Mind free, step free, Days to follow after, Joys of life sold to me For the price of laughter. Girl's love, man's love, Love of work and duty, Just a will of God's to prove William Stanley Braithwaite [1878 PATMOS ALL around him Patmos lies, Strain nor voice nor reed can match: Many a silver, sphery note All around him Patmos lies, Manifold his fellowships: Now the rocks their archives ope; All around him Patmos lies, Of an isle in seas of peace. Edith M. Thomas [1854 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, Give life to this dark world which lieth dead; 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. Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels: And everything save her, who all should grace. William Drummond [1585-1649] HYMN OF APOLLO THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 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, 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 Fly me, and from the glory of my ray I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven; For grief that I depart they weep and frown: I am the eye with which the Universe All prophecy, all medicine, is mine, Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] THE night was dark, though sometimes a faint star The night was dark and still the dawn seemed far, 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 Turned slowly to pale rose, |