To Spring; or, The Fables of Antiquity

Because the sun restores
Its beauty to the sky, and airs revive
At Zephyr's breath, whence heavy clouds retire,
Divided in their shadows deep and grey:
The birds their pinions trust
Unto the breeze, and the diurnal ray
Doth give new hope of love and new desire
To happy beasts amid the dews dissolved,
Amid the forests filled with joyous light:
Perchance unto the weary minds of men,
In graves of woe entombed,
Returns the happy age, by grief and dire
Torches of truth consumed
Before its time? Darkened for aye and spent
Are not Heaven's rays for him to anguish doomed
Through Time's eternal flight?
And, odorous Spring, art thou on firing bent,
This frozen heart, to whom hath long been told
Even in the flower of life, that it is worn and old?
Dost thou still live, divine
Nature, still live? And the unaccustomed ear
Receives the sound of the maternal voice?
The streams were haunts of spotless nymphs erewhile
Abodes and mirrors clear
Were liquid springs. The secret dances strange
Of feet immortal, shook the wild ravine
And wood remote (where now the fierce winds range,
Deserted else); and the mild shepherd heard,
When guiding to meridian shades beside
The flowery river bank,
His thirsty flock, a piercing lay proceed
From sylvan deities' reed,
Resounding far: and witnessed with amaze
The waters quake; for veiled from mortal gaze,
The Goddess of the bow
Sank in the warm stream of the flood below,
And from the dust of the ensanguined chase
Her snowy limbs did cleanse and arms of virgin grace.
In happier days of yore
The flowers, the herbs, the forests were alive.
The firmament, the Titan of the light,
Were conscious of mankind; o'er hill and vale
When shone thy silver beam,
O radiant Cynthia! in the lonely night
With orbs intent thy brow the wanderer sought,
And thee his path's companion he did deem,
And fancied we were cherished in thy thought.
If man from factions of fierce cities fled
And from disastrous strife,
Seeking for refuge mid the mighty trees
Of deepest forest lone:
He thought that fire ran through their arid veins,
That foliage breathed; and quivering in the embrace
Full of delicious pains,
Daphne and Phyllis, or the wailing moan
For him who in Eridanus was cast
By fury of the Sun, he heard upon the blast.
Nor piercing wail and sighs
Of human woe, ye rocks of rigid height,
Struck you, unfeeling, whilst lone Echo dwelt
In your recesses of alarming night:
No error of vain wind,
But wretched spirit of a nymph in tears,
Of mortal shape despoiled by ruthless Fate
And cruel Love. She, 'mid the grottos blind
And naked crags and dwellings desolate,
The loud complaining of our woes and fears
To the imprisoned air
Revealed and taught. And thee in earthly deed
Well versed did Fame declare,
Sweet-throated warbler in the leafy wood
Who now dost praise the infant year with song,
Lamenting once the wrong
That made thy spirit with deep anguish bleed,
In notes sublime unto the darkening sky,
At which for pity and rage light did from Heaven fly.
But not to ours allied
Is now thy race; those varied notes of thine
Pain mellows not; and thee, unstained by guilt,
Much less endeared, the dusky valleys hide.
Alas! now that divine
Olympus mourns its empty halls; and wide
The thunder wanders o'er the cloud-capped peaks,
In sightless rage the noble and the base
Appalling with its rumbling; and our soil,
Unconscious of the offspring it doth feed,
Brings forth its sons for moyle:
Thou the deep anguish and the fate obscure
Of mortals dost endure,
O wondrous Nature! Thou the ancient spark
Art kindling in my soul, if thou indeed
Livest; if aught there be
In Heaven above, or on the sunny earth,
Or in the bosom of the azure main,
To gaze, even though unpitying, on terrestrial pain.