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The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone
In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced
The rustle of those ample skirts about
These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers
Lift up their heads, as still the whisper passed.
Goddess! I have beheld those eyes before,
And their eternal calm, and all that face,

Or I have dreamed."—"Yes," said the supreme shape,
"Thou hast dreamed of me; and awaking up
Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side,

Whose strings touched by thy fingers, all the vast
Unwearied ear of the whole universe

Listened in pain and pleasure at the birth

Of such new tuneful wonder. Is't not strange That thou shouldst weep, so gifted? Tell me, youth, What sorrow thou canst feel: for I am sad When thou dost shed a tear: explain thy griefs To one who in this lonely isle hath been The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life, From the young day when first thy infant hand Plucked witless the weak flowers, till thine arm Could bend that bow heroic to all times. Show thy heart's secret to an ancient Power Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones For prophecies of thee, and for the sake Of loveliness new born."-Apollo then, With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes, Thus answered, while his white melodious throat Throbbed with the syllables: "Mnemosyne! Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how; Why should I tell thee what thou so well seest? Why should I strive to show what from thy lips Would come no mystery? For me, dark, dark, And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes: I strive to search wherefore I am so sad, Until a melancholy numbs my limbs ;

And then upon the grass I sit, and moan,
Like one who once had wings. O why should I
Feel cursed and thwarted, when the liegeless air
Yields to my step aspirant? why should I

- Spurn the green turf as hateful to my feet? Goddess benign, point forth some unknown thing: Are there not other regions than this isle?

What are the stars?

There is the sun, the sun!

And the most patient brilliance of the moon!

And stars by thousands! Point me out the way To any one particular beauteous star,

And I will flit into it with my lyre,

And make its silvery splendour pant with bliss.
I have heard the cloudy thunder: Where is power?
Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity

Makes this alarum in the elements,

While I here idle listen on the shores
In fearless yet in aching ignorance?
O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp,
That waileth every morn and eventide,
Tell me why thus I rave, about these groves!
Mute thou remainest-Mute! yet I can read
A wondrous lesson in thy silent face :
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
Names, deeds, grey legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,

Creations and destroyings, all at once

Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,*
And deify me, as if some blithe wine

Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal."-Thus the God,
While his enkindled eyes, with level glance
Beneath his white soft temples, steadfast kept
Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne.

* Mnemosyne was the goddess of memory.

Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush
All the immortal fairness of his limbs ;

Most like the struggle at the gate of death;
Or liker still to one who should take leave
Of pale immortal death, and with a pang
As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse
Die into life so young Apollo anguished:

:

His very hair, his golden tresses famed
Kept undulation round his eager neck.
During the pain Mnemosyne upheld

Her arms as one who prophesied.—At length
Apollo shrieked ;-and lo! from all his limbs
Celestial

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[graphic]

Poems.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

I.

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 thine 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.

II.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt 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-stainèd mouth ;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

III.

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.

IV.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

VI.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

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