mand,
But a strange pain was written on his brow,
And thrilled throughout his silver accents now.

"My bird," he cries, "my destined brother friend,
O whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight?
Hast thou forgotten that I here attend,
From the full noon until this sad twilight?
A hundred times, at least, from the clear spring,
Since the fall noon o'er hill and valley glowed,
I've filled the vase which our Olympian king
Upon my care for thy sole use bestowed;
That, at the moment when thou shouldst descend,
A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend.

"Hast thou forgotten earth, forgotten me,
Thy fellow-bondsman in a royal cause,
Who, from the sadness of infinity,
Only with thee can know that peaceful pause
In which we catch the flowing strain of love,
Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove?

"Before I saw thee, I was like the May,
Longing for summer that must mar its bloom,
Or like the morning star that calls the day,
Whose glories to its promise are the tomb;
And as the eager fountain rises higher
To throw itself more strongly back to earth,
Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire,
More fondly it reverted to its birth,
For what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose,
The meaning that the boy foretold the man cannot disclose.

"I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt
Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit;
Full feeling was the thought of what was felt,
Its music was the meaning of the lute;
But heaven and earth such life will still deny,
For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question _Why?_

"Upon the highest mountains my young feet
Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew,
My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet,
Yet win no greeting from the circling blue;
Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere,
They had no care that there was none for me;
Alike to them that I was far or near,
Alike to them time and eternity.

"But from the violet of lower air
Sometimes an answer to my wishing came;
Those lightning-births my nature seemed to share,
They told the secrets of its fiery frame,
The sudden messengers of hate and love,
The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove,
And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred grove.

"Come in a moment, in a moment gone,
They answered me, then left me still more lone;
They to