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(From Lines Written under Delphi)
I HAVE seen Delphi: I no more shall see it: | |
| I go contented, having seen it once; | |
| Yet here awhile remain, prisoner well-pleased | |
| Of reboant winds. Within this mountain cove | |
| Their sound alone finds entrance. Lightly the waves, | 5 |
| Rolled from the outer to the inner bay, | |
| Dance in blue silver o’er the silver sands; | |
| While, like a chain-bound antelope by some child | |
| Mocked oft with tempting hand and fruit upheld, | |
| Our quick caique vaults up among the reeds, | 10 |
| The ripples that plunge past it upward sending | |
| O’er the gray margin matted with sea-pink | |
| Ripplings of light. The moon is veiled; a mile | |
| Below the mountain’s eastern range it hangs: | |
| Yon gleam is but its reflex, from white clouds | 15 |
| Scattered along Parnassian peaks of snow. | |
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| I see but waves and snows. Memory alone | |
| Fruition hath of what this morn was mine: | |
| O’er many a beauteous scene at once she broods, | |
| And feeds on joys without confusion blent | 20 |
| Like mingling sounds or odors. Now she rests | |
| On that serene expanse (the confluence | |
| Of three long vales) in sweetness upward heaved, | |
| Ample and rich as Juno’s breast what time | |
| The Thunderer’s breath in sleep moves over it: | 25 |
| Bathes in those runnels now, that raced in light | |
| This morn as at some festival of streams, | |
| Through arbutus and ilex, wafting each | |
| Upon its glassy track a several breeze, | |
| Each with its tale of joy or playful sadness. | 30 |
| Fair nymphs, by great Apollo’s fall untouched! | |
| Sing, sing forever! When did golden Phœbus | |
| Look sad one moment for a fair nymph’s fall? | |
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| A still, black glen; below, a stream-like copse | |
| Of hoary olives; rocks like walls beside, | 35 |
| Never by Centaur trod, though these fresh gales | |
| Give man the Centaur’s strength. Again I mount, | |
| From cliff to cliff, from height to height ascend; | |
| Glitters Castalia’s Fount; I see, I touch it! | |
| That rift once more I reach, the oracular seat, | 40 |
| Whose arching rocks half meet in air suspense; | |
| ’Twixt them is one blue streak of heaven; hard by | |
| Dim temples hollowed in the stone, for rites | |
| Mysterious shaped, or mansions of the dead: | |
| Released, I turn, and see, far, far below, | 45 |
| A vale so rich in floral garniture, | |
| And perfume from the orange and the sea, | |
| So girt with white peaks flashing from sky chasms, | |
| So lighted with the vast blue dome of heaven, | |
| So lulled with music from the winds and waves, | 50 |
| The guest of Phœbus claps his hands and shouts, | |
| “There is but one such spot; from heaven Apollo | |
| Beheld; and chose it for his earthly shrine!” | |
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