ΙΟ 20 30 40 THE WILD HUNTSMAN FROM G. A. BÜRGER'S POEM 'DER WILDE JÄGER' THE Wildgrave winds his bugle horn, To horse, to horse! halloo, halloo! His fiery courser snuffs the morn, And thronging serfs their lords pursue. The eager pack, from couples freed, Dash through the bush, the brier, the brake, While, answering hound, and horn, and steed, The mountain echoes startling wake. The beams of God's own hallowed day Loud, long, and deep the bell had tolled: But still the Wildgrave onward rides; Who was each stranger, left and right, The right-hand horseman, young and fair, His smile was like the morn of May; The left, from eye of tawny glare, Shot midnight lightning's lurid ray. He waved his huntsman's cap on high, Cried, 'Welcome, welcome, noble lord! What sport can earth, or sea, or sky, To match the princely chase afford?' 'Cease thy loud bugle's clanging knell,' Cried the fair youth with silver voice; 'And for Devotion's choral swell, Exchange the rude unhallowed noise.' 'Away, and sweep the glades along!' The Sable Hunter hoarse replies; 'To muttering monks leave matin-song, And bells, and books, and mysteries.' The Wildgrave spurred his courser light, O'er moss and moor, o'er holt and hill; And on the left, and on the right, Each stranger horseman followed still. Up springs, from yonder tangled thorn, A stag more white than mountain snow; And louder rung the Wildgrave's horn, 'Hark, forward, forward! holla, ho!' Earnest the right-hand Stranger pleads, The left still cheering to the prey; The impetuous Earl no warning heeds, But furious holds the onward way. 'Away, thou hound! so basely born, Or dread the scourge's echoing blow!'Then loudly rung his bugle-horn, 'Hark forward, forward, holla, ho!' Again uproused, the timorous prey Scours moss and moor, and holt and hill; Hard run, he feels his strength decay, And trusts for life his simple skill. Too dangerous solitude appeared; His harmless head he hopes to shroud. O'er moss and moor, and holt and hill, The furious Earl pursues the chase. Full lowly did the herdsman fall;'O spare, thou noble Baron, spare These herds, a widow's little all; These flocks, an orphan's fleecy care!'— Earnest the right-hand Stranger pleads, Again he winds his bugle-horn, Hark forward, forward, holla, ho!' And through the herd, in ruthless scorn, He cheers his furious hounds to go. In heaps the throttled victims fall; With blood besmeared and white with foam, He seeks, amid the forest's gloom, The humble hermit's hallowed bower. But man and horse, and horn and hound, Fast rattling on his traces go; The sacred chapel rung around With, Hark away! and, holla, ho!' PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) ADONAIS AN ELEGY CN THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS I WEEP for Adonais-he is dead! O! weep for Adonais, though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: 'With me Died Adonais! Till the future dares Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!' Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness? Where was lorn Urania With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awakened from the dream of life'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings.-We decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, com pelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing the unwilling dross, that checks its flight, To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it, for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 100 60 70 Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Weave a network of coloured light; And up through the rifts And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, When they love but live no more. BATTLE OF NAVARINO HELLAS The fleet, which, like a flock Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner. Our winged castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! master. Hassan. Latmos and Ampelos and Phanae saw The wreck Mahmud. The caves of the Icarian isles Told each to the other in loud mockery, And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes, First of the sea-convulsing fight-and thenThou darest to speak ;-senseless are the mountains; Interpret thou their voice. Hassan. My presence bore A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at day-break from the north, and hung As multitudinous on the ocean line As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men, Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle Was kindled. First through the hail of our artillery The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail Poised on a hundred azure mountain-isles. As the sun drinks the dew. What more? We fled! Our noonday path over the sanguine foam Was beaconed,-and the glare struck the sun pale By our consuming transports; the fierce light Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red, And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding The ravening fire even to the water's level: Some were blown up; some, settling heavily, Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind that bore us fast and far, 30 40 50 |