294

BY THE WINTER SEA.

BY THE WINTER SEA.

(ELEGIACS).

WEARILY stretches the sand to the surge and the surge to the cloudland;

Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone.
Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles zrdeï your,

Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;
No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of

ether,

But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me

What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame?

Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;

Grey rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by

the weeper.

Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry. Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-weed;

Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide.

Just is the wave which uptore us; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us;

Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the

sand!

Joy to the oak of the mountain: he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts;

Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the

stone.

C. Kingsley.

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES.

295

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES.

HEAR, my beloved, an old Milesian story!-
High, and embosom'd in congregated laurels,
Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland;
In the dim distance amid the skyey billows
Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had placed it.
From the far shores of the bleak resounding island
Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating,
Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,
Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes
Up to the groves of the high embosom❜d temple.
There in a thicket of dedicated roses,

Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision,
Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,
Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat,
And with invisible pilotage to guide it
Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor
Shivering with ecstasy sank upon her bosom.

S. T. Coleridge.

296

IN ARCADY.

IN ARCADY.

(ELEGIACS.)

TRUNKS the forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing,
Boughs with apples laden, beautiful, Hesperian—
Golden, odoriferous, perfume exhaling about them,
Orbs in a dark umbrage luminous and radiant;
To the palate grateful, more luscious were not in Eden,
Or in that fabled garden of Alcinoüs;

Out of a dark umbrage sounds also musical issued,
Birds their sweet transports uttering in melody,
Thrushes clear-piping, wood-pigeons cooing, arousing
Loudly the nightingale, loudly the sylvan echoes;
Waters transpicuous flowed under, flowed to the listening
Ear with a soft murmur, softly soporiferous:

Nor, with ebon locks, too, there wanted, circling, attentive,
Unto the sweet fluting, girls, of a swarthy shepherd;

Over a sunny level their flocks are lazily feeding;
They, of Amor musing, rest in a leafy cavern.

A. H. Clough.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

297

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

I.

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

2.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

3.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

298

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens over-wrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats.