About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same disccurse
renewed.
And soon with this he other matter blended
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanor kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended
I could have laughed myself to scorn, to find
In that decrepit man so firm a mind.
"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely
CHAMELEONS feed on light and air-
Poets' food is love and fame;
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a-day?
Poets are on this cold earth
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea:
Where light is, chameleons change-
Where love is not, poets do.
Fame is love disguised; if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind; If bright chameleons should devour Any food but beams and wind, They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are: Children of a sunnier star, Spirits from beyond the moon, Oh, refuse the boon!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THOU still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our
rhyme!
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? what maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape! What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone!
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not
leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss Though winning near the goal; yet do not grieve
She cannot fade, though thou hast net
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves nor ever bid the spring adieu: And happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love' For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice!
To what green altar, O mysterious priest
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garland:
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
U Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed!
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of
thought,
As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY LIFE.
MARTIAL, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I findThe riches left, not got with pain; The fruitful ground, the quiet mind,
The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthful life;
The household of continuance;
The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom joined with simpleness; The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress;
The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night; Contented with thine own estate,
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.
HENCE, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born!
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under ebon shades, and lowbrowed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free, In heav'n y-cleped Euphrosyne, And, by men, heart-easing Mirth! Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister graces more, To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore; Or whether (as some sages sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing— As he met her once a-MayingThere, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek—
Sport, that wrinkled care derides,
And laughter holding both his sides.
Come! and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free-
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night
From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill
Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray-
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest-
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neigboring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savory dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the live-long daylight fail,
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale
With stories told of many a feat:
How fairy Mab the junkets eat—
She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he by friar's lantern led;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And, crop-full, out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bolt In weeds of peace high triumphs holdWith store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp and feast and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantrySuch sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream: Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild
And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony-
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regained Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
HENCE, vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred! How little you bestead,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes pos
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeams
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue--
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended;
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore-
His daughter she (in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain).
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive nun, devont and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn!
Come! but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad, leaden, downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast;
And join with thee calm peace,
and quiet--
Spare fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing;
And add to these retired leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne-
The cherub contemplation;
And the mute silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustomed oak.
Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of fol ly
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among
I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heav'n's wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar,
Or if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom-
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