Wondering I ask'd, "Whose grave dost thou prepare?"
The labouring ghost disdainful paused and said,
"To dig the grave is Death my father's care,
I disinter the dead
Under the stars."
Therewith he cast a skull before my feet,
A skull with worms encircled, and a crown,
And mouldering shreds of Beauty's winding-sheet.
Chilling and cheerless down
Shimmer'd the stars.
"And of the Past," I sigh'd, "are these alone
The things disburied? spare the dread repose,
Or bring once more the monarch to his throne,
To Beauty's cheek the rose."
Cloud wrapt the stars,
While the pale sexton answer'd, "Fool, away!
Thou ask'st of Memory that which Faith must give;
Mine is the task to disinter the clay,
Hers to bid life revive,"—
Cloud left the stars.
THE DISPUTE OE THE POETS.
An idyll scene of happy Sicily!
Out from its sacred grove on grassy slopes
Smiles a fair temple, vow'd to some sweet Power
Of Nature deified. In broad degrees
From flower-wreath'd porticos the shining stairs,
Through tiers of Myrtle in Corinthian urns,
Glide to the shimmer of an argent lake.
Calm rest the swans upon the glassy wave,
Save where the younger cygnets, newly-pair'd,
Through floating brakes of water-lilies, sail
Slowly in sunlight down to islets dim.
But farther on, the lake subsides away
Into the lapsing of a shadowy rill
Melodious with the chime of falls as sweet
As (heard by Pan in Arethusan glades)
The silvery talk of meeting Naïades.
Where cool the sunbeam slants through ilex-boughs,
The fane above them and the rill below,
Two forms recline; nor, e'er in Arcady
Did fairer Manhood win an Oread's love,
Or lift diviner brows to earliest stars.
The one of brighter hues, and darker curls
Clustering and purple as the fruit o' the vine,
Seem'd like that Summer-Idol of rich life
Whom sensuous Greece, inebriate with delight,
From Orient myth and symbol-worship brought
To blue Cithæron blithe with bounding faun
And wood-nymph wild,—Nature's young Lord, Iacchus!
Bent o'er the sparkling brook, with careless hand
From sedge or sward, he pluck'd or reed or flower,
Casting away light wreaths on playful waves;
While,—as the curious ripple murmur'd round
Its odorous prey, and eddying whirl'd it on
O'er pebbles glancing sheen to sunny falls,—
He laugh'd, as childhood laughs, in such frank glee
The very leaves upon the ilex danced
Joyous, as at some mirthful wind in May.
The other, though the younger, more serene,
And to the casual gaze severer far,
To that bright comrade-shape; by contrast seem'd
As serious Morn, star-crown'd on Spartan hills,
To Noon, when hyacinths flush through Enna's vales,
Or murmurous winglets hum 'mid Indian palms.
Such beauty his as the first Dorian bore
From the far birthplace of Homeric men,
Beyond the steeps of Boreal Thessaly,
When to the swart Pelasgic Autocthon
The blue-eyed Pallas came with lifted spear,
And, her twin type of the fair-featured North.
Phœbus, the archer with the golden hair.
Bright was the one as Syrian Adon-ai,
Charming the goddess born from roseate seas;
And while the other, leaning on his lyre,
Lifted the azure light of earnest eyes
From flower and wave to the remotest hill
On which the soft horizon melted down,
Ev'n so methought had gazed Endymion,
With looks estranged from the luxuriant day,
To the far Latmos steep—where holy dreams
Nightly renew'd the kisses of the Moon.