An Æolian Harp

Dost thou not hear? Amid dun, lonely hills
Far off a melancholy music shrills,
As for a joy that no fruition fills.

Who live in that far country of the wind?
The unclaimed hopes, the powers but half-divined,
The shy, heroic passions of mankind.

And all are young in those reverberant bands;
None marshals them, no mellow voice commands;
They whirl and eddy as the shifting sands.

There, there is ruin, and no ivy clings;
There pass the mourners for untimely things.
There breaks the stricken cry of crownless kings.

But ever and anon there spreads a boom
Of wonder through the air, arraigning doom
With ineffectual plaint as from a tomb.