Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky;
Be it love, light, harmony,
Odor, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse

Peopling the lone universe.

What sweet-breathing presence
Out-perfumes the thyme?

What voices enrapture

The night's balmy prime ? —

'Tis Apollo comes leading

His choir, the Nine.

The leader is fairest,

But all are divine.

They are lost in the hollows!
They stream up again!

What seeks on this mountain,

The glorified train ? –

They bathe on this mountain,
In the spring by their road;
Then on to Olympus,

Their endless abode!

Whose praise do they mention ?

Of what is it told?

What will be forever;

What was from of old.

First hymn they the Father

Of all things; and then
The rest of immortals,

The action of men.

The day in his hotness,

The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,

The stars in their calm.

Matthew Arnold.

C

CHORUS OF CREADES.

[From The Masque of Pandora.]

ENTURIES old are the mountains:

Their foreheads wrinkled and rifted

Helios crowns by day,

Pallid Selene by night;

From their bosoms uptossed

The snows are driven and drifted

Like Tithonus' beard

Streaming dishevelled and white.

Thunder and tempest of wind
Their trumpets blow in the vastness;

Phantoms of mist and rain,

Cloud and the shadow of cloud,

Pass and repass by the gates
Of their inaccessible fastness;
Ever unmoved they stand,
Solemn, eternal, and proud.

VOICES OF THE WATERS.

Flooded by rain and snow
In their inexhaustible sources,
Swollen by affluent streams
Hurrying onward and hurled
Headlong over the crags,
The impetuous water-courses,
Rush and roar and plunge

Down to the nethermost world.

Say, have the solid rocks

Into streams of silver been melted,
Flowing over the plains,

Spreading to lakes in the fields?
Or have the mountains, the giants,
The ice-helmed, the forest-belted,
Scattered their arms abroad;

Flung in the meadows their shields.

VOICES OF THE WINDS.

High on their turreted cliffs

That bolts of thunder have shattered, Storm-winds muster and blow

Trumpets of terrible breath;

Then from the gateways rush,

And before them routed and scattered

Sullen the cloud-rack flies,

Pale with the pallor of death.

Onward the hurricane rides,

And flee for shelter the shepherds;

White are the frightened leaves,
Harvests with terror are white;
Panic seizes the herds,

And even the lions and leopards
Prowling no longer for prey,

Crouch in their caverns with fright.

VOICES OF THE FOREST.

Guarding the mountains around
Majestic the forests are standing,
Bright are their crested helms,
Dark is their armor of leaves;
Filled with the breath of freedom
Each bosom subsiding expanding,
Now like the ocean sinks,
Now like the ocean upheaves.

Planted firm on the rock,

With foreheads stern and defiant,
Loud they shout to the winds,
Loud to the tempest they call;
Naught but Olympian thunders,
That blasted Titan and Giant,
Them can uproot and o'erthrow,
Shaking the earth with their fall.

CHORUS OF OREADES.

These are the Voices Three

Of winds and forests and fountains, Voices of earth and of air,

Murmur and rushing of streams,