SUMMER AND WINTER.

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds.
From the horizon and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas then for the homeless beggar old!

ODE TO NAPLES.

EPODE I. α.

I STOOD within the city disinterred;

And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood;

I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke —
I felt, but heard not: - through white columns glowed
The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood,

A plane of light between two Heavens of azure :
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine

Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE II. α.

Then gentle winds arose

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-odour keen;
And where the Baian ocean

Welters with airlike motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm ;
I sailed, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.

Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal æther; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime

There streamed a sunlight vapour, like the standard
Of some ætherial host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea

Prophesyings which grew articulate —

They seize me - I must speak them—be they fate!

STROPHE α. I.

Naples thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City which to calm inchantest

The mutinous air and sea: they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven !

Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstained

To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,
Hail, hail, all hail !

STROPHE 6. 2.

Thou youngest giant birth

Which from the groaning earth

Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale ! Last of the Intercessors !

Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors

Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth

Nor let thy high heart fail,

Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors,
With hurried legions move!
Hail, hail, all hail !

ANTISTROPHE α.

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer;

A new Actæon's error

Shall their's have been - devoured by their own hounds! Be thou like the imperial Basilisk

Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!

Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk
Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk :
Fear not, but gaze - for freemen mightier grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe;
If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great — All hail!

ANTISTROPHE 3. 2.

From Freedom's form divine,

From Nature's inmost shrine,