90 ODE TO AUTUMN. The squirrel gloats o'er his accomplish'd hoard, The sweets of summer in their luscious cells; Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded T. Hood. AUTUMN. AUTUMN. A DIRGE. THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Of the dead cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling. Come, Months, come away; Put on white, black, and grey; Let your light sisters play— Of the dead cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. P. B. Shelley. 91 92 CHORAL HYMN TO ARTEMIS. CHORAL HYMN TO ARTEMIS. WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, With a noise of winds and many rivers, With a clamour of waters, and with might; Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, Over the splendour and speed of thy feet; For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, And the south-west wind and the west wind sing. CHORAL HYMN TO ARTEMIS. For winter's rains and ruins are over, The light that loses, the night that wins; Blossom by blossom the spring begins. The full streams feed on flower of rushes, And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, And soft as lips that laugh and hide The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair Her bright breast shortening into sighs; The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. Algernon Charles Swinburne. 93 94 HYMN OF PAN. HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. Liquid Peneus was flowing, The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did them attend and follow, Were silent with love,-as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings. I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dædal earth, And of heaven, and the Giant wars, And love, and death, and birth. |