But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are

strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,

Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and

oil;

Till they perish and they suffer

whisper'd-down in hell

some, 'tis

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys

dwell,

Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander

more.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

HYLAS

EAR to the sailor-kings,

DE

Bronze-bearded, steadfast-hearted,

Oars' dash, when galley swings

Black through the grey waves parted.
But they said: Make the cove

66

Where breathes a moonless grove,
And larks hang glad

O'er pebbly pools and sweet;
He sickens with the heat,
Our little lad."

So they call, the gold-browed kings,
Hylas, Hylas, Hylas! clear;
And Alcides' great voice rings,-
For he loved the brown child dear.

He left the blue profound

To follow winding valleys;
He lost the surf's faint sound
In aspen-shivering alleys.
Beside the freshes cold
He found white fingers hold
His brown hand hot;

The dark kings waited long,
But he came not.

Yet they call him from the shore,
Hylas, Hylas, Hylas! thrice;

But Alcides sails no more

Remembering the drowned child's eyes. Georgiana Goddard King

ORPHEUS

ORPHEUS with his lute made trees.

And the mountain tops that freeze

Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,

Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

Shakespeare?

HYMN OF PAN

FROM the forests and highlands
tome, we come;

From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the nymphs of the wood and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves. And all that did then 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 daedal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus

I pursued a maiden, and clasp'd a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus:

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed. All wept- - as I think both ye now would, If envy or age had not frozen your bloodAt the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

PHILOMELA

HARK! ah, the nightingale —

The tawny-throated!

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark! - what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,

Still, after many years, in distant lands,

Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain

That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world

Say, will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn

With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy racked heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,

Here, through the moonlight on this English

grass,

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and seared eyes

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound

With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?

Listen, Eugenia,—

THE ISLES OF GREECE

HE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,

Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute