Leave us at least, if not the things we were, At least consentient to the thing we be; Not hapless doomed to loathe the forms we bear, For surely cursed above all cursed are we, And surely this the bitterest of ill; To feel the old aspirings fair and free Become blind motions of a powerless will Through swine-like frames dispersed to swine-like issues still. But make us men again, for that thou mays't!— Yea, make us men, Enchantress, and restore Yea, een by him hereafter born in pain, Shall draw sustainment from thy bosom's core, And find its like therein,-make thou us men again! Make thou us men again,—if men but groping That dark Hereafter which th' Olympians keep; For yet to laugh is somewhat, and to weep ;- The salt-blown acres of the shoreless deep ;- Foul faces to foul earth, and yearn—as we do now! So they in speech unsyllabled. But She, Compelled them groaning to the styes again; Where they in hopeless bitterness were fain And tear the troughs in impotence of pain,— Divine Odysseus stood,-as Hermes told of yore. TO A GREEK GIRL. 66 (AFTER A WEEK OF LANDOR'S HELLENICS.") WITH breath of thyme and bees that hum, Across the years you seem to come,— And wind-blown brows unfilleted; A girlish shape that slips the bud In lines of unspoiled symmetry ; A girlish shape that stirs the blood With pulse of Spring, Autonoë! Where'er you pass,-where'er you go, I hear the pebbly rillet flow; Where'er you go,—where'er you pass, You bring blithe airs where'er you tread,— You wake in me a Pan not dead, Not wholly dead !—Autonoë! How sweet with you on some green sod How sweet beneath the chesnut's shade With you to weave a basket-braid; To watch across the stricken chords Your rosy-twinkling fingers flee; Or woo you in soft woodland words, With woodland pipe, Autonoë! |