VIIL Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: IX. Like a high-born maiden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: XI. Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. XII. Sound of vernal showers All that ever was Joyous and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. XIII. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. XIV. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. XV. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? XVI. With thy clear keen joyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. XVIL Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? XVIII. We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. XIX. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. XX. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! XXI. Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. ΤΟ I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden, My spirit is too deeply laden I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, With which I worship thine. LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. THE fountains mingle with the river, See the mountains kiss high heaven, ODE TO LIBERTY. Yet freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying, I. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again The lightning of the nations: Liberty, From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, And, in the rapid plumes of song, Clothed itself sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, II. The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth; Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms. The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. III. Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied His generations under the pavilion Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid, Temple and prison, to many a swarming million, Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, The sister-pest, congregator of slaves: Into the shadow of her pinions wide, Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, IV. The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody On the unapprehensive wild. The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child, Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Egean main V. Athens arose a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of kingliest masonry: the ocean floors By thunder-zoned winds, each head Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. VI. Within the surface of Time's fleeting river Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay Immoveably unquiet, and for ever It trembles, but it cannot pass away! Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast : One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. VII. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, By thy sweet love was sanctified; But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness, Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. See the Baccha of Euripides. |