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"Be still the unimaginable lodge

For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,

Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven,

That spreading in this dull and clodded earth,
Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth;

Be still a symbol of immensity;

A firmament reflected in a sea;

An element filling the space between ;

An unknown-but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven-rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan,
Upon thy Mount Lycean!"

Even while they brought the burden to a close,
A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That linger'd in the air like dying rolls

Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals

Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.
Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,
Young companies nimbly began dancing
To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.
Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly

To tunes forgotten-out of memory:

Fair creatures! whose young children's children bred Thermopyla its heroes-not yet dead,

But in old marbles ever beautiful.

High genitors, unconscious did they cull

Time's sweet first-fruit—they danced to weariness,

And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
Of some strange history, potent to send
A young mind from its bodily tenement.
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,-Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
The archers too, upon a wider plain,
Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,
And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft

Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,

Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope

Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee

And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,

Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young

Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue

Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,

And very, very deadliness did nip

Her motherly cheeks. Aroused from this sad mood

By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd,

Uplifting his strong bow into the air,

Many might after brighter visions stare :
After the Argonauts, in blind amaze
Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways,
Until, from the horizon's vaulted side,
There shot a golden splendour far and wide,
Spangling those million poutings of the brine

With quivering ore: 'twas even an awful shine
From the exaltation of Apollo's bow;

A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.
Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,
Might turn their steps towards the sober ring
Where sat Endymion and the aged priest
'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increased
The silvery setting of their mortal star.
There they discoursed upon the fragile bar
That keeps us from our homes ethereal;
And what our duties there: to nightly call
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather:
To summon all the downiest clouds together
For the sun's purple couch; to emulate
In minist'ring the potent rule of fate
With speed of fire-tail'd exhalations;

To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,

A world of other unguess'd offices.

Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,

Into Elysium; vying to rehearse

Each one his own anticipated bliss.

One felt heart-certain that he could not miss

His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs,
Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows

Her lips with music for the welcoming.
Another wish'd, 'mid that eternal spring,
To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,
Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:

Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,

And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;

And, ever after, through those regions be
His messenger, his little Mercury.

Some were athirst in soul to see again

Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign
In times long past; to sit with them, and talk
Of all the chances in their earthly walk;
Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores
Of happiness, to when upon the moors,
Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,

And shared their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told
Their fond imaginations,-saving him

Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim,
Endymion yet hourly had he striven

To hide the cankering venom, that had riven
His fainting recollections. Now indeed

His senses had swoon'd off: he did not heed
The sudden silence, or the whispers low,
Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,
Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,
Or maiden's sigh, the grief itself embalms :
But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,
Like one who on the earth had never stept.
Ay, even as dead-still as a marble man,
Frozen in that old tale Arabian.

Who whispers him so pantingly and close?

Peona, his sweet sister of all those,

His friends, the dearest.

Hushing sounds she made

And breathed a sister's sorrow to persuade

A yielding up, a cradling on her care.
Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
Along a path between two little streams,—
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
From low-green branches, and his footsteps slow
From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;
Until they came to where these streamlets fall,
With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
A little shallop, floating there hard by,
Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;
And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,
And dipt again, with the young couple's weight,
Peona guiding, through the water straight,
Towards a bowery island opposite ;
Which gaining presently, she steered light
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,
Where nested was an arbour, overwove
By many a summer's silent fingering;
To whose cool bosom she was used to bring
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,
And minstrel memories of times gone by.

So she was gently glad to see him laid
Under her favourite bower's quiet shade,
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,
Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves

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