Classic Poem

CANTO I

Over a bloomy land, untrod
By heavier foot than bird or bee
Lays on the grassy-bosomed sod,
I passed one day in reverie:
High on his unpavilioned throne
The heaven's hot tyrant sat alone,
And like the fabled king of old
Was turning all he touched to gold.
The glittering fountains seemed to pour
Steep downward rills of molten ore,
Glassily tinkling smooth between
Broom-shaded banks of golden green,
And o'er the yellow pasture straying
Dallying still yet undelaying,
In hasty trips from side to side
Footing adown their steepy slide
Headlong, impetuously playing
With the flowery border pied,
That edged the rocky mountain stair,
They pattered down incessant there,
To lowlands sweet and calm and wide.
With golden lip and glistening bell
Burned every bee-cup on the fell,
Whate'er its native unsunned hue,
Snow-white or crimson or cold blue;
Even the black lustres of the sloe
Glanced as they sided to the glow;
And furze in russet frock arrayed
With saffron knots, like shepherd maid,
Broadly tricked out her rough brocade.
The singed mosses curling here,
A golden fleece too short to shear!
Crumbled to sparkling dust beneath
My light step on that sunny heath.
Light! for the ardour of the clime
Made rare my spirit, that sublime
Bore me as buoyant as young Time
Over the green Earth's grassy prime,
Ere his slouch'd wing caught up her slime;
And sprang I not from clay and crime,
Had from those humming beds of thyme
Lifted me near the starry chime
To learn an empyrean rhyme.

No melody beneath the moon
Sweeter than this deep runnel tune!
Here on the greensward grown hot gray,
Crisp as the unshorn desert hay,
Where his moist pipe the dulcet rill
For humorous grasshopper doth fill,
That spits himself from blade to blade
By long o'er-rest uneasy made;
Here, ere the stream by fountain pushes
Lose himself brightly in the rushes
With butterfly path among the bushes,
I'll lay me, on these mosses brown,
Murmuring beside his murmurs down,
And from the liquid tale he tells
Glean out some broken syllables,
Or close mine eyes in dreamy swoon,
As by hoarse-winding deep Gihoon
Soothes with the hum his idle pain
The melancholy Tartar swain,
Sole mark on that huge-meadowed plain!

Hie on to great Ocean! hie on! hie on!
Fleet as water can gallop, hie on!
Hear ye not thro' the ground
How the sea-trumpets sound
Round the sea-monarch's shallop, hie on!

Hie on to brave Ocean! hie on! hie on!
From the sleek mountain levels, hie on!
Hear ye not in the boom
Of the water-bell's womb
Pleasant whoop to sea-revels, hie on!

Hie on to bright Ocean! hie on! hie on!
'Tis the store of rich waters, hie on!
Hear ye not the rough sands
Rolling gold on the strands
For poor Earth's sons and daughters, hie on!

Hie on to calm Ocean! hie on! hie on!
Summer-rest from earth riot, hie on!
Hear ye not the smooth tide
With deep murmur and wide
Call ye down to its quiet, hie on!

Thus to the babbling streamlet elves
To haste them down the slopes and shelves,
Methought some Naiad of their fall
In her bright dropping sparry hall
Sang to her glassy virginal. —

Perchance to me monition sweet!

I started upright to my feet
Attent: 'twas but a fancy dream!
I only heard in measure meet
The pulses of the fountain beat,
As onward prest the throbbing stream.
Fair fall no less my fancy dream!
I have been still led like a child
My heedless, wayward path and wild
Thro' this rough world by feebler clues,
So they were bright, than rainbow dews
Spun by the insect gossamer
To climb with thro' the ropy air.
Fair fall ye then, my fancy dream!
I'll with this labyrinthian stream,
Where'er it flow, where'er it cease,
There be my pathway and my peace!

Swift as a star falls thro' the night,
Swift as a sunshot dart of light,
Down from the hill's heaven-touching height
The streamlet vanished from my sight!

I crept me to a promontory
Where it had fallen from earth's top storey,
And peering over, saw its flow,
A cataract white of smoke and snow,
Looping in fleecy shawls below;
Frail footing on such shrouds as these!
Elves may descend them if they please;
But here, by help of bushy stem
That plumes the hill's huge diadem,
By hoar rock, its gigantic gem
Far glancing o'er the prostrate seas,
Into the vale that spreads to them
Lark-like I'll drop by glad degrees.

Shrill on those lofty-sloping leas
The wind-bells sounded in the breeze,
Dingling beside me, as I glid,
So sweet, I scarce knew what I did;
But shrilly, too, as that lithe shell
Blown from old Ocean's world-broad well,
When the red hour of morn's begun
And Zephyr posts before the Sun.
Yet shriller still than rings at morn
The wet-mouthed wind-god's broadening horn,
Sudden above my head I heard
The cliff-scream of the thunder-bird,
The rushing of his forest wings,
A hurricane when he swoops or springs,
And saw upon the darkening glade
Cloud broad his sun-eclipsing shade.

With the shrill clang that cleft the skies
When he flew Joveward with his prize,
The golden-haired Dardanian boy,
With such rude burst of robber joy,
Rose the sun-scorner; from earth's shore
My boy-weight like a worm he bore
Methought to heaven's embowed floor;
My brain turned — I could see no more!

O blest unfabled Incense Tree,
That burns in glorious Araby,
With red scent chalicing the air,
Till earth-life grow Elysian there!

Half buried to her flaming breast
In this bright tree, she makes her nest,
Hundred-sunned Phaenix! when she must
Crumble at length to hoary dust!

Her gorgeous death-bed! her rich pyre
Burnt up with aromatic fire!
Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!
Her birthplace when self-born again!

The mountainless green wilds among,
Here ends she her unechoing song!
With amber tears and odorous sighs
Mourned by the desert where she dies!

Laid like the young fawn mossily
In sun-green vales of Araby,
I woke hard by the Phaenix tree
That with shadeless boughs flamed over me;
And upward called by a dumb cry
With moonbroad orbs of wonder, I
Beheld the immortal Bird on high
Glassing the great sun in her eye.
Stedfast she gazed upon his fire,
Still her destroyer and her sire!
As if to his her soul of flame
Had flown already, whence it came;
Like those that sit and glare so still,
Intense with their death struggle, till
We touch, and curdle at their chill! —
But breathing yet while she doth burn,
The deathless Daughter of the sun!
Slowly to crimson embers turn
The beauties of the brightsome one.
O'er the broad nest her silver wings
Shook down their wasteful glitterings;
Her brinded neck high-arched in air
Like a small rainbow faded there;
But brighter glowed her plumy crown
Mouldering to golden ashes down;
With fume of sweet woods, to the skies,
Pure as a Saint's adoring sighs,
Warm as a prayer in Paradise,
Her life-breath rose in sacrifice!
The while with shrill triumphant tone
Sounding aloud, aloft, alone,
Ceaseless her joyful deathwail she
Sang to departing Araby!

Deep melancholy wonder drew
Tears from my heartspring at that view;
Like cresset shedding its last flare
Upon some wistful mariner,
The Bird, fast blending with the sky,
Turned on me her dead-gazing eye
Once — and as surge to shallow spray
Sank down to vapoury dust away!

O, fast her amber blood doth flow
From the heart-wounded Incense Tree,
Fast as earth's deep-embosomed woe
In silent rivulets to the sea!

Beauty may weep her fair first-born,
Perchance in as resplendent tears,
Such golden dewdrops bow the corn
When the stern sickleman appears.

But oh! such perfume to a bower
Never allured sweet-seeking bee,
As to sip fast that nectarous shower
A thirstier minstrel drew in me!

My burning soul one drop did quaff —
Heaven reeled and gave a thunder-laugh!
Earth reeled, as if with pendulous swing
She rose each side thro' half her ring,
That I, head downward, twice uphurled,
Saw twice the deep blue underworld,
Twice, at one glance, beneath me lie
The bottomless, boundless, void sky!
Tho' inland far, me seemed around
Ocean came on with swallowing sound
Like moving mountains serried high!
Methought a thousand daystars burned
By their mere fury as they turned,
Bewildering heaven with too much bright,
Till day looked like a daylight night.
Brief chaos, only of the brain!
Heaven settled on its poles again,
And all stood still, but dizzily.

Light-trooping o'er the distant lea
A band I saw, where Revelry
Seemed on her bacchant foot to be,
And heard the dry tambour afar
Before her Corybantian car
Booming the rout to winy war.
Forward I felt my spirit chime
Awhoop with this hot-raging rhyme,
That, breathed up by the feverish crew,
While back their Maenad locks they threw,
O'er them imbrowned the welkin blue.

Ambition mad, when most sublime!
Fain had I clomb Heaven's empery,
Fain would my Titan spirit climb
Mountain-topt mountain arduously,
To whoop the far uproar to me!
Such insane power and subtilty
The magic drop ethereal gave,
Tireless I clomb that palmy tree
And saw broad-landed Earth how brave!
Low on the horizontal lee
I saw, bedreamed, far ocean dumb
Upgathering his white skirts to come
Midland; his arms twixt Araby
And Europe, Afric, India, spread
I saw; the Mediterraneans three,
Azure, and orient grey, and red,
Washing at once the earth and sky;
With the untravelled wastes that lie
Of greenest ocean, where the South
Swills it with Demogorgon drouth,
Disgorging amid foam and roar
His salt draught back to every shore

Mute as I gaze my feet below,
By times the silvery ashes glow
Under me, where the Bird of Fire
In her own flames seemed to expire,
Chanting her odorous monody;
Methought in each faint glow, again
I saw her last dim glance at me
Languid with hope akin to pain.

" How, if the juice with ether rife,
Elixir of superfluous life,
Instinct with spiritual flame
Which from you still of splendour came,
Might prove more quick restorative
Of her, than Hippocrat could give? "

So thought I, and with fancy fired
Did what the draught itself inspired:
I sprinkled on the embers white
Few drops; they curdle — close — unite,
Each with his orb of atomies,
Till in firm corporation these
Leaguing again by law occult,
Shapening and shapening by degrees,
Develop fair the full result;
And like the sun in giant mould,
Cast of unnumbered stars, behold
The Phaenix with her crest of gold,
Her silver wings, her starry eyes,
The Phaenix from her ashes rise!

Now was the wherefore easy scanned,
She bore me from my bloomy land,
Threw on me her last filmed look;
Smouldering aidless in her nook
Years had departed ere she grew
By sun and starlight bird anew;
But their full essence poured in flame,
Distilment sweet! Nepenthe true!
(By nature panacee sure, and name!)
Poured on her dust-dismembered frame,
Phaenix at once to heaven she flew!

Over hills and uplands high
Hurry me, Nymphs! O, hurry me!
Where green Earth from azure sky
Seems but one blue step to be;
Where the sun his wheel of gold
Burnishes deeply in her mould,
And her shining walks uneven
Seem declivities of Heaven.
Come! where high Olympus nods,
Groundsill to the hall of Gods!
Let us thro' the breathless air
Soar insuperable, where
Audibly in mystic ring
The angel orbs are heard to sing;
And from that bright vantage ground
Viewing nether heaven profound,
Mark the eagle near the sun
Scorching to gold his pinions dun;
With fleecy birds of paradise
Upfloating to their native skies;
Or hear the wild swans far below
Faintly whistle as they row
Their course on the transparent tide
That fills the hollow welkin wide!

Hurry me, Nymphs! O, hurry me
Far above the grovelling sea,
Which, with blind weakness and base roar
Casting his white age on the shore,
Wallows along that slimy floor;
With his widespread webbed hands
Seeking to climb the level sands,
But rejected still to rave
Alive in his uncovered grave.

Light-skirt dancers, blithe and boon
With high hosen and low shoon,
'Twixt sandal bordure and kirtle rim
Showing one pure wave of limb,
And frequent to the cestus fine
Lavish beauty's undulous line,
Till like roses veiled in snow
Neath the gauze your blushes glow;
Nymphs, with tresses which the wind
Sleekly tosses to its mind,
More deliriously dishevelled
Than when the Naxian widow revelled
With her flush bridegroom on the ooze,
Hurry me, Sisters! where ye choose,
Up the meadowy mountains wild,
Aye by the broad sun oversmiled,
Up the rocky paths of gray
Shaded all my hawthorn way,
Past the very turban crown
Feathered with pine and aspen spray,
Darkening like a soldan's down
O'er the mute stoopers to his sway,
Meek willows, daisies, brambles brown,
Grasses and reeds in green array,
Sighing what he in storm doth say —
Hurry me, hurry me, Nymphs, away!

Here on the mountain's sunburnt side
Trip we round our steepy slide,
With tinsel moss, dry-woven pall,
Minist'ring many a frolic fall;
Now, sweet Nymphs, with ankle trim
Foot we around this fountain brim,
Where even the delicate lilies show
Transgressing bosoms in bright row
(More lustrous-sweet than yours, I trow!)
Above their deep green boddices.
Shall you be charier still than these?
Garments are only good to inspire
Warmer, wantoner desire;
For those beauties make more riot
In our hearts, themselves at quiet
Under veils and vapoury lawns
Thro' which their moon-cold lustre dawns,
And might perchance if full revealed
Seem less wondrous than concealed,
Greater defeat of Virtue made
When Love shoots from an ambuscade,
Than with naked front and fair.
Who the loose Grace in flowing hair
Hath ever sought with so much care,
As the crape-enshrouded nun
Scarce warmed by touches of the sun?
Nathless, whatsoe'er your tire,
Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher, higher!
Till the broad seas shrink to streams,
Or, beneath my lofty eye,
Ocean a broken mirror seems,
Whose fragments 'tween the lands do lie,
Glancing me from its hollow sky,
Till my cheated vision deems
My place in heaven twice as high!

Ho! Evoe! I have found
True Nepenthe! balm of pain!
Sought by the sagest wits profound,
Mystic Panacee! in vain.
Virtuous Elixir, this
Sure the supreme sense of bliss!
Feeling my impetuous soul
Ravish me swifter than Earth's roll
Tow'rds bright day's Eoan goal;
Or if West I chose to run,
Would sweep me thither before the sun,
Raising me on ethereal wing
Lighter than the lark can spring
When drunk with dewlight which the Morn
Pours from her translucent horn
To steep his sweet throat in the corn.
Still, O still my step sublime
Footless air would higher climb,
Like the Chaldee Hunter bold,
Builder of towery Babel old!
O what sweeter, finer pleasure
Than this wild, unruly measure,
Reeling hither, thither, so
Higher to the heavens we go!
Nymph and Swain, with rosy hand,
Wreathed together in a band,
Like embracing vines that loop
Browner elms with tendril hoop,
Let us, liker still to these
In rich autumn's purple weather,
Mix, as the vineyard in the breeze,
Our wine-dropping brows together!
Swinging on our feet around
Till our tresses touch the ground,
That mad moment we do stay
To meditate our whirl-away!
Winds that, blown off the honied heath,
Warm the deep reeds with mellowing breath,
Shall for us, Æolian still,
Those green flutes of Nature fill;
On bluebell beds like dulcimers
Tingle us most fantastic airs;
And where'er her numerous strings
Woodbine like a wind-harp swings,
Play us light fugues with nimble wings,
Trumpeting thro' each twisted shell
Till its mossy wrinkles swell
Such shall, with sweet voluntaries,
Blithe accompaniment bear us,
Not without help of that dim band,
Minstrels of each woody land,
Piping unhired on every hand;
These shall be our volatile chorus,
Fleeting the wilderness before us,
Like their small brethren of the chant,
Drone-winders itinerant
Old-world humming-birds, the bees,
Our sweet whifflers shall be these!
While our oval close within
Capering faun keeps mellow din,
With pipe and ceaseless cittern thrum,
Tinkling tabor's shallow drum,
Cymbal and lengthening cornmuse hum.
Uproar sweet! as when he crost,
Omnipotent Bacchus, with his host,
To farthest Ind; and for his van
Satyrs and other sons of Pan,
With swoln eye-burying cheeks of tan,
Who trolled him round which way he ran
His spotted yoke through Hindustan,
And with most victorious scorn
The mild foes of wine to warn,
Blew his dithyrambic horn!
That each river to his source
Trembled — and sunk beneath his course,
Where, 'tis said of many, they
Mourn undiscovered to this day.

Still my thoughts, mine eyes aspire!
Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher and higher!
Smooth green hills my soul do tire;
Let us leave this lowly shire,
Tho' it be the Happy Clime,
'Tis for spirits less sublime!
Fleet we sheer as lightning-blast
Pinnacled Petrea past,
Burning rocks bestrown with sands!
O'er the bleak Deserta lands
Pass we, as o'er dead Nature's tomb,
Where Sirocco and Simoom
Battle with hot breath for room,
Tho' not even a flower or cress
Make war-worth that wilderness;
From this wavering blown arene
To where the Rome-repelling queen,
High-stomach'd, star-bound Emperess!
Long beruled broad Palmyrene,
Let's begone; and farther still,
Here, too, naught but sandblown hill,
Only another ocean bed
Tossed by billowy winds instead
Of the old legitimate breakers,
Dust-disturbers, not earth-shakers!
From these deep abysses dry,
Filled with sunlight to the sky,
Let us, O let us swift begone
To the cedared Lebanon;
Over Carmel's flowery sides
Where the wild bee ever bides,
Round each beauty of the glade
Singing his noontide serenade,
Till the ear-enchanted fair,
Opening her leafy stomacher,
Lets in the little ravisher.
On to shadowy Taurus, on!
Looming o'er the Syrian wave,
Scarce a flower his sides upon,
Swoln with many an antique grave
Of slaughtered Persepolitan,
Rare Greek and Macedonian.
Lowly shelter for the slain
Still his rueful heaths remain,
That purpler tinged with buried blood
Darken deeper the green flood,
And, a blushing chronicle,
The tale of fallen glory tell,
Persia's dumb echoes know so well!

Thou whose thrilling hand in mine
Makes it tremble as unbid,
Whose dove-drooping eyes divine
Curtain Love beneath their lid!
Fairest Anthea! thou whose grace
Leads me enchantedly along
Till the sweet windings that we trace
Seem like the image of a song!
Blithest Anthea! thou I ween
Of this jocund choir the queen,
From thy beauty still more rare,
And a more earth-spurning air,
If forsooth my reeling vision
Hold thee steadily, and this
Be not my mind's insane misprision,
Drunk with the essence-drop of bliss!
Small matter! — while the dream be bright!
Surely thou with form so light
Must be some creature born for winging
Where the chimes of Heaven are ringing,
And sweet cherub faces singing
Requiems to ascending souls
Where each orb of glory rolls!
Bind me, oh bind me next thy heart,
So shall we to the skies depart,
And like a twin-star fixt in ether,
Burn with immortal flame together!

That be our emprised rest,
Eyry where birds of Eden nest,
Warbling hymns in Wonder's ear!
We still walk this lowly sphere,
Lost in the heaven's crystalline mere
More than in ocean one small tear.
Wherefore, without vain delay,
Haste, Anthea! haste away
To those highest peaks the sun
Steps with glittering sandal on,
That this bosom-fire as fast
As his, breathe forth in the clear vast!

Bright-haired Spirit! Golden Brow!
Onward to far Ida now!
Leaving these garden lands below
In sea-born dews to steep their glow:
Caria and Lycia, dulcet climes!
Beds of flowers whose odour limes
The o'erflying fast far bird, their thrall
Hovering entranced till he fall;
Broad Maeonia's streamy vales
Winding beneath us, white with swans
Borne by their downy-swelling sails;
Each her lucid beauty scans,
Bending her slow beak round, and sees
Her grandeur as she floats along
Gracefully ruffled by the breeze,
And troats for joy, too proud for song.
Leave we the downlands, tho' be there
Joy a lifelong sojourner;
There for ever wildwood numbers
Poured in Doric strains dilute
Thro' the unlaborious flute
Soothe Disquiet to his slumbers;
In his rosebed sleeps the bee,
Lulled by Lydian melody,
Half the honied morn in vain!
Idler still than Doric swain,
Steeped in double sweetness he
Hums, as he dreams, his wildwood strain.
The Mysian vineplucker sings i' the tree,
And Ionia's echoing train
Of reapers, bending down the lea,
Make rich the winds with minstrelsy.

Here, no less, if any linger,
Pointing us down with abject finger,
Or stop with but a sigh to praise
The slothful fields on which we gaze
More time than serves him to renew
His buoyant draughts of ether blue,
Or (if the wine-sweat pouring through
With beaded reek his brows embrue)
Shake from his curls the shining dew —
Down with the grovelling caitiff, down!
Scourge him with your green thyrses down!
While as a thundercloud on high
Bursting its blackness o'er him, I
Envelop him in my blazing scorn
Of dread pride and bright anger born!
Here is meet repose for none
That climb Earth's mountain-studded zone!
Here the Great Mother smoothes again
Her broad skirts to the broader main!
Even Æolia's lofty steep
Shelves to the tributary deep,
And her level winds do play
His watery organ far away
To the hoarse Thermaic strand;
Sleek as the tremulous lady moon
From her bright horizon chair,
Tipping his silver keys in tune
With long low arm and beamy hand
She stretches all enjewelled there
Ida! — illoo! behold! behold
Ida, the Queen of the Hills of old,
Rising with sundropt crown of gold!
Alone great Ida from the shore
Lifts high above its silent roar
Her caverns, and with those rude ears
Only the haughty thunder hears!
All hail, green-mantled Ida!
Floodgate of heaven-fall'n streams!
Replenisher of wasteful ocean's store!
Sweetener of his salt effluence! Ever-pure!
Battener of meagre Earth! Bestower
Of their moist breath to vegetable things
That suck their life from thee! —
All hail! —
All hail, green Ida! —
Woody-belted Ida! —
Nurse of the bounding lion! his green lair,
Whence he doth shake afar
The shepherdry with his roar! All hail,
Peaks where the wild ass flings
His Pegasean heels against mankind,
And the more riotous mares
Pawing at heaven, snuff the womb-swelling wind!
Ida, all hail! all hail!
Nature's green, ever-during pyramid
Heaped o'er the behemoth brute-royal bones
Of monstrous Anakim!
All hail, great Ida! throne
Of that old Jove the olden poet sung
Where, from the Gods alone,
He listened to the moan
Of his divine Sarpedon, thousand moans among! —
Ida, all hail! all hail!
Thus on thy pinnacle,
With springy foot like the wild swan that soars
Off to invisible shores,
I stand! with blind Ambition's waxen wings
High o'er my head
Outspread
Plucking me off the Earth to wheel airial rings!
Lo! as my vision glides
Adown these perilous flowery sides,
Green hanging-gardens only trod
By Nymph or Sylvan god,
And sees o'er what a gulf their eminent glory swells,
I tremble with delight,
Proud of my terrible plight,
And turn me to the hollow caves
Where the hoarse spirit of the Euxine raves,
The melancholy tale of that drown'd Youth he tells
To the fast fleeting waves,
For ever in vast murmurs, as he laves
With foam his sedgy locks loose-floating down the Dardanelles
!
Down the Dardanelles!
What Echo in musical sound repels
My words, like thunder tolled
From the high-toppling rocks
In loud redoublous shocks
Behold, great Sun, behold!

emsp;Down the Dardanelles!
Behold the Thunderer where she rides!
Behold her how she swells
Like floating clouds her canvas sides!
Raising with ponderous breast the tides
On both the shores, as down she strides,
Down the Dardanelles!

Down the Dardanelles!
Each Continent like a caitiff stands,
As every broadside knells!
While with a voice that shakes the strands
She spreads her hundred-mouth'd commands,
Albion's loud law to both the lands,
Down the Dardanelles!

Down the Dardanelles!
Ye billowy hills before her bowne!
Wind Caverns! your deep shells
Ring Ocean and Earth her old Renown,
Long as that sun from Ida's crown
Smoothes her broad road with splendour down,
Down the Dardanelles!

Anthea, ever dear!
I feel, I feel the sharp satyric ear
Thy draught Circean gave me, echoing clear
With that far chime!
Capacious grown enough to hear
The music of the lower sphere,
Tho' fainter than the passing tread of stealthy-footed Time!
Be mute, ye summer airs around!
Let not a sigh disturb the sound
That like a shadow climbs the steepy ground
Up from blue Helle's dim profound!
Listen! the roar
Creeps on the ear as on a little shore,
And by degrees
Swells like the rushing sound of many seas,
And now as loud upon the brain doth beat
As Helle's tide in thunderbursts broke foaming at my feet!

Hist! ho! — the Spirit sings
While in the cradle of the surge he swings,
Or falling down its sheeted laps,
Speaks to it in thunder-claps
Terrifical, half-suffocated things!
For ever with his furious breath
Keeping a watery storm beneath
Where'er he sinks, that o'er him seethe
The frothy salt-sea surfaces
Dissolving with an icy hiss,
As if the marvellous flood did flow
Over a quenchless fire below!
Hist! ho! the Spirit sings!

In the caves of the deep — lost Youth! lost Youth! —
O'er and o'er, fleeting billows! fleeting billows! —
Rung to his restless everlasting sleep
By the heavy death-bells of the deep,
Under the slimy-dropping sea-green willows,
Poor Youth! lost Youth!
Laying his dolorous head, forsooth,
On Carian reefs uncouth —
Poor Youth!
On the wild sand's ever-shifting pillows!

In the foam's cold shroud — lost Youth! lost Youth! —
And the lithe waterweed swathing round him! —
Mocked by the surges roaring o'er him loud,
" Will the sun-seeker freeze in his shroud,
Aye, where the deep-wheeling eddy has wound him? "
Lost Youth! poor Youth!
Vail him his Daedalian wings, in truth?
Stretched there without all ruth —
Poor Youth! —
Weeping fresh torrents into those that drowned him!

List no more the ominous din,
Let us plunge deep Helle in!
Thracia hollos! — what to us
Sky-dejected Icarus?
Shall we less than those wild kine
That swam this shallow salt confine,
Venture to show how mere a span
Keeps continental man from man?
Welcome, gray Europe, native clime
Of clouds, and cliffs yet more sublime!
Gray Europe, on whose Alpine head
The Northwind makes his snowy bed,
And fostered in that savage form
Lies down a blast and wakes a storm!
Up! up! to shrouded Rhodope
That seems in the white waste to be
An ice-rock in a foaming sea!

This inward rage, this eating flame,
Turns into fiery dust my frame;
Thro' my red nostril and my teeth
In sulphury fumes I seem to breathe
My dragon soul, and fain would quench
This drouth in some o'erwhelming drench!
Up! to the frostbound waterfalls,
That hang in waves the mountain walls!
Down tumbling ever and anon
With long-pent thunders loosed in one,
Thro' the deep valleys where of yore
The Deluge his wide channels wore.
Hark! thro' each green and gateless door,
Valley to echoing valley calls
Me, steep up, higher to the sun!
Hark! while we stand in mute astound,
Cloud-battled high Pangaeus hoar
With earthquake voice and ocean roar
Keeps the pale region trembling round!
Upward! each loftier height we gain,
I spurn it like the basest plain
Trod by the fallen in hell's profound!
Illoo, great Haemus! Haemus old,
Half earth into his girdle rolled,
Swells against heaven! — Up! up! the stars
Wheel near his goal their glittering cars;
Ambition's mounting-step sublime
To vault beyond the sphere of Time
Into Eternity's bright clime!
Where this fierce joy
I feel shall aye subside,
Like a swoln bubble on the ocean tide,
Into the River of Bliss, Elysium-wide;
And all annoy
Lie drowned with it for ever there,
And never-ebbing Life's soft stream with confluent wave
My floating Spirit bear
Among those calm Beatitudes and fair,
That lave
Their angel forms, with pure luxuriance free,
In thy rich ooze and amber-molten sea,
Slow-flooding to the one deep choral stave —
Eterne Tranquillity!
All-blessing, blest, eterne Tranquillity!

Strymon! heaven-descended stream!
Valley along, thy silver sand
Broader and broader yet doth gleam,
Spreading into ocean's strand,
Over whose white verge the storm
With his wide-swaying loomy arm
Weaves his mournful tapestry,
Slowly let down from sky to sea
Strymon! up thy craggy banks
'Mid the pinewood's wavering ranks,
What terrible howl ascends? What blaze
Of torches blackening the coil'd haze
With grim contrast of smoky rays?
What hideous features 'mid the flare,
Lit with yellow laughter? Where,
Ah! where my boon Circean band
Quiring round me hand in hand? —
Furies, avaunt! that dismal joy
Breeds me horrible annoy!
Avaunt, she-wolves! with rabid yell
Riving the very seams of hell
To swallow me and your rout as well!
Flee, flee, my wretched soul, from these
Erinnys and Eumenides,
Bacchants no more, but raging brood
Of fiends to feast them on hot blood! —
Down! down! and shelter me in the flood!

" Hollo after! — to living shreds tear him! — hollo after!
To the ravenous wild winds share him! — hollo after!
Our rite he spurns,
From our love he turns,
Hurl him the glassy crags down! hollo after!
With your torches blast him,
To the broken waves cast him,
Head and trunk far asunder!
With a bellow like thunder,
Hollo after! hollo after! hollo after! "

Dull in the Drowner's ear
Bubbled amid far ocean these sad echoes drear.

In the caves of the deep — Hollo! hollo! —
Lost Youth! — o'er and o'er fleeting billows!
Hollo! hollo! — without all ruth! —
In the foam's cold shroud! — Hollo! hollo!
To his everlasting sleep! — Lost Youth!