HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me, as I lie
Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the

caves

Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown: What look is more delightful than the smile With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine are mine,
All light of art or nature;—to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

FROM the forests and highlands

We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,

The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,

Were as silent as ever old Tmolus *

was,

Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,

And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

The light of the dying day,

Speeded with my sweet pipings.

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I

sang of the dædal Earth,

And of Heaven-and the giant wars,

And Love, and Death, and Birth.

And then I changed my pipings,
Singing how down the vale of Manalus

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:

*This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the prize in music.

All wept, as I think both ye now would envy or age had not frozen your blood, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

If

THE QUESTION.

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets; Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth; The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets

Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured

May,

And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering

astray;

And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white;

And starry river buds among the sedge;

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery
light;

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours

Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it !—O, to whom?