n the delicate air;
Ah, then, in that so lovely earth wilt thou
With all thy beauty love me all one way,
And make me all thy lover as before?
Lo, where the white-maned horses of the surge, 10
Plunging in thunderous onset to the shore,
Trample and break and charge along the sand!
XCIV
Cold is the wind where Daphne sleeps,
That was so tender and so warm
With loving,--with a loveliness
Than her own laurel lovelier.
Now pipes the bitter wind for her, 5
And the snow sifts about her door,
While far below her frosty hill
The racing billows plunge and boom.
XCV
Hark, where Poseidon's
White racing horses
Trample with tumult
The shelving seaboard!
Older than Saturn, 5
Older than Rhea,
That mournful music,
Falling and surging
With the vast rhythm
Ceaseless, eternal, 10
Keeps the long tally
Of all things mortal.
How many lovers
Hath not its lulling
Cradled to slumber
With the ripe flowers, 15
Ere for our pleasure
This golden summer
Walked through the corn-lands
In gracious splendour! 20
How many loved ones
Will it not croon to,
In the long spring-days
Through coming ages,
When all our day-dreams 25
Have been forgotten,
And none remembers
Even thy beauty!
They too shall slumber
In quiet places, 30
And mighty sea-sounds
Call them unheeded.
XCVI
Hark, my lover, it is spring!
On the wind a faint far call
Wakes a pang within my heart,
Unmistakable and keen.
At the harbour mouth a sail 5
Glimmers in the morning sun,
And the ripples at her prow
Whiten into crumbling foam,
As she forges outward bound
For the teeming foreign ports. 10
Through the open window now,
Hear the sailors lift a song!
In the meadow ground the frogs
With their deafening flutes begin,--
The old madness of the world 15
In their golden throats again.
Little fifers of live bronze,
Who hath taught you with wise lore
To unloose the strains of joy,
When Orion seeks the west?
|