Of ebon hair on calmèd brows—
O poet-woman! none forgoes
The leap, attaining the repose.
Theocritus, with glittering locks
Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks
He watched the visionary flocks.
And Aristophanes, who took
The world with mirth, and laughter-struck
The hollow caves of Thought and woke
The infinite echoes hid in each.
And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech
Did help the shade of bay to reach
And knit around his forehead high:
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.
Lucretius, nobler than his mood,
Who dropped his plummet down the broad
Deep universe and said "No God—"
Finding no bottom: he denied
Divinely the divine, and died
Chief poet on the Tiber-side
By grace of God: his face is stern
As one compelled, in spite of scorn,
To teach a truth he would not learn.
And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed;
Once counted greater than the rest,
When mountain-winds blew out his vest.
And Spenser drooped his dreaming head
(With languid sleep-smile you had said
From his own verse engenderèd)