Like bands of ministering Spirits, or when they lie,

As if some Protean art the change had wrought, 75

In listless quiet o’er the ethereal deep

Scattered, a Cyclades[250] of various shapes

And all degrees of beauty. O ye Lightnings!

Ye are their perilous offspring;[251] and the Sun—

Source inexhaustible of life and joy, 80

And type of man’s far-darting reason, therefore

In old time worshipped as the god of verse,[252]

A blazing intellectual deity—