The World Beautiful

SWEET is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night
With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train.
JOHN MILTON.

From 66 Paradise Lost."

3.

The Harvest Moon

It is the harvest moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack

When the morning-star shines dead,
As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea

beneath

Its ardors of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove."

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

The World Beautiful

The World Beautiful

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and

swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my

chair,

Is the million-colored bow:

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky:

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex

gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the

tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Before the Rain

We knew it would rain, for all the morn,
A spirit on slender ropes of mist
Was lowering its golden buckets down
Into the vapory amethyst

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-
Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,

To sprinkle them over the land in showers.

The

World Beautiful