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O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang | |
| From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth | |
| Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death | |
| Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness; | |
| Who lov’st to see the hamadryads dress | 5 |
| Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken; | |
| And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken | |
| The dreary melody of bedded reeds— | |
| In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds | |
| The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth; | 10 |
| Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth | |
| Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx—do thou now, | |
| By thy love’s milky brow! | |
| By all the trembling mazes that she ran, | |
| Hear us, great Pan! | 15 |
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| O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles | |
| Passion their voices cooingly ’mong myrtles, | |
| What time thou wanderest at eventide | |
| Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side | |
| Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom | 20 |
| Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom | |
| Their ripen’d fruitage; yellow girted bees | |
| Their golden honeycombs; our village leas | |
| Their fairest-blossom’d beans and poppied corn; | |
| The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, | 25 |
| To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries | |
| Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies | |
| Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year | |
| All its completions—be quickly near, | |
| By every wind that nods the mountain pine, | 30 |
| O forester divine! | |
| |
| Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies | |
| For willing service; whether to surprise | |
| The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit; | |
| Or upward ragged precipices flit | 35 |
| To save poor lambkins from the eagle’s maw; | |
| Or by mysterious enticement draw | |
| Bewildered shepherds to their path again; | |
| Or to tread breathless round the frothy main | |
| And gather up all fancifullest shells | 40 |
| For thee to tumble into Naiads’ cells, | |
| And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping; | |
| Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping, | |
| The while they pelt each other on the crown | |
| With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown— | 45 |
| By all the echoes that about thee ring, | |
| Hear us, O satyr king! | |
| |
| O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, | |
| While ever and anon to his shorn peers | |
| A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, | 50 |
| When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn | |
| Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, | |
| To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: | |
| Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, | |
| That come a swooning over hollow grounds, | 55 |
| And wither drearily on barren moors: | |
| Dread opener of the mysterious doors | |
| Leading to universal knowledge—see, | |
| Great son of Dryope, | |
| The many that are come to pay their vows | 60 |
| With leaves about their brows! | |
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| Be still the unimaginable lodge | |
| For solitary thinkings; such as dodge | |
| Conception to the very bourne of heaven, | |
| Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, | 65 |
| That spreading in this dull and clodded earth | |
| Gives it a touch ethereal—a new birth: | |
| Be still a symbol of immensity; | |
| A firmament reflected in a sea; | |
| An element filling the space between; | 70 |
| An unknown—but no more: we humbly screen | |
| With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, | |
| And giving out a shout most heaven-rending, | |
| Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan, | |
| Upon thy Mount Lycean! | 75 |
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