Page:Summer on the lakes, in 1843.djvu/65

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GANYMEDE.
55
Before I saw thee, I was like the May,
 Longing for summer that must mar its bloom,
Or like the morning star that calls the day,
 Whose glories to its promise are the tomb;
And as the eager fountain rises higher
 To throw itself more strongly back to earth,
Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire,
 More fondly it reverted to its birth,
For, what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose,
The meaning foretold by the boy the man cannot disclose.
I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt
 Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit,
Full feeling was the thought of what was felt,
 Its music was the meaning of the lute;
But heaven and earth such life will still deny,
For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question Why?
Upon the highest mountains my young feet
 Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew,
My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet,
 Yet win no greeting from the circling blue;
Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere,
 They had no care that there was none for me;
Alike to them that I was far or near,
 Alike to them, time and eternity.
But, from the violet of lower air,
 Sometimes an answer to my wishing came,
Those lightning births mv nature seemed to share,
 They told the secrets of its fiery frame,
The sudden messengers of hate and love,
The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove,
And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred grove.