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Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread
A mighty forest: for the moist earth fed
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots

Into o'erhanging boughs, and precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequester'd deep,
Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep
A lamb stray'd far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every night-fall went.

Among the shepherds 'twas believed ever,

That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
From the white flock, but pass'd unworried

By any wolf, or pard with prying head,

Until it came to some unfooted plains

Where fed the herds of Pan: ay, great his gains

Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,

Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly

To a wide lawn, whence one could only see
Stems thronging all around between the swell

Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell

The freshness of the space of heaven above,

Edged round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat his wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.

Full in the middle of this pleasantness There stood a marble altar, with a tress Of flowers budded newly; and the dew

Had taken fairy phantasies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him: cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

Now while the silent workings of the dawn

Were busiest, into that self-same lawn,
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped

A troop of little children garlanded;

Who gathering round the altar, seem'd to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy

Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were sated

With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then
Fill'd out his voice, and died away again.

Within a little space again it gave

Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,

To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad valleys, e'er their death, o'ertaking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.

And now, as deep into the wood as we

Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light
Fair faces and a rush of garments white,

Plainer and plainer showing, till at last
Into the widest alley they all past,

Making directly for the woodland altar.

O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue falter
In telling of this goodly company,

Of their old piety, and of their glee:
But let a portion of ethereal dew

Fall on my head, and presently unmew

My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,

To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.

Leading the way, young damsels danced along,
Bearing the burden of a shepherd's song;
Each having a white wicker over-brimm'd
With April's tender younglings: next, well trimm'd,
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'erflowing die

In music, through the vales of Thessaly :
Some idly trail'd their sheep-hooks on the ground,
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound
With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,
Now coming from beneath the forest trees,
A venerable priest full soberly,

Begirt with ministering looks: alway his eye

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