What voice-like sounds
Off the Trinacrian coast, low, plaintive, sweet,
Blend with the breeze? or is it Fancy’s cheat?
There seem no grounds
For watch or fear: the waves have sunk to sleep
In twilight on the bosom of the deep.
The ship seems half becalmed, and eve surrounds
The crew with dolphins in perpetual leap.
But hark again!
Now here, now there, now all around the ship
The voices sound each from an unseen lip!
Dost hear the strain?
It charms, it lulls, it lures, yet seems to fill
The soul with something ominous of ill,
A strange vague song with which man strives in vain,
Which melts the heart while it benumbs the will.
The weird sounds float
Across the waters from the rocky shore;
The listless crew grow drowsy more and more.
No signs denote
A coming storm; but something slow and strong
Sucks unperceived those spell-bound men along:
Awake, awake! the whirlpool grasps the boat!
It seethes, it roars, it drowns the Sirens’ song!
APOLLO.
Out on thy strife
Of winds and birds!—See, see the golden spears
Gleam through the dust, and desperate charioteers
And Death and Life
Sweep by all wildly blent!—See, see how flash
The helmets in the sun, as onward dash
The waves of war! The very air seems rife
With goading Gods who wield an unseen lash!
O Sun, shine down
On Freedom’s ranks; pour strength into their hearts,
And blind the foe with thy resistless darts!
On, on! the crown
Is for you all, both those who live and die!
See, see, they waver! now they turn and fly
In wild mad rout and trample down their own,
While thick as autumn leaves their strewn dead lie.
And as decrease
The rattle and the roar, the crash and cries,
Triumphant hymns from all the vast plain rise,
And never cease
To shake the stars.—Sound high, sound high, my strings!
For from the bloodstained dust the laurel springs;
Ay, and the olive with its fruit of peace,
And freedom’s garnered grain and earth’s best things!
MARSYAS.
Right sweetly played!
But oh, I love the caves where all is mute
Save unseen dropping waters, or my flute,
Whose tones are made
So strange by echo, that, transformed, increased,
They ape the voice of some wild wounded beast
Or eager hounds; or wail in cavernous shade
Like souls in Hades wailing unreleased.
And not less well
I love deep gorges, whether, in the spring,
With crash of slipping snow their echoes ring;
Or they compel
A summer storm’s pent thunder, peal on peal,
To roll along them; or their rent flanks feel
Autumnal waters roar; or fierce howls tell
Of captive wintry winds in wild appeal.