The players' pockets wer a-strout,
Wi' wold brown pence, a-rottlèn in,
Their zwangen bags did soon begin,
Wi' brocks an' scraps, to plim well out.
The childern all did run an' poke
Their heads vrom hatch or door, an' shout A-runnèn back to wolder vo'k.
Why, here! the humstrums be about!
As ing-an-ing did ring the string,
As ang-an-ang the wires did clang.
Ye rocky heights of Chios, where the snow,
Lit by the far-off and receding moon,
Now feels the soft dawn's purpling twilight creep
Over your ridges, while the mystic dews
Swarm down, and wait to be instinct with gold
And solar fire!-ye mountains waving brown
With thick-winged woods, and blotted with deep
In secret places; and ye paths that stray
E'en as ye list; what odours and what sighs
Tend your sweet silence through the star-showered
Like memories breathing of the Goddess forms
That left your haunts, yet with the day return!
And still more distant through the grey sky floats The faint blue fragment of the dead moon's shell;
Not dead indeed, but vacant, since 'tis now
Left by its bright Divinity. The snows
On steepest heights grave tints of dawn receive,
And mountains from the misty woodland rise
More clear of outline, while thick vapours curl
From off the valley streams, and spread away,
Till one by one the brooks and pools unveil
Their cold blue mirrors. From the great repose
What echoes now float on the listening air-
Now die away-and now again ascend,
Soft ringing from the valleys, caves, and groves,
Beyond the reddening heights? 'Tis Artemis come
With all her buskined Nymphs and sylvan rout,
To scare the silence and the sacred shades,
And with dim music break their rapturous trance!
But soon the music swells, and as the gleam
Of sunrise tips the summits tremblingly,
And the dense forests on their sides exchange
Shadows opaque for warm transparent tones,
Though still of depth and grandeur, nearer grows
The revelry; and echoes multiply
Behind the rocks and uplands, with the din
Of reed-pipe, timbrel, and clear silver horns,
With cry of Wood-nymphs, Fauns, and chasing hounds.
Within the isle, far from the walks of men,
Where jocund chase was never heard, nor hoof
Of Satyr broke the moss, nor any bird
Sang, save at times the nightingale—but only
In his prolonged and swelling tones, nor e'er
With wild joy and hoarse laughing melody,
Closing the ecstasy, as is his wont,-
A forest, separate and far withdrawn
From all the rest, there grew. Old as the earth,
Of cedar was it, lofty in its glooms
When the sun hung o'erhead, and, in its darkness,
Like Night when giving birth to Time's first pulse.
Silence had ever dwelt there; but of late
Came faint sounds, with a cadence droning low,
From the far depths, as of a cataract
Whose echoes midst incumbent foliage died.
From one high mountain gushed a flowing stream,
Which through the forest passed, and found a fall
Within, none knew where, then rolled tow'rds the sea.
There, underneath the boughs, mark where the gleam
Of sunrise through the roofing's chasm is thrown
Upon a grassy plot below, whereon
The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream
Swift rolling tow'rds the cataract, and drinks deeply. Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks,
While ever and anon the nightingale,
Not waiting for the evening, swells his hymn-
His one sustained and heaven-aspiring tone-
And when the sun hath vanished utterly,
Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade,
With arching wrist and long extended hands,
And graveward fingers lengthening in the moon,
Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still
Hang o'er the stream
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