The bard, and minor poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Harp on, ye winds! in glad content,
Your hymns on every instrument
Of rock, and mount, and cave;
The trees their joyful notes will bring,
Each flower, each blade of grass, will sing
Your measures, glad or grave.

And not to me alone the songs
That to your minstrelsy belongs,
Of joys that never cease;
The lonely spring, the quiet stream,
The lake low murmuring as in dream,
Have heard your hymns of Peace.

The nightingale, in sweetest note,
To you her lone complaint hath brought,
To you each bird hath sung;
The weed-clad tower of ancient time,
The church bell's solitary chime,
Have join'd your banner'd throng.

Who, who may tell whence ye arise?
In what far region of the skies?
In what high forest tree?

101

Ye come as rushing hosts of war,
As loosen'd cataracts heard afar,
As thunders of the sea.

Or fanning round the wild bird's wing,
Or by the moon's cold pathways sing
Along the milky way;
Or through fierce caves and arches high,
Where Ruin mocks the morning sky,
Ye woo the love-worn day.

And whence that influence, dark and dim,
That wakes the soul's Æolian hymn
To measures glad and gay?
That breathes unto the midnight hour
Such spell of mystery and power,
And holds monarchic sway?

That makes the Poet weep and sigh;
That gathers tears in Beauty's eye,
And dreams around its head;
That, breathed in sounds of awe and fear,
Doth sing unto crazed lover's ear,
Old songs of maiden dead?

That treadeth where no foot can go,
That murmurs where no fount can flow,
Where no proud pennant streams;
That to the stars and to the moon
Doth ever sing a slumbering tune—
The very Queen of Dreams?

102

For ever breathed your hymns of love!
Ye call'd the laurel-seeking dove
Out from the foundering ark;
Ye came to Ruth among the corn,
Singing of distant lands forlorn,
Beyond the waters dark.

Ye waved the rushes o'er the brow
Of Moses, when the lady saw
God's chosen nod his head;
Ye caught the stir of Jordan's sea,
To Israel's king ye sang in glee
Ere Absalom was dead.

Ye speak to us of human life!
One hour of calm, one hour of strife,
Now bright, now dark your form!
At morn ye sing to tree and flower,
The evening hears your voice of power,
And trembles in the storm.

Ye speak of human life! Ye go,
We know not where,—ye have a flow
Wilder than ocean wave;
Heaven scarce can hold ye, and the bound
Of earth knows not your various sound
More than the secret grave.

Ye speak of human life! now high,
Like thunder-clouds, ye brave the sky,
Now sleep ye by the streams;

103

Ye are like earthquakes roaring wild,
And then make music, as a child
That singeth in its dreams.

Away, my fancies! even now
I feel no more upon my brow
The mountain breezes fall:
The stars are out, and I must go
Down to my quiet home below,
Among the poplars tall.

And I, whilst dreaming in my bed,
Will list your dirges o'er my head,
And think ye sing to me,
And dream that I have wings like you,
To fan the locks on heaven's clear brow,
And roll unchain'd and free.