Classic Poem

Would this unquenchèd spirit now could take
One sip of that immortal beverage,
Wherewith th' Olympians were wont to slake
Their divine thirst in a long-buried age;
That I might feel mortality fall away
With the harsh noises of this feverish earth,
While the soft cadence of some easeful lay—
Filling all things—should hail my second birth:
Silence scarce breathing in its sleep should veil
All memories of the past; while ample plains,
Seas tipped with smiles of heaven, and woods, reveal
Rare forms of beauty, and the old remains
Of Grecian life before the years declined,
Beneath the noiseless pinion of the mind.

O! TO be now a creature of delight,
Following some piping swain along the vales
As day withdraws from heaven before the night,
List'ning the fluttering of the nightingales,
Pausing ere they commence their ravishing hymn
To the uprising orb, or to lie prone
Upon some height, and mark the foamy rim
Of the Egean lap the Persian's throne,
While seen afar, like unpolluted joys,
Fair dancers trip it to some perfect lyre,
And agèd priests, and troops of singing boys
Lead forth the flower-crowned victim to the fire,
Or after, list an Iliad's strains upsteal
Sung by some Homer, for his evening meal.