Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying · day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue: Then in a wailful choir the small gnats 25 TO AUTUMN (1819) mourn 30 I Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom friend of the maturing sun! Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottagetrees, 5 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells! Among the river sallows, borne aloft, Or sinking, as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. now with HYPERION A FRAGMENT (1818-19) 10 II Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find BOOK FIRST Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, rear 40 10 45 50 Still as the silence round about his lair. 5 How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 35 Forest on forest hung about his head Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was There was a listening fear in her regard, there As if calamity had but begun: Not so much life as on a summer's day As if the vanward clouds of evil days Robs not one light seed from the feathered Had spent their malice, and the sullen grass; But where the dead leaf fell, there did it Was with its stored thunder laboring up. rest. One hand she pressed upon that aching A stream went voiceless by, — still dead spot ened more Where beats the human heart, as if just By reason of his fallen divinity there, Spreading a shade: the naiad 'mid her Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain: reeds The other upon Saturn's bended neck Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips. She laid, and to the level of his ear Leaning with parted lips, some words she Along the margin-sand large footmarks spake went, 15 In solemn tenor and deep organ tone: No further than to where his feet had Some mourning words, which in our feeble strayed, tongue And slept there since. Upon the sodden Would come in these like accents -0 ground how frail His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, To that large utterance of the early gods! dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were "Saturn, look up! — though wherefore, closed; poor old King? While his bowed head seemed list'ning to I have no comfort for thee, no not one: the Earth, I cannot say, "O wherefore sleepest His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. thou?” For heaven is parted from thee, and the It seemed no force could wake him from earth his place; Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for But there came one, who with a kindred god; hand And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, Touched his wide shoulders, after bending Has from thy sceptre passed; and all the low air With reverence, though to one who knew Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. Thy thunder, conscious of the new comShe was a goddess of the infant world; mand, By her in stature the tall Amazon Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house; Had stood a pigmy's height: she would And thy sharp lightning, in unpractised have ta'en hands, Achilles by the hair and bent his neck, Scorches and burns Or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel. domain. Her face was large as that of Memphian O aching time! O moments big as years! sphinx, All as ye pass swell out the monstrous Pedestalled haply in a palace court, truth, When sages looked to Egypt for their lore. And press it so upon our weary griefs But oh! how unlike marble was that face: That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 20 55 a it not. 25 60 our once serene 30 65 100 105 75 110 - I am 80 Saturn, sleep on - 0 thoughtless, why Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape did I Is Saturn's; tell me if thou hear'st the Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude? voice Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes? 70 Of Saturn; tell me if this wrinkling Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I brow, weep." Naked and bare of its great diadem, power As when, upon a trancèd summer-night, To make me desolate? whence came the Those green-robed senators of mighty strength? woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest How was it nurtured to such bursting forth, stars, While Fate seemed strangled in my nervDream, and so dream all night without ous grasp? a stir, But it is so; and I am smothered up, Save from one gradual solitary gust And buried from all godlike exercise Which comes upon the silence, and dies Of influence benign on planets pale, off, Of admonitions to the winds and seas, As if the ebbing air had but one wave: Of peaceful sway above man's harvestSo came these words and went, the ing, while in tears And all those acts which deity supreme She touched her fair large forehead to Doth ease its heart of love in. the ground, gone Just where her falling hair might be out Away from my own bosom: I have left spread My strong identity, my real self, A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. Somewhere between the throne and where One moon, with alteration slow, had shed I sit Her silver seasons four upon the night, Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, And still these two were postured motion search! less, Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them Like natural sculpture in cathedral cav round ern, Upon all space: space starred, and lorn The frozen God still couchant on the of light; earth, And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet: Space regioned with life-air; and barren void ; Until at length old Saturn lifted up Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom hell. gone, And all the gloom and sorrow of the Search, Thea, search! and tell me if thou place, A certain shape or shadow, making way And that fair kneeling goddess; and then With wings or chariot fierce to repossess spake, A heaven he lost erewhile: it must it As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard Be of ripe progress Saturn must be Shook horrid with such aspen-malady: King. Yes, there must be a golden victory: "O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, 95 There must be gods thrown down, and Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face; trumpets blown Look up, and let me see our doom in it. Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival 115 85 120 90 seest must 125 Upon the gold clouds metropolitan, shall be Beautiful things made new, for the sur prise Of the sky-children: I will give com mandThea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?” 160 140 170 Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed, More sorrow like to this, and such like woe, Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe: The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison bound, Groaned for the old allegiance once more, And listened in sharp pain for Saturn's voice. But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept His sov'reignty, and rule, and majesty: 165 Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire Still sat, still snuffed the incense teeming up From man to the sun's God; yet unsecure. For as among us mortals omens drear Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech, Or the familiar visiting of one Upon the first toll of his passing-bell, Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp; But horrors portioned to a giant nerve, 175 Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright, Bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold, And touched with shade of bronzed obelisks, Glared a blood-red through all its thou sand courts, Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries ; 180 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds Flushed angerly: while sometimes eagle's wings, Unseen before by gods or wondering men, Darkened the place; and neighing steeds were heard, Not heard before by gods or wondering 145 This passion lifted him upon his feet, 135 And made his hands to struggle in the air, His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat, His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease. He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep. A little time, and then again he snatched Utterance thus: “But cannot I create? Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth Another world, another universe, To overbear and crumble this to nought? Where is another chaos? Where?" That word Found way unto Olympus, and made quake The rebel three. Thea was startled up, And in her bearing was a sort of hope, As thus she quick-voiced spake, yet full of awe: “This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends, 0 Saturn! come away, and give them heart; I know the covert, for thence came I hither." Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went With backward footing through the shade a space: He followed, and she turned to lead the way Through agèd boughs, that yielded like the mist Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest. 150 155 Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths Of incense, breathed aloft from sacred hills, Instead of sweets his ample palate took Savor of poisonous brass and metal sick. |