but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier—
'Past Thymiaterion in calmèd bays,
Between the southern and the western Horn,
Heard neither'—
We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean—he heard
—'neither the warbling of the nightingale
Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'
but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following song:—
'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowèd fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charmèd root,
Round about all is mute'—
mute, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at sea—
——'all is mute
As the snow-field on mountain peaks,
As the sand-field at the mountain foot.
Crocodiles in briny creeks
Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.'
How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charmèd neighbourhood—fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its foot. The very crocodiles, too, are mute—not dumb but mute. The 'red-combèd dragon curl'd' is next introduced—
'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen away,
For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.'