus * was, Listening to my sweet pipings. Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay The light of the dying day, Speeded with my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, And the brink of the dewy caves, I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dædal Earth, And of Heaven—and the giant wars, And Love, and Death, and Birth. And then I changed my pipings, I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed: It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed: 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. |