The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over [flowed. What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden. In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Like a high-born maiden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives [view : Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, All that ever was [thieves. Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 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. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 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! With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 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. X 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. Better than all measures, Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books, are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 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. THE CLOUD. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shades for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, Over earth and ocean with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit |