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HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the grey 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,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

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

Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophesy, all medicine, are mine,
All light of art or nature;-to my song,
Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

FROM the forests and highlands

We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizard 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

In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

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.

M

Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immoveably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the [.
1

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,
Like mountain over mountain huddled-but
Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
And over it a space of watery blue,
Which the keen evening star is shining through.

ARETHUSA.

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,

From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams;—

Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams:
And gliding and springing,

She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,

And Heaven smiled above her,

As she lingered towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook;

And opened a chasm

In the rocks;-with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below:

The beard and the hair
Of the river God were

Seen through the torrent's sweep,

As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight

To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,

And divided at her prayer;
And under the water

The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended,

Her billows unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream:

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main

Alpheus rushed behind,--

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers

Sit on their pearled thrones,

Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,

Over heaps of unvalued stones:

Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams

Weave a net-work of coloured light;

And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night:-
Outspeeding the shark,

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.

At sun-rise they leap

From their cradles steep

In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noon-tide they flow

Through the woods helow

And the meadows of Asphodel;

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