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. 66 Where breathes a moonless grove, O'er pebbly pools and sweet; So they call, the gold-browed kings, He left the blue profound To follow winding valleys; The dark kings waited long, Yet they call him from the shore, 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: Every thing that heard him play, Hung their heads and then lay by. Killing care and grief of heart Shakespeare? HYMN OF PAN FROM the forests and highlands From the river-girt islands, The wind in the reeds and the rushes, And the lizards below in the grass, Liquid Peneus was flowing, 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 pursued a maiden, and clasp'd a reed: 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, Dost thou to-night behold, Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? 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; |