35 All light of Art or Nature;-to my song Victory and praise in its own right belong.

5

10

15

From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale1 above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the
waves,

20 To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

25 I sang of the dancing stars,

robe;

Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may

shine

Are portions of one power, which is mine.

25 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

30 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,

I sang of the dædal2 Earth,
And of Heaven-and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth;-

And then I changed my pipings,-
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.3 Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed. All wept, as I think both ye now would, 35 If envy or age had not frozen your blood, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

25 I see the light, and I hear the sound;
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,
With the calm within and the light around
Which makes night day;

And thou, when the gloom is deep and
stark,

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way

35 That the same hues, which in their natural

My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark

On high, far away.

Some say there is a precipice

Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin 35 O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice

Come, Months, come away,

From November to May,

In your saddest array;

Follow the bier

Of the dead cold Year,

First our pleasures die-and then

ulchre.

These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust-and we die too.