294 BY THE WINTER SEA. BY THE WINTER SEA. (ELEGIACS). WEARILY stretches the sand to the surge and the surge to the cloudland; Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife; ether, But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them; Grey rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper. Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry. Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-weed; Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide. Just is the wave which uptore us; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us; Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand! Joy to the oak of the mountain: he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts; Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone. C. Kingsley. CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES. 295 CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES. HEAR, my beloved, an old Milesian story!- Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision, S. T. Coleridge. 296 IN ARCADY. IN ARCADY. (ELEGIACS.) TRUNKS the forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing, Out of a dark umbrage sounds also musical issued, Nor, with ebon locks, too, there wanted, circling, attentive, Over a sunny level their flocks are lazily feeding; A. H. Clough. ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. 297 ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. I. THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness! A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 2. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 3. Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed And happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; 298 ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever panting and for ever young; 4. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 5. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens over-wrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. John Keats. |