Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/328

If on the marble’s sleeping forms he breathe,
To life they start the chisel’s touch beneath:
In Phaedra, Tancred, Zorayde he wrings
The heart within us deep; or softly brings
Love-fraught delight, as do their strains inspire
Anacreon, or Tibullus, or the lyre
Of our Melendez, sweetest languishings.
Or wrapt in thunder snatches us away
With Pindar, or Herrera, or thy lay,
Illustrious Quintana! .to the heights,
Where virtue, and where glory too invites.
By him compels us Tasso to admire
Clorinda ; Homer fierce Achilles’ ire;
And Milton, elevated all beyond,
His direful angel, arm’ d of diamond.

O’er all, though invisible, this spirit dwells;
But from ethereal mansions he descends
To show himself to men, and thus portends
His steps the night rain, and the thunder tells.
There have I seen him: or perhaps serene
In the sun’s beam, he wanders to o’erflow
Heaven, earth and sea, in waves of golden glow.
On music’s accent trembles he unseen;
And solitude he loves, he lists attent
The waters’ rush in headlong fury sent: