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PAPERS ON LITERATURE AND ART.
| With your oaks and pine-trees, ancient brood, |
| Spirits rise above the wizard soil, |
| And with these I rove amid the wood; |
| Man may dream on earth no less than toil. |
| Shapes that seem my kindred meet the ken; |
| Gods and heroes glimmer through the shade; |
| Ages long gone by from haunts of men |
| Meet me here in rocky dell and glade. |
| There the Muses, touched with gleams of light, |
| Warble yet from yonder hill of trees, |
| And upon the huge and mist-clad height |
| Fancy sage a clear Olympus sees. |
| ’Mid yon utmost peaks the elder powers |
| Still unshaken hold their fixed abode, |
| Fates primeval throned in airy towers, |
| That with morning sunshine never glowed. |
| Deep below, amid a hell of rocks, |
| Lies the Cyclops, and the Dragon coils, |
| Heaving with the torrent’s weary shocks, |
| That round the untrodden region boils. |
| But more near to where our thought may climb, |
| In a mossy, leaf-clad, Druid ring, |
| Three gray shapes, prophetic Lords of Time, |
| Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, sit and sing. |
| Each in his turn his descant frames aloud, |
| Mingling new and old in ceaseless birth, |
| While the Destinies hear amid their cloud, |
| And accordant mould the flux of earth. |
| Oh! ye trees that wave and glisten round, |
| Oh! ye waters gurgling down the dell, |
| Pulses throb in every sight and sound, |
| Living Nature’s more than magic spell. |
| Soon amid the vista still and dim, |
| Knights, whom youth’s high heart forgetteth not, |
| Each with sears and shadowy helmet grim, |
| Amadis, Orlando, Launcelot. |
