Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare, and hoary,
See it half-finish'd: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly
dress
that I may

My uncertain path with green,

60

speed Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

Full in the middle of this pleasantness There stood a marble altar, with a tress 90 Of flowers budded newly; and the dew Had taken fairy phantasies to strew Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve, And so the dawned light in pomp receive. For 't was the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing

sun;

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The lark was lost in him; cold springs had

run

To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass; Man's voice was on the mountains; and the

mass

Of nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold,

To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.

Now while the silent workings of the dawn

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Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
A troop of little children garlanded;
Who gathering round the altar seem'd to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy
Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were
sated

With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then

Fill'd out its voice, and died away again.
Within a little space again it gave
Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,
To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes
breaking

Through copse-clad valleys,
death, o'ertaking

ere their

The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.

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Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare

The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;

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And all ye gentle girls who foster up
Udderless lambs, and in a little cup
Will put choice honey for a favour'd youth:
Yea, every one attend! for in good truth
Our vows are wanting to our great god
Pan.

Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains

Speckled with countless fleeces ? Have not rains

Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had Great bounty from Endymion our lord. The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd

His early song against yon breezy sky, That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity.'

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Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire

Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire; Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god. Now while the earth was drinking it, and while

The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, To sing for thee; low-creeping strawberries Their summer coolness; pent-up butterflies Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh-budding year

Even while they brought the burden to a

close,

A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That linger'd in the air like dying rolls
Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals 310
Of dolphins bob their noses through the
brine.

Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,
Young companies nimbly began dancing
To the swift treble pipe, and humming
string.

Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly
To tunes forgotten-out of memory:
Fair creatures! whose young children's
children bred

Thermopylæ its heroes

not yet dead, But in old marbles ever beautiful. High genitors, unconscious did they cull 320 Time's sweet first-fruits - they danced to