Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot,
And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave,
Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot,
Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave,
And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave.
sinks, more lovely ere his race be
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light!
O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows.
On old Ægina's rock and Idra's isle
The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis !
Their azure arches through the long expanse
More deeply purpled meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven;
Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian cliff he sinks to sleep.
On such an eve his palest beam he cast,
When-Athens! here thy wisest looked his last.
How watched thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murdered sage's latest day!
Not yet, not yet, Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still!
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes:
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seemed to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frowned before;
But ere he sank below Citharon's head,
The cup of woe was quaffed, the spirit fled;
The soul of him who scorned to fear or fly,
Who lived and died, as none can live or die!
But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain,
The queen of night asserts her silent reign.
No murky vapor, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, nor girds her glowing form;
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,
And, bright around with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret :
The groves of olive scattered dark and wide
Where meek Cephisus pours his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And, dun and sombre mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane yon solitary palm,
All tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye,
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.
Again the Egean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war;
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long array of sapphire and of gold,
Mixed with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown, where gentler occan seems to smile.
Lord Byron.
Wandering Permessus, upward through thy vale,
And let me find, beneath the twisted boughs
Of these old evergreens, coolness and shade,
To make my toil the easier. Darkly rolls
Thy current under them, and hollower sounds
Thy hidden roar. I just can catch a glimpse
Of yon deep pool, dark and mysterious,
Sunk in its well of rock; and now from out
A tuft of seeded fern I see thee plunge,
Tinted with golden green, for there a sunbeam
Strays through thy arch of shade. Still as I climb
Thy voice goes with me, like the laborer's song,
To cheer me; and anon I see thee flashing
Through the laburnum thickets, rivalling
Their golden flowers; and then thou rushest by
Crested with foam, the whiter for the darkness
That covers thee; and then I pause and hang
Over a broad, smooth mirror, where the sky
Looks in, and sees itself, as purely blue,
As vast and round, and all its cloudy folds,
Their snowy
bosses and their iris fringes
Are there, and all the circling rocks repeat
Their lights and shadows in that vacancy,
So clear, it seems but air. Thou rollest on
Thus brightly, and for ages thou hast kept
This ever-varying, yet eternal way;
And like the voice of a divinity
Thou pourest thy endless song. But now the rocks
That hemmed thee in recede, and, round and fair,
The open vale of Aganippe smiles
To greet me, as a fond and gentle mistress
Welcomes her weary lover, when he comes
At evening to her bower.
WHERE Eurus blows, and wintry suns arise,
Thessalia's boundary proud Ossa lies;
But when the God protracts the longer day,
Pelion's broad back receives the dawning ray.
Where through the lion's fiery sign he flies,
Othrys his leafy groves for shade supplies.
On Pindus strikes the fady western light,
When glittering Vesper leads the starry night.
Northward, Olympus hides the lamps, that roll
Their paler fires around the frozen pole.
The middle space, a valley low depressed,
Once a wide, lazy, standing lake possessed;
While growing still the heapy waters stood,
Nor down through Tempe ran the rushing flood:
But when Alcides to the task applied,
And cleft a passage through the mountains wide;
Gushing at once the thundering torrent flowed,
While Nereus groaned beneath the increasing load.
Then rose (O, that it still a lake had lain!)
Above the waves Pharsalia's fatal plain,
Once subject to the great Achilles' reign.
Then Phylace was built, whose warriors boast
Their chief first landed on the Trojan coast;
Then Pteleos ran her circling wall around,
And Dorion, for the Muses' wrath renowned;
Then Trachin high, and Meliboa stood,
Where Hercules his fatal shafts bestowed;
Larissa strong arose, and Argos, now
A plain, submitted to the laboring plough.
Here stood the town, if there be truth in fame,
That from Boeotian Thebes received its name.
Here sad Agave's wandering sense returned,
Here for her murdered son the mother mourned;
With streaming tears she washed his ghastly head,
And on the funeral pile the precious relic laid.
The gushing waters various soon divide,
And every river rules a separate tide;
|