THE GOLDEN SILENCE

WHAT though I sing no other song?
What though I speak no other word?
Is silence shame? Is patience wrong?-
At least one song of mine was heard:

One echo from the mountain air,

One ocean murmur, glad and free, One sign that nothing grand or fair In all this world was lost to me.

I will not wake the sleeping lyre;

I will not strain the chords of thought; The sweetest fruit of all desire

Comes its own way, and comes unsought.

Though all the bards of earth were dead, And all their music passed away, What Nature wishes should be said She'll find the rightful voice to say!

Her heart is in the shimmering leaf,
The drifting cloud, the lonely sky,
And all we know of bliss or grief

She speaks, in forms that cannot die.

The mountain peaks that shine afar,
The silent stars, the pathless sea,

Are living signs of all we are,
And types of all we hope to be.

William Winter [1836

DAWN AND DARK

PHOEBUS, arise,

SONG

And paint the sable skies

With azure, white, and red:

Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed,
That she thy career may with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each where sing,
Make an eternal Spring!

Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair.

In larger locks than thou wast wont before,

And, emperor-like, decore

With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:

Chase hence the ugly night,

Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn,

That day, long-wished day,

Of all my life so dark,

(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn,

And fates not hope betray,)

Which, only white, deserves

A diamond for ever should it mark.

This is the morn should bring unto this grove

My Love, to hear and recompense my love.

Fair king, who all preserves,

But show thy blushing beams,

And thou two sweeter eyes

Shalt see, than those which by Peneus' streams

Did once thy heart surprise.

Nay, suns, which shine as clear

As thou, when two thou didst to Rome appear. Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise:

If that ye, winds, would hear

A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre,

Your stormy chiding stay;

Let Zephyr only breathe,

And with her tresses play,

Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death.
-The winds all silent are,
And Phoebus in his chair
Ensaffroning sea and air,
Makes vanish every star:
Night like a drunkard reels

Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels:
The fields with flowers are decked in every hue,
The clouds bespangle with bright gold their blue:
Here is the pleasant place,

And everything save her, who all should grace. William Drummond [1585-1649]

HYMN OF APOLLO

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,— Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.

Prelude

1267

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe,
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers,

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine,
Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, are mine,
All light of art or nature;-to my song
Victory and praise in their own right belong.

Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822]

PRELUDE

From "The New Day "

THE night was dark, though sometimes a faint star
A little while a little space made bright.

The night was dark and still the dawn seemed far,
When, o'er the muttering and invisible sea,

Slowly, within the East, there grew a light
Which half was starlight, and half seemed to be

The herald of a greater. The pale white

and up the height

The gray sea grew

Turned slowly to pale rose,
Of heaven slowly climbed.
Rose-colored like the sky. A white gull flew
Straight toward the utmost boundary of the East
Where slowly the rose gathered and increased.
There was light now, where all was black before:
It was as on the opening of a door

By one who in his hand a lamp doth hold
(Its flame being hidden by the garment's fold),-
The still air moves, the wide room is less dim.

More bright the East became, the ocean turned
Dark and more dark against the brightening sky—
Sharper against the sky the long sea line.
The hollows of the breakers on the shore
Were green like leaves whereon no sun doth shine,
Though sunlight make the outer branches hoar.
From rose to red the level heaven burned;
Then sudden, as if a sword fell from on high,
A blade of gold flashed on the ocean's rim.

Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909]

DAWN ON THE HEADLAND

DAWN-and a magical stillness: on earth, quiescence profound;

On the waters a vast Content, as of hunger appeased and stayed;

In the heavens a silence that seems not mere privation of sound,

But a thing with form and body, a thing to be touched and weighed!

Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the cosmic wheel,

In the hot collision of Forces, and clangor of boundless Strife,

Mid the sound of the speed of the worlds, the rushing worlds, and the peal

Of the thunder of Life.

William Watson [1858

THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN

WHAT Would it mean for you and me

If dawn should come no more!
Think of its gold along the sea,
Its rose above the shore!
That rose of awful mystery,
Our souls bow down before.