University of Virginia Library

For nine full weary days I have not moved,
But taken on the cold gray ground my seat.
Apollo, oh look down upon my love,
Look down and bless me with the dazzling light
Of thy bright face so marvelously fair.
Take pity on me, O thou glorious god!
Thou lookest down with those great lustrous eyes
Upon the meanest of the things of earth.
Thou kissest tenderly the quivering leaves,
That gleam and glow atremble neath thy touch.
Thou crownest with thy beams each azure wave,
And brightenest e'en the spearlets of the grass:
My love alone thou ever dost disdain.
I sit and pine here, lonely on the ground,
My drink the globèd dew-drops, or my tears,
My bitter, bitter, ever-flowing tears.
Pensive I follow all the day thy course,
And watch and wait and weep and yearn and pray.
And when I see thee sink unto thy rest,
With all the amber-hued and rosy-tinged,
And royal-purple clouds around thy couch,
And every hill-top with thy light afire,
And every streamlet like a trail of flame,
And every daisy with the rose's blush,
Beneath the ardor of thy glowing glance,
Then know I that e'en this, my single joy—
The sight of thee—is gone for weary hours.
All night I wait, and heed not on my head
The chill damp dews, or e'en the falling rains,
That drop upon my streaming yellow hair.
Alone beneath the stars I dream of thee—
The thousand, thousand stars so bright and fair,
That gleam so purely on the field of night.
They shine upon me with a softer ray,
They look upon me far more tenderly,
And sometimes e'en I think they weep for me;
And yet, Apollo, all their million worlds
I would not give for thee and for thy love.
Alone beneath the stars I dream of thee,
Until upon the farthest eastern sky
I see gray lines, and then a pale white streak,
And then a milky opening of light,
And then a rosy flush upon the brow
Of fair Aurora, whom I envy so;
And then each dull gray cloud is edged with gold,
A border rich that feathers toward the sky
Of paly blue, and then with such a burst
Of dazzling radiance, such a wondrous gleam
Of blinding light, that all my pulses thrill,
That my heart throbs, my tearful eyes grow bright,
And my sad mouth half breaks into a smile,
Then doth thy form arise above the hills,
The mist-bathed hills erst cut so cold and clear.
Apollo, oh take pity on my love;
I pine, I faint, I die with love of thee!
Thou makest e'en the humblest flower glad
With thy great light, then change me, O my king.
Into the meanest one of these, or love me too!

Thus Clytie to Apollo, and at last
His heart she touches, for he now is seized
With tender pity for the pining nymph,
Transforming her in answer to her prayer.
A verdant tissue clothes her listless limbs,
And weaves itself about her graceful frame,
And spreadeth into leaves upon her breast,
And bursteth into little swelling buds,
Encasing all her pliant form. Her face
Becomes a flower golden as the sun,
Which moves upon its stalk and ever turns,
And follows even yet Apollo's course,
Up in the trackless heaven's azure waste.