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ROMAN ANTIQUITIES DISCOVERED.

75

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES DISCOVERED.

WHILE poring Antiquarians search the ground
Upturned with curious pains, the bard, a Seer,
Takes fire:-the men that have been reappear;
Romans for travel girt, for business gowned;
And some recline on couches, myrtle-crowned,
In festal glee. Why not? For fresh and clear,
As if its hues were of the passing year,

Dawns this time-buried pavement. From that mound
Hoards may come forth of Trajans, Maximins,
Shrunk into coins with all their warlike toil:

Or a fierce impress issue with its foil

Of tenderness—the Wolf, whose suckling Twins
The unlettered ploughboy pities, when he wins
The casual treasure from the furrow'd soil.

W. Wordsworth.

76

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

-Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez-when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats.

FANCY IN NUBIBUS.

77

FANCY IN NUBIBUS.

OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS.

O! IT is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low

And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land! Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight, Be that blind bard who, on the Chian strand

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

S. T. Coleridge.

78

WITH A COPY OF THE ILIAD..

WITH A COPY OF THE ILIAD.

BAYARD, awaken not this music strong
While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze
Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas
O'er which Ulysses heard the Siren's song!
Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong,
And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease;
But later, when these high ancestral trees
Are sear, and such Odyssean languors wrong
The reddening strength of the autumnal year,
Yield to heroic words thine ear and eye:
Intent on these broad pages thou shalt hear
The trumpet's blare, the Argive battle-cry,
And see Achilles hurl his hurtling spear,
And mark the Trojan arrows make reply.

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

TO MILTON.

79

TO MILTON.

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men:
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free;
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

W. Wordsworth.

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