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Hymn of Apollo

HE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries

From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day · All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might, Until diminished by the reign of Night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers, With their aethereal colours; the moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown :
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine is mine,
All light of art or nature ;- -to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

The Visit of the Gods

(Imitated from Schiller)

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,
Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the Sorrow-beguiler,
Iacchus! but in came Boy Cupid the Smiler ;
Lo! Phoebus the Glorious descends from his throne !
They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With Divinities fills my

Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you

Due entertainment,

Celestial quire?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance,

THE VISIT OF THE GODS

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!
Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul
O give me the nectar !

O fill me the bowl!

Give him the nectar!

Pour out for the poet,
Hebe! pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Paean, I cry!
The wine of the Immortals

Forbids me to die!

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIdge.

So

Revival

I went wrong,

Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o'ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o'erflowed, or hushed itself in fear

Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and meseemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being's depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden urns of verse.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

Apollo

VAINLY, O burning Poets!

Ye wait for his inspiration,
Even as kings of old

Stood by the oracle-gates.

Hasten back, he will say, hasten back
To your provinces far away!
There, at my own good time,
Will I send my answer to you.

Are ye not kings of song?
At last the god cometh!
The air runs over with splendour:
The fire leaps high on the altar;
Melodious thunders shake the ground.
Hark to the Delphic responses!
Hark! it is the god!

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

APOLLO

W

A Musical Instrument

HAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river!),

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

In holes, as he sat by the river.