By all the trembling mazes that she ran, Hear us, great Pan !
"O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, What time thou wanderest at eventide Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow-girted bees Their golden honeycombs; our village leas Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn ; The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year All its completions-be quickly near,
By every wind that nods the mountain pine, O forester divine!
"Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies For willing service; whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit; Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw; Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping; Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping, The while they pelt each other on the crown
With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown- By all the echoes that about thee ring, Hear us, O satyr king!
"O Hearkener to tne loud-clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a-swooning over hollow grounds, And wither drearily on barren moors: Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledge-see, Great son of Dryope,
The many that are come to pay their vows With leaves about their brows!
"Be still the unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth, Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth;
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between ;
An unknown-but no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, And giving out a shout most heaven-rending, Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan, Upon thy Mount Lycean!"
Even while they brought the burden to a close, A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That linger'd in the air like dying rolls Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals
Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine. Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine, Young companies nimbly began dancing To the swift treble pipe, and humming string. Ay, those fair living forms swam heavenly To tunes forgotten-out of memory:
Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred Thermopyla its heroes-not yet dead,
But in old marbles ever beautiful.
High genitors, unconscious did they cull
Time's sweet first-fruits-they danced to weariness, And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end Of some strange history, potent to send
young mind from its bodily tenement.
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side; pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him,-Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phœbus mounts the firmament, Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,
Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope
Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,
Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young
Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,
And very, very deadliness did nip
Her motherly cheeks. Aroused from this sad mood By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd, Uplifting his strong bow into the air, Many might after brighter visions stare : After the Argonauts, in blind amaze Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways, Until, from the horizon's vaulted side, There shot a golden splendor far and wide, Spangling those million poutings of the brine With quivering ore: 't was even an awful shine From the exaltation of Apollo's bow;
A heavenly beacon in their dreary wo. Who thus were ripe for high contemplating, Might turn their steps towards the sober ring Where sat Endymion and the aged priest 'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increased The silvery setting of their mortal star. There they discoursed upon the fragile bar That keeps us from our homes ethereal; And what our duties there: to nightly call Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather; To summon all the downiest clouds together For the sun's purple couch; to emulate In ministering the potent rule of fate With speed of fire-tail'd exhalations;
To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
A world of other unguess'd offices. Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,
Into Elysium; vying to rehearse
Each one his own anticipated bliss.
One felt heart-certain that he could not miss
His quick-gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs, Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows Her lips with music for the welcoming. Another wish'd, 'mid that eternal spring, To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails, Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales: Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind, And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind; And, ever after, through those regions be His messenger, his little Mercury.
Some were athirst in soul to see again
Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign In times long past; to sit with them, and talk Of all the chances in their earthly walk; Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores Of happiness, to when upon the moors, Benighted, close they huddled from the cold, And shared their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told
Their fond imaginations,-saving him Whose eye-lids curtain'd up their jewels dim, Endymion: yet hourly had he striven
To hide the cankering venom, that had riven His fainting recollections. Now indeed
His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed The sudden silence, or the whispers low, Or the old eyes dissolving at his wo, Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms, Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms: But in the self-same fixed trance he kept, Like one who on the earth had never stept.
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