Yearn to the white-bright moon, which over the curvèd horizon, Climbing the air still flushed with the flames of the opposite sunset,* Seems with affectionate eye to regard her, and weep to her weeping; But it is now not as when, having pined for Endymion's kindness, She with the mourners of love held personal sympathy ever, When in the sky's void chasms a wanderer, she to pilgrim, Over the world's sick plain, was a dear companion in sorrow. Down through the blue-grey thyme, which roofs their courses with odour, Rivulets, gentle as words from the lips of Beauty, are flowing; Still, in the dusky ravine, they deepen and freshen their waters, Still, in the thick-arched coves, they slumber and dimple delighted, Catching the full-swell'd fig, and the deep-stained arbutus ruby, Still, to the sea's sand-brim, by royally gay oleanders, *The contemporaneity of a transparent moonlight with the roseate æther and gold and orange tracts of sunset is one of the most impressive phenomena of these regions. And oriental array of reeds, they are ever attended; But they are all dumb forms, unimpregnate with vital emotion, Now from the pure fount-head, no Nymph, her bosom expanding, Dazzles the way-worn wretch with the smile of her bland benediction, Giving the welcomed draught mysterious virtue and savour; Now no curious hind in the noon-tide's magical ardour,* Peeps through the blossomy trellice, that over the pool's dark crystal Guards the immaculate forms of the awful Olympian bathers; Now at the wide stream-mouth never one, one amorous Triton Breathes to the surge and the tall marsh-blooms euphonious passion. These high Temples around, the religious shade of the olive Falls on the grass close-wove ;-in the redolent valley beneath us, Stems of the loftiest platain their crowns large-leavèd are spreading, *On the mystical power of noon in the appearance of supernatural beings, vide Theocritus, i. 15; Lucan, iii. 422; Philostratus, Heroic. i. art 4; Porphyrius de Antro Nymph. c. xxvi. and xxvii. While the most motley of herds is adorning the calm of their umbrage ;— Yet ye are gone, ye are vanished for ever, ye guardian Beings! Who in the time-gnarled trunks, broad branches, and summer enchantment Held an essential life and a power, as over your members, Soothing the rage of the storm by your piteous moans of entreaty, Staying the impious axe in the paralysed hand of the woodman. Daphne, tremulous nymph, has fled the benignant asylum Which, in the shape of the laurel, she found from the heat of Apollo ; Wan Narcissus has languished away from the languishing flower ; Hyacinth dwells no more in his brilliant abode, and the stranger Reads the memorial signs he has left, with a curious. pleasure. Thou art become, oh Echo! a voice, an inanimate image; Where is the palest of maids, dark-tressed, darkwreathed with ivy, Who with her lips half-opened, and gazes of beautiful wonder, Quickly repeated the words that burst on her lonely recesses, Low in a love-lorn tone, too deep-distracted to answer? What must have been thy Nature, oh Greece ! when marvellous-lovely As it is now, it is only the tomb of an ancient existence? MARATHON. I COULD believe that under such a sky, Thus grave, thus streaked with thunderlight, of yore, How weak that massive motley enemy Seemed to those hearts, full-fed on that high lore, Thus Marathon was Troy,-thus here again, Of Nemesis, empowerèd to chastise The rampant insolence that would not be made wise. THE CONCENTRATION OF ATHENS. THE Poet Keats, to whom the old Greek mind seemed instinctively familiar, in an unpublished fragment, speaks of the Greek Poets as "Bards who died content on pleasant sward, Leaving great verse unto a little clan." and continues with a prayer that he too may attain their old vigour, and sing WHY should we wonder that from such small space And brotherhood was never rare or new. A watchful gaze: thus from the rising Pnyx |