190 191 THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK HE sun-beams streak the azure skies, THE and line with light the mountain's brow: The goats wind slow their wonted way, WE MUTABILITY S. ROGERS E are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; streaking the darkness radiantly!-yet soon We rest-a dream has power to poison sleep; it is the same! For, be it joy or sorrow, P. B. SHELLEY 192 THE YEAR N childhood, when with eager eyes all, garbed in fairy guise, Spring sang of heaven; the summer-flowers They came and went-the short-lived four, Far different now;—the whirling year all blent in one dusk hue. 193 LYRA APOSTOLICA HYMN TO LIGHT FIRST-BORN of Chaos, who so fair did'st come Negro's darksome womb! which when it saw the lovely child, the melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled. Thou tide of glory, which no rest doth know, but ever ebb and ever flow! thou golden shower of a true Jove! who does in thee descend, and Heaven to Earth make love! Hail active Nature's watchful life and health! her joy, her ornament and wealth! hail to thy husband heat and thee! thou the world's beauteous Bride, the lusty Bridegroom he! Say from what golden quivers of the sky do all thy winged arrows fly? swiftness and power by birth are thine: from thy great Sire they came, thy Sire the Word divine. 194 Swift as light thoughts their empty career run, thy race is finished, when begun : let a Post-angel start with thee, and thou the goal of Earth shalt reach as soon as he. Thou in the Moon's bright chariot, proud and gay, dost the bright wood of stars survey; and all the year doth with thee bring a thousand flowery lights, thine own nocturnal spring. asham'd and fearful to appear, they screen their horrid shapes with the black Hemisphere. With them there hastes, and wildly takes th' alarm, of painted dreams a busy swarm; at the first opening of thine eye the various clusters break, the antic atoms fly. creep conscious to their secret rests; Nature to thee does reverence pay, ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way. 195 At thy appearance, Grief itself is said to shake his wings and rouse his head; a gentle beamy smile reflected from thy look. to the cheek colour comes and firmness to the knee. to darkness' curtains he retires, in sympathising night he rolls his smoky fires. thy quire of birds about thee play, and all the joyful world salutes the rising day. The ghosts and monster spirits, that did presume a body's privilege to assume, vanish again invisibly and bodies gain again their visibility. 196 All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes, is but thy several liveries: thou the rich dye on them bestow'st, thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go'st. A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st; a crown of studded gold thou bear'st, the virgin lilies in their white are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light. The violet, spring's little infant, stands girt in thy purple swaddling-bands: on the fair tulip thou dost dote; thou cloth'st it with a gay and party-coloured coat. flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she. Ah, Goddess! would thou could'st thy hand withhold and be less liberal to gold; didst thou less value to it give of how much care, alas! might'st thou poor man relieve! 197 To me the Sun is more delightful far, and all fair days much fairer are; but few, ah wondrous few there be who do not gold prefer, O Goddess! ev'n to thee. Through the soft ways of heaven and air and sea, which open all their pores to thee, like a clear river thou dost glide, and with thy living stream through the close channels slide. But, where firm bodies thy free course oppose, gently thy source the land o'erflows; 198 199 takes there possession and does make, of colours mingled, light, a thick and standing lake. But the vast ocean of unbounded day from thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow. THE LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY HE fountains mingle with the river the winds of heaven mix for ever with a sweet emotion; nothing in the world is single, all things by a law divine in one another's being mingle- See the mountains kiss high heaven and the sunlight clasps the earth, A. COWLEY P. B. SHELLEY SONG FOR THE WANDERING JEW HOUGH the torrents from their fountains THOUG roar down many a craggy steep, yet they find among the mountains Clouds that love through air to hasten, ere the storm its fury stills, helmet-like themselves will fasten If on windy days the Raven |