Selected Poems and Prose

  Song of Pan

  From the forests and highlands

  We come, we come;

  From the river-girt islands

  Where loud waves were dumb

  5Listening my sweet pipings.

  The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

  The bees in the bells of thyme,

  The birds in the myrtle bushes,

  The cicadae above in the lime,

  10 And the lizards below in the grass,

  Were silent as even old Tmolus was,

  Listening my sweet pipings.

  Liquid Peneus was flowing—

  And all dark Tempe lay

  15In [ ? ] 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 the waves

  20 To the edge of the moist river-lawns

  And the brink of the dewy caves,

  And all that did then attend and follow,

  Were as silent for love, as you now, Apollo,

  For envy of my sweet pipings.

  25I sang of the dancing stars,

  I sang of the daedal Earth,

  And of Heaven, and the giant wars,

  And Love and Death and Birth;

  And then I changed my pipings,

  30 Singing how, down the vales of Maenalus

  I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:

  Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!—

  It breaks on our bosom and then we bleed;

  They wept as I think both ye now would,

  35If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

  At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

  The Cloud

  I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

  From the seas and the streams;

  I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

  In their noon-day dreams.

  5From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

  The sweet buds every one,

  When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,

  As she dances about the sun.

  I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

  10 And whiten the green plains under,

  And then again I dissolve it in rain,

  And laugh as I pass in thunder.

  I sift the snow on the mountains below,

  And their great pines groan aghast;

  15And all the night ’tis my pillow white,

  While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

  Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

  Lightning my pilot sits;

  In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

  20 It struggles and howls at fits;

  Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

  This pilot is guiding me,

  Lured by the love of the genii that move

  In the depths of the purple sea;

  25Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

  Over the lakes and the plains,

  Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream

  The Spirit he loves remains;

  And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,

  30 Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

  The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

  And his burning plumes outspread,

  Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

  When the morning star shines dead,

  35As on the jag of a mountain crag,

  Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

  An eagle alit one moment may sit

  In the light of its golden wings.

  And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit Sea beneath,

  40 Its ardours of rest and love,

  And the crimson pall of eve may fall

  From the depth of Heaven above,

  With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,

  As still as a brooding dove.

  45That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

  Whom mortals call the moon,

  Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,

  By the midnight breezes strewn;

  And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

  50 Which only the angels hear,

  May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,

  The stars peep behind her, and peer;

  And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

  Like a swarm of golden bees,

  55When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

  Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

  Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

  Are each paved with the moon and these.

  I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,

  60 And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl;

  The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

  When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

  From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

  Over a torrent sea,

  65Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof;

  The mountains its columns be!

  The triumphal arch, through which I march

  With hurricane, fire, and snow,

  When the Powers of the Air are chained to my chair,

  70 Is the million-coloured Bow;

  The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

  While the moist earth was laughing below.

  I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

  And the nursling of the sky;

  75I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

  I change, but I cannot die—

  For after the rain, when with never a stain,

  The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

  And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

  80 Build up the blue Dome of Air,

  I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

  And out of the caverns of rain,

  Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

  I arise, and unbuild it again.

  ‘God save the Queen!’

  [A New National Anthem]

  God! prosper, speed and save,

  God! raise from England’s grave

  Her murdered Queen.

  Pave with swift victory

  5The steps of Liberty

  Whom Britons own to be

  Immortal Queen!

  See, she comes throned on high,

  On swift Eternity,

  10 God save the Queen!

  Millions on millions wait

  Firm, rapid, [ ], elate,

  On her [?approaching] state,

  God save the Queen!

  15She is thine own pure soul

  [?Moulding] the mighty whole,

  God save our Queen!

  She is thine own deep love,

  Rained down from Heaven above,

  20Wherever she rest or move,

  God save our Queen!

  Wilder her enemies

  In their own dark disguise,

  God save our Queen!

  25All earthly things that dare

  Her sacred name to wear,

  Strip them, as Kings [ ] bare;

  God save our Queen!

  Be her eternal throne

  30Built in our hearts alone,

  God save our Queen!

  Let the Oppressor hold

  Canopied seats of gold,

  She sits enthroned of old

  35 O’er our hearts, Queen.

  Lips, touched by seraphim,

  Breathe out the choral hymn,

  God save the Queen!

  Sweet as if Angels sang,

  40Loud as that [ ] clang

  Wakening the world’s dead gang,

  God save the Queen!

  Translation of Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto XXVIII, lines 1–51

  [Matilda Gathering Flowers]

  Earnest to explore within and all around

  The divine wood, whose thick green living woof


  Tempered the young day to the sight, I wound

  Up the [green] slope, beneath the [forest’s] roof,

  5With slow [soft] steps, leaving the abrupt shelf

  And the [     ] aloof—

  A gentle air which had within itself

  No motion struck upon my forehead bare

  Like the soft stroke of a continuous wind

  10In which the passive leaves tremblingly were

  All bent towards that [part] where earliest

  That sacred hill obscures the morning air,

  Yet were they not so shaken from their rest

  But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray

  15[Incessantly] renewing their blithe quest,

  With perfect joy received the early day

  Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound

  Kept one low burthen to their roundelay

  Such as from bough to bough gathers around

  20The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore

  When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.

  My slow steps had already borne me o’er

  Such space within the antique wood, that I

  Perceived not where I entered any more,

  25When lo, a stream whose little waves went by,

  Bending towards the left the grass that grew

  Upon its bank, impeded suddenly

  My going on—waters of purest hue

  On Earth, would appear turbid and impure

  30Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew,

  Dark, dark, [yet] clear, moved under the obscure

  Eternal shades, whose [?intense] [ ] [glooms]

  No rays of moon or sunlight e’er endure.

  I moved not with my feet, but amid the glooms

  35I pierced with my charmed sight, contemplating

  The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms,

  And then appeared to me—even like a thing

  Which suddenly for blank astonishment

  Dissolves all other thought, [   ]

  40A solitary woman, and she went

  Singing and gathering flower after flower

  With which her way was painted and besprent.

  ‘Bright lady, who if looks had ever power

  To bear firm witness of the heart within,

  45Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower

  ‘[Towards] this bank; I prithee let me win

  Thus much of thee that thou shouldst come anear

  So I may hear thy song—like Proserpine

  ‘Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here

  50And gathering flowers, at that [sweet] time when

  She lost the spring and Ceres her … more dear.’

  Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa

  The sun is set, the swallows are asleep,

  The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;

  The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,

  And evening’s breath, wandering here and there

  5Over the gleaming surface of the stream,

  Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

  There is no dew on the dry grass tonight,

  Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;

  The wind is intermitting, dry and light,

  10 And in the inconstant motion of the breeze

  The dust and straws are driven up and down

  And whirled about the pavement of the Town.

  Within the surface of the fleeting river

  The wrinkled image of the city lay

  15Immoveably unquiet—and forever

  It trembles but it never fades away;

  Go to the Indies [         ]

  You, being changed, will find it then as now.

  The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut

  20 By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud

  Like mountain over mountain huddled but

  Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,

  And over it a space of watery blue

  Which the keen evening star is shining through.

  25And overhead hangs many a flaccid fold

  Of lurid thundersmoke most heavily,

  A streak of dun and sulphureous gold

  Ode to Liberty

  Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying,

  Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.

    Byron

  I

  A glorious people vibrated again

  The lightning of the nations: Liberty

  From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,

  Scattering contagious fire into the sky,

  5Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,

  And, in the rapid plumes of song

  Clothed itself, sublime and strong;

  As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,

  Hovering in verse o’er its accustomed prey;

  10 Till from its station in the heaven of fame

  The Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray

  Of the remotest sphere of living flame

  Which paves the void was from behind it flung,

  As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came

  15 A voice out of the deep: I will record the same.

  II

  The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:

  The burning stars of the abyss were hurled

  Into the depths of heaven. The daedal earth,

  That island in the ocean of the world,

  20Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air:

  But this divinest universe

  Was yet a chaos and a curse,

  For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse,

  The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,

  25 And of the birds, and of the watery forms,

  And there was war among them, and despair

  Within them, raging without truce or terms:

  The bosom of their violated nurse

  Groan’d, for beasts warr’d on beasts, and worms on worms,

  30 And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.

  III

  Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied

  His generations under the pavilion

  Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,

  Temple and prison, to many a swarming million,

  35Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.

  This human living multitude

  Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,

  For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,

  Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves

  40 Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified

  The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;

  Into the shadow of her pinions wide,

  Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood,

  Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,

  45 Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

  IV

  The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

  And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves

  Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles

  Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves

  50Prophetic echoes flung dim melody

  On the unapprehensive wild.

  The vine, the corn, the olive mild,

  Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;

  And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,

  55 Like the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain,

  Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,

  Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein

  Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child,

  Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain

  60 Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Aegean main

  V

  Athens arose: a city such as vision

  Builds from the purple crags and silver towers

  Of battlemented cloud, as in deris
ion

  Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors

  65Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;

  Its portals are inhabited

  By thunder-zoned winds, each head

  Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded,

  A divine work! Athens diviner yet

  70 Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will

  Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;

  For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill

  Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead

  In marble immortality, that hill

  75 Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.

  VI

  Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river

  Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay

  Immoveably unquiet, and for ever

  It trembles, but it cannot pass away!

  80The voices of its bards and sages thunder

  With an earth-awakening blast

  Through the caverns of the past;

  Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:

  A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,

  85 Which soars where Expectation never flew,

  Rending the veil of space and time asunder!

  One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;

  One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast

  With life and love makes chaos ever new,

  90 As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.

  VII

  Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,

  Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,*

  She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest

  From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;

  95And many a deed of terrible uprightness

  By thy sweet love was sanctified;

  And in thy smile, and by thy side,

  Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

  But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness,

  100 And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,

  Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,