Teach us, sprite or bird,
          What sweet thoughts are thine: 
        I have never heard
          Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

        Chorus Hymenaeal,
          Or triumphal chaunt,
        Matched with thine would be all
          But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

        What objects are the fountains
          Of thy happy strain? 
        What fields, or waves, or mountains? 
          What shapes of sky or plain? 
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

        With thy clear keen joyance
          Languor cannot be: 
        Shadow of annoyance
          Never came near thee: 
Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

        Waking or asleep,
          Thou of death must deem
        Things more true and deep
          Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

        We look before and after,
          And pine for what is not: 
        Our sincerest laughter
          With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

        Yet if we could scorn
          Hate, and pride, and fear;
        If we were things born
          Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

        Better than all measures
          Of delightful sound,
        Better than all treasures
          That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

        Teach me half the gladness
          That thy brain must know,
        Such harmonious madness
          From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

77. Chorus from ’Hellas.’

The world’s great age begins anew,
  The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
  Her winter weeds outworn: 
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
  From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
  Against the morning-star. 
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
  Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
  And loves, and weeps, and dies. 
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

O, write no more the tale of Troy,
  If earth Death’s scroll must be! 
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
  Which dawns upon the free: 
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,
  And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
  The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.