Marcian Colonna :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh! what a voice is silent. It was soft
As mountain-echoes, when the winds aloft—
The gentle winds of summer meet in caves;
Or when in sheltered places the white waves
Are 'wakened into music, as the breeze
Dimples and stems the current: or as trees
Shaking their green locks in the days of June:
Or Delphic girls when to the maiden moon
They sang harmonious pray'rs: or sounds that come
(However near) like a faint distant hum
Out of the grass, from which mysterious birth
We guess the busy secrets of the earth.
—Like the low voice of Syrinx, when she ran
Into the forests from Arcadian Pan:

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Or sad Œnone's, when she pined away
For Paris, or (and yet 'twas not so gay)
As Helen's whisper when she came to Troy,
Half sham'd to wander with that blooming boy:
Like air-touch'd harps in flowery casements hung;
Like unto lovers' ears the wild words sung
In garden bowers at twilight: like the sound
Of Zephyr when he takes his nightly round,
In May, to see the roses all asleep:
Or like the dim strain which along the deep
The sea-maid utters to the sailors' ear,
Telling of tempests, or of dangers near:
Like Desdemona, who (when fear was strong
Upon her soul) chaunted the willow song,
Swan-like before she perish'd: or the tone
Of flutes upon the waters heard alone:
Like words that come upon the memory
Spoken by friends departed; or the sigh
A gentle girl breathes when she tries to hide
The love her eyes betray to all the world beside.