Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems—
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled

To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove
Wax'd
green,

and flowers burst forth like starry beams; The grass

in the warm sun did start and move, And sea-buds burst under the waves serene. How

many a one, though none be near to love,
Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
In any mirror—or the spring's young minions,
The winged leaves amid the copses green:

How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
And his own steps, and over wide dominions

Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast, More feet than storms. The wide world shrinks below, When winter and despondency are past.

Shelley.

Ye have been fresh and green,

Ye have been fill'd with flowers,
And

ye

the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.

You have beheld how they

With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away

The richer cowslips home.

You've heard them sweetly sing,

And seen them in a round ;
Each virgin like a spring,

With honeysuckles crown'd.

a

DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair ;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more
By reason of his fallen divinity,
Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, No further than to where his feet had stray'd, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bow'd head seem'd list’ning to the Earth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

a

It seem'd no force could wake him from his place ; But there came one, who with a kindred hand Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low With reverence, though to one who knew it not. She was a Goddess of the infant world ; By her in stature the tall Amazon Had stood a pigmy's height : she would have ta'en Achilles by the hair and bent his neck ; Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, Pedestal'd haply in a palace court, When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. But oh! how unlike marble was that face : How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear Was with its stored thunder labouring up. One hand she press'd upon that aching spot Where beats the human heart, as if just there, Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain : The other

upon

Saturn's bended neck She laid, and to the level of his ear Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake In solemn tenour and deep organ tone : Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue Would come in these-like accents; O how frail To that large utterance of the early Gods !...

II

As when, upon a trancèd summer-night, Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,

Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave ;
So came these words and went; the while in tears
She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground,
Just where her falling hair might be outspread
A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet.
One moon, with alteration slow, had shed
Her silver seasons four upon the night,
And still these two were postured motionless,
Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;
The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet :
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow of the place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess.

Keats.

.

Leans now the fair willow, dreaming
Amid her locks of green.
In the driving snow she was parch'd and cold,
And in midnight hath been
Swept by blasts of the void night,
Lash'd by the rains.
Now of that wintry dark and bleak
No memory remains.

In mute desire she sways softly ;
Thrilling sap up-flows ;
She praises God in her beauty and grace,

, Whispers delight. And there flows

A delicate wind from the Southern seas,
Kissing her leaves. She sighs.
While the birds in her tresses make merry ;
Burns the Sun in the skies.

Walter de la Mare.

91

Song
The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow

Above the swelling stream ;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,

And wild the clouded gleam.
The thistle now is older,
His stalk begins to moulder,

His head is white as snow;
The branches all are barer,
The linnet's

song
The robin pipeth now.

is rarer,

Dixon.

92

I

A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers :

To himself he talks ;
For at éventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh

In the walks ;

Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers :

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly ; Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.