University of Virginia Library

Thou art, in truth, a fair and kingly star,
Planet! whose silver crest now gleams afar
Upon the edge of yonder eastern hill,
That, night-like, seems a third of heaven to fill.
Thou art most worthy of a poet's lore,
His worship—as a thing to bend before;
And yet thou smilest as if I might sing,
Weak as I am—my lyre unused to ring
Among the thousand harps which fill the world.
The sun's last fire upon the sky has curled,
And on the clouds, and now thou hast arisen,
And in the east thine eye of love doth glisten—
Thou, whom the ancients took to be a king,
And that of gods; and, as thou wert a spring
Of inspiration, I would soar and drink,
While yet thou art upon the mountain's brink.
Who bid men say that thou, O silver peer,
Wast to the moon a servitor, anear
To sit, and watch her eye for messages,
Like to the other fair and silver bees
That swarm around her when she sits her throne?
What of the moon? She bringeth storm alone,
At new, and full, and every other time;
She turns men's brains, and so she makes them rhyme,
And rave, and sigh away their weary life;
And shall she be of young adorers rife,
And thou have none? Nay, one will sing to thee,
And turn his eye to thee, and bend the knee.
Lo! on the marge of the dim western plain,
The star of love doth even yet remain—
She of the ocean-foam—and watch thy look,
As one might gaze upon an antique book,
When he doth sit and read, at deep dead night,
Stealing from Time his hours. Ah, sweet delay!
And now she sinks to follow fleeting day,
Contented with thy glance of answering love:
And where she worships can I thoughtless prove?
Now as thou risest higher into sight,
Marking the water with a line of light,
On wave and ripple quietly aslant,
Thy influences steal upon the heart,
With a sweet force and unresisted art,
Like the still growth of some unceasing plant.
The mother, watching by her sleeping child,
Blesses thee, when thy light, so still and mild,

Falls through the casement on her babe's pale face,
And tinges it with a benignant grace,
Like the white shadow of an angel's wing.
The sick man, who has lain for many a day,
And wasted like a lightless flower away,
He blesses thee, O Jove! when thou dost shine
Upon his face, with influence divine,
Soothing his thin, blue eyelids into sleep.
The child its constant murmuring will keep,
Within the nurse's arms, till thou dost glad
His eyes, and then he sleeps. The thin, and sad,
And patient student, closes up his books
A space or so, to gain from thy kind looks
Refreshment. Men, in dungeons pent,
Climb to the window, and, with head upbent,
Gaze they at thee. The timid deer awake,
And, 'neath thine eye, their nightly rambles make,
Whistling their joy to thee. The speckled trout,
From underneath his rock comes shooting out,
And turns his eye to thee, and loves thy light,
And sleeps within it. The gray water plant
Looks up to thee beseechingly aslant,
And thou dost feed it there, beneath the wave.
Even the tortoise crawls from out his cave,
And feeds wherever, on the dewy grass,
Thy light hath lingered. Thou canst even pass
To water-depths, and make the coral-fly
Work happier, when flattered by thine eye.
Thou touchest not the roughest heart in vain;
Even the sturdy sailor, and the swain,
Bless thee, whene'er they see thy lustrous eye
Open amid the clouds, stilling the sky.
The lover praises thee, and to thy light
Compares his love, thus tender and thus bright;
And tells his mistress thou dost kindly mock
Her gentle eye. Thou dost the heart unlock
Which Care and Wo have rendered comfortless,
And teachest it thy influence to bless,
And even for a time its grief to brave.
The madman, that beneath the moon doth rave,
Looks to thy orb, and is again himself.
The miser stops from counting out his pelf,
When, through the barred windows comes thy lull—
And even he, he thinks thee beautiful.
Oh! while thy silver arrows pierce the air,
And while beneath thee, the dim forests, where
The wind sleeps, and the snowy mountains tall
Are still as death—oh! bring me back again
The bold and happy heart that blessed me, when
My youth was green; ere home and hope were vailed
In desolation! Then my cheek was paled,

But not with care. For, late at night, and long,
I toiled, that I might gain myself among
Old tomes, a knowledge; and in truth I did:
I studied long, and things the wise had hid
In their quaint books, I learned; and then I thought
The poet's art was mine; and so I wrought
My boyish feelings into words, and spread
Them out before the world—and I was fed
With praise, and with a name. Alas! to him,
Whose eye and heart must soon or late grow dim,
Toiling with poverty, or evils worse,
This gift of poetry is but a curse,
Unfitting it amid the world to brood,
And toil and jostle for a livelihood.
The feverish passion of the soul hath been
My bane. O Jove! couldst thou but wean
Me back to boyhood for a space, it were
Indeed a gift.
There was a sudden stir,
Thousands of years ago, upon the sea;
The waters foamed, and parted hastily,
As though a giant left his azure home,
And Delos woke, and did to light up come
Within that Grecian sea. Latona had,
Till then, been wandering, listlessly and sad,
About the earth, and through the hollow vast
Of water, followed by the angry haste
Of furious Juno. Many a weary day,
Above the shaggy hills where, groaning, lay
Enceladus and Typhon, she had roamed,
And over volcanoes, where fire upfoamed;
And sometimes in the forests she had lurked,
Where the fierce serpent through the herbage worked,
Over gray weeds, and tiger-trampled flowers,
And where the lion hid in tangled bowers,
And where the panther, with his dappled skin,
Made day like night with his deep moaning din:
All things were there to fright the gentle soul—
The hedgehog, that across the path did roll,
Gray eagles, fanged like cats, old vultures, bald,
Wild hawks and restless owls, whose cry appalled,
Black bats and speckled tortoises, that snap,
And scorpions, hiding underneath gray stones,
With here and there old piles of human bones
Of the first men that found out what was war,
Brass heads of arrows, rusted scimetar,
Old crescent, shield and edgeless battle-axe,
And near them skulls, with wide and gaping cracks,
Too old and dry for worms to dwell within;
Only the restless spider there did spin,
And made his house.

And then she down would lay
Her restless head, among dry leaves, and faint,
And close her eyes, till thou wouldst come and paint
Her visage with thy light; and then the blood
Would stir again about her heart, endued,
By thy kind look, with life again, and speed;
And then wouldst thou her gentle spirit feed
With new-winged hopes, and sunny fantasies,
And, looking piercingly amid the trees,
Drive from her path all those unwelcome sights—
Then would she rise, and o'er the flower-blights,
And through the tiger-peopled solitudes,
And odorous brakes, and panther-guarded woods,
Would keep her way until she reached the edge
Of the blue sea, and then on some high ledge
Of thunder-blackened rocks, would sit and look
Into thine eye, nor fear lest, from some nook,
Should rise the hideous shapes that Juno ruled,
And persecute her.
Once her feet she cooled
Upon a long and narrow beach. The brine
Had marked, as with an endless serpent spine,
The sanded shore with a long line of shells,
Like those the Nereids weave, within the cells
Of their queen Thetis—such they pile around
The feet of cross old Nereus, having found
That this will gain his grace, and such they bring
To the quaint Proteus, as an offering,
When they would have him tell their fate, and who
Shall first embrace them with a lover's glow.
And there Latona stepped along the marge
Of the slow waves, and when one came more large,
And wet her feet, she tingled, as when Jove
Gave her the first, all-burning kiss of love.
Still on she kept, pacing along the sand,
And on the shells, and now and then would stand,
And let her long and golden hair outfloat
Upon the waves—when lo! the sudden note
Of the fierce hissing dragon met her ear.
She shuddered then, and, all-possessed with fear,
Rushed wildly through the hollow-sounding vast
Into the deep, deep sea; and then she passed
Through many wonders—coral-raftered caves,
Deep, far below the noise of upper waves—
Sea-flowers, that floated into golden hair,
Like misty silk—fishes, whose eyes did glare,
And some surpassing lovely—fleshless spine
Of old behemoths—flasks of hoarded wine
Among the timbers of old shattered ships—
Goblets of gold, that had not touched the lips
Of men a thousand years.

And then she lay
Her down, amid the ever-changing spray,
And wished, and begged to die; and then it was,
That voice of thine the deities that awes,
Lifted to light beneath the Grecian skies,
That rich and lustrous Delian paradise,
And placed Latona there, while yet asleep,
With parted lip, and respiration deep,
And open palm; and when at length she woke,
She found herself beneath a shadowy oak,
Huge and majestic; from its boughs looked out
All birds, whose timid nature 't is to doubt
And fear mankind. The dove, with patient eyes,
Earnestly did his artful nest devise,
And was most busy under sheltering leaves;
The thrush, that loves to sit upon gray eaves
Amid old ivy, she too sang, and built;
And mock-bird songs rang out like hail-showers spilt
Among the leaves, or on the velvet grass;
The bees did all around their store amass,
Or down depended from a swinging bough,
In tangled swarms. Above her dazzling brow
The lustrous humming-bird was whirling; and,
So near, that she might reach it with her hand,
Lay a gray lizard—such do notice give
When a foul serpent comes, and they do live
By the permission of the roughest hind;
Just at her feet, with mild eyes up-inclined,
A snowy antelope cropped off the buds
From hanging limbs; and in the solitudes
No noise disturbed the birds, except the dim
Voice of a fount, that, from the grassy brim,
Rained upon violets its liquid light,
And visible love; also, the murmur slight
Of waves, that softly sang their anthem, and
Trode gently on the soft and noiseless sand,
As gentle children in sick chambers grieve,
And go on tiptoe.
Here, at call of eve,
When thou didst rise above the barred east,
Touching with light Latona's snowy breast
And gentler eyes, and when the happy earth
Sent up its dews to thee—then she gave birth
Unto Apollo and the lustrous Dian;
And when the wings of morn commenced to fan
The darkness from the east, afar there rose,
Within the thick and odor-dropping forests,
Where moss was grayest and dim caves were hoarest,
Afar there rose the known and dreadful hiss
Of the pursuing dragon. Agonies

Grew on Latona's soul; and she had fled,
And tried again the ocean's pervious bed,
Had not Apollo, young and bright Apollo,
Restrained from the dim and perilous hollow,
And asked what meant the noise. `It is, O child!
The hideous dragon, that hath aye defiled
My peace and quiet, sent by heaven's queen
To slay her rival, me.'
Upon the green
And mossy grass there lay a nervous bow,
And heavy arrows, eagle-winged, which thou,
O Jove! hadst placed within Apollo's reach.
These grasping, the young god stood in the breach
Of circling trees, with eye that fiercely glanced,
Nostril expanded, lip pressed, foot advanced,
And arrow at the string; when lo! the coil
Of the fierce snake came on with winding toil,
And vast gyrations, crushing down the branches,
With noise as when a hungry tiger cranches
Huge bones: and then Apollo drew his bow
Full at the eye—nor ended with one blow:
Dart after dart he hurled from off the string—
All at the eye—until a lifeless thing
The dragon lay. Thus the young sun-god slew
Old Juno's scaly snake; and then he threw
(So strong was he) the monster in the sea;
And sharks came round and ate voraciously,
Lashing the waters into bloody foam,
By their fierce fights.
Latona, then, might roam
In earth, air, sea, or heaven, void of dread;
For even Juno badly might have sped
With her bright children, whom thou soon didst set
To rule the sun and moon, as they do yet.
Thou! who didst then their destiny control,
I here would woo thee, till into my soul
Thy light might sink. O Jove! I am full sure
None bear unto thy star a love more pure
Than I; thou hast been, everywhere, to me
A source of inspiration. I should be
Sleepless, could I not first behold thine orb
Rise in the west; then doth my heart absorb,
Like other withering flowers, thy light and life;
For that neglect, which cutteth like a knife,
I never have from thee, unless the lake
Of heaven be clouded. Planet! thou wouldst make
Me, as thou didst thine ancient worshippers,
A poet; but, alas! whatever stirs

My tongue and pen, they both are faint and weak:
Apollo hath not, in some gracious freak,
Given to me the spirit of his lyre,
Or touched my heart with his etherial fire
And glorious essence: thus, whate'er I sing
Is weak and poor, and may but humbly ring
Above the waves of Time's far-booming sea.
All I can give is small; thou wilt not scorn
A heart: I give no golden sheaves of corn;
I burn to thee no rich and odorous gums;
I offer up to thee no hecatombs,
And build no altars: 't is a heart alone;
Such as it is, I give it—'t is thy own.