325

Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God

Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and

cried,

"Be not!" And like my words they were

no more.

The Earth

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,

The vaporous exultation not to be confined!

Ha ha! the animation of delight Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,

How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up

By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;

And from beneath, around, within, above,

wind.

The Moon

Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,

Some Spirit is darted like a beam from
thee,

Which penetrates my frozen frame, And passes with the warmth of flame, 330 With love, and odor, and deep melody Through me, through me!

destruction, sending

thunder-ball.

Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,

1 The sea.

2 Jupiter.

scurest bowers;

445

450

On thee a light, a life, a power,

485

Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or a chameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,

As a violet's gentle eye

Gazes on the azure sky

Until its hue grows like what it beholds, As a gray and watery mist

Glows like solid amethyst

est thine

As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,

Under the shadow of his beauty lying,

When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow

The Earth

And the weak day weeps

That it should be so.

O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight Falls on me like thy clear and tender light Soothing the seaman, borne the summer

night,

Through isles forever calm;

O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce

warmth doth keep.

So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee

455 Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, Full, oh, too full!

460

465

470

475

Thou art speeding round the sun'
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour

Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamored maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mænad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up

In the weird Cadmæan forest.
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl, and follow

That the light of its tremulous bells is

seen

Through their pavilions of tender green;

25 And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,

Which flung from its bells a sweet peal

anew

Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odor within the sense;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,

30 Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,

Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Mænad, its moonlight-colored cup,
35 Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,

The sweetest flower for scent that blows; 40 Grew in that garden in perfect prime. And all rare blossoms from every clime

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,

With golden and green light, slanting through

Their heaven of many a tangled hue,

45 Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft stream did glide and dance

With a motion of sweet sound and radi

ance.

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,