Yet Love hath echoes truer far And far more sweet Than e'er, beneath the moonlight's star The songs repeat. 'Tis when the sigh,-in youth sincere And only then, The sigh that's breathed for one to hear- Breathed back again. 493 AT THE MID HOUR OF NIGHT Ar the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear. CHARLES WOLFE [1791-1823] 494 THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORunna Nor a drum was heard, not a funeral note, We buried him darkly at dead of night, No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring: And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory. 495 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [1792-1822] HYMN OF PAN FROM the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb, And the lizards below in the grass, Liquid Peneus was flowing, The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, And all that did then attend and follow, I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dædal earth, And of heaven, and the giant wars, 496 It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed. HELLAS THE world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam A brighter Hellas rears its mountains A new Peneus rolls his fountains Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies; O write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be- Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; 497 And leave, if naught so bright may live, Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, O cease! must hate and death return? The world is weary of the past— INVOCATION RARELY, rarely comest thou, Wherefore hast thou left me now How shall ever one like me Spirit false! thou hast forgot All but those who need thee not. As a lizard with the shade Of a trembling leaf, Thou with sorrow art dismay'd; Even the sighs of grief Reproach thee, that thou art not near, And reproach thou wilt not hear. |