AT AMALFI

HERE might I rest for ever; here,
Till death, inviolate of fear,

Descended cloud-like on calm eyes,
Enjoy the whisper of the waves
Stealing around those azure caves,
The gloom and glory of the skies!

Great mother, Nature, on thy breast
Let me, unsoiled by sorrow, rest,

By sin unstirred, by love made free:
Full-tired am I by years that bring
The blossoms of the tardy spring
Of wisdom, thine adept to be.

In vain I pray: the wish expires
Upon my lip, as fade the fires

Of youth in withered veins and weak; Not mine to dwell, the neophyte

Of Nature, in her shrine of light,

But still to strive and still to seek.

I have outgrown the primal mirth
That throbs in air and sea and earth;
The world of worn humanity
Reclaims my care; at ease to range
Those hills, and watch their interchange
Of light and gloom, is not for me.

Dread Pan, to thee I turn: thy soul
That through the living world doth roll,
Stirs in our heart an aching sense
Of beauty, too divinely wrought
To be the food of mortal thought,

For earth-born hunger too intense.

Breathless we sink before thy shrine;
We
e pour our spirits forth like wine;
With trembling hands we strive to lift
The veil of airy amethyst,

That shrouds thy godhood like a mist;
Then, dying, forth to darkness drift

Thy life around us laughs, and we
Are merged in its immensity;

Thy chanted melodies we hear,

The marrying chords that meet and kiss
Between two silences; but miss

The meaning, though it seems so clear.

From suns that sink o'er silent seas,
From myrtles near the mountain breeze
Shedding their drift of scented snow,
From fleeting hues, from sounds that swoon
On pathless hills, from night and noon,
The inarticulate passions flow,

That are thy minions, mighty Pan!
No priest hast thou; no muse or man

Hath ever told, shall ever tell,

But each within his heart alone,

Awe-struck and dumb hath learned to own,

The burden of thine oracle.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

PÆSTUM

PÆSTUM

Lo, far on the horizon's verge reclined
A temple, reared as on a broken throne:
The sun's red rays in lurid light declined
O'er clouds that mutter forth a thunder-tone,
Gleam athwart each aerial column shown

Like giants standing on a sable sky;

What record tells it in that desert lone?

Resting in solitary majesty

Eternal Pæstum there absorbs the heart and eye.

Pause here, the desolate waste, the lowering

heaven,

The sea-fowl's cang, the gray mist hurrying by,

The altar fronting ye with brow unriven,

In isolation of sublimity,

Mates with the clouds, the mountains, and the

sky:

But the sea breaks no more against his shrine, Hurled from his base the ocean-deity;

His worshippers have passed and left no sign, The Shaker of the Earth no more is held divine!

There like some Titan throned in his retreat
Of deserts, the declining sun's last rays
Falling round him on his majestic seat,
Each limb dilated in the twilight haze
Of the red distance darkening on the gaze:
An image whose august tranquillity

The presence of unconscious power betrays, Whose co-mates are the hills, the rocks, the sea, Even so the awestruck soul reposing dwells on thee!

And there thou standest stern, austere, sublime,
Strength nakedly reposing at thy base,
Making a mockery of the assaults of time;
Earthquakes have heaved, storms shook, the
lightning's trace

Left the black shadows time shall not efface,
And the hot levin dinted where it fell!

But on thy unperturbed and steadfast face
Is stamped the impress of the unchangeable,
That fixed forever there thy massive form shall
dwell.

Spirit of grey Antiquity! enthroned

With solitude and silence here, proclaim

Thou, brooding o'er thy altar-place, who

owned,

Who reared, that mightiest temple? from whence came