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WHO, who from Dian’s feast would be away? | |
| For all the golden bowers of the day | |
| Are empty left? Who, who away would be | |
| From Cynthia’s wedding and festivity? | |
| Not Hesperus: lo! upon his silver wings | 5 |
| He leans away for highest heaven and sings, | |
| Snapping his lucid fingers merrily!— | |
| Ah, Zephyrus! art here, and Flora too! | |
| Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew, | |
| Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, | 10 |
| Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill | |
| Your baskets high | |
| With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines, | |
| Savory, latter-mint, and columbines, | |
| Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme; | 15 |
| Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime, | |
| All gather’d in the dewy morning: hie | |
| Away! fly, fly!— | |
| Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven, | |
| Aquarius! to whom king Jove has given | 20 |
| Two liquid pulse streams ’stead of feather’d wings, | |
| Two fan-like fountains,—thine illuminings | |
| For Dian play: | |
| Dissolve the frozen purity of air; | |
| Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare | 25 |
| Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright | |
| The Star-Queen’s crescent on her marriage night: | |
| Haste, haste away!— | |
| Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see! | |
| And of the Bear has Pollux mastery: | 30 |
| A third is in the race! who is the third, | |
| Speeding away swift as the eagle bird? | |
| The ramping Centaur! | |
| The Lion’s mane on end: the Bear how fierce! | |
| The Centaur’s arrow ready seems to pierce | 35 |
| Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent | |
| Into the blue of heaven. He’ll be shent, | |
| Pale unrelentor, | |
| When he shall hear the wedding lutes a-playing.— | |
| Andromeda! sweet woman! why delaying | 40 |
| So timidly among the stars: come hither! | |
| Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither | |
| They all are going. | |
| Danae’s Son, before Jove newly bow’d, | |
| Has wept for thee, calling to Jove aloud. | 45 |
| Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral: | |
| Ye shall for ever live and love, for all | |
| Thy tears are flowing. | |
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