Her passion for old giantkind,
     That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock,
     Devolves on them who read aright
     Her meaning and devoutly serve;
     Nor in her starlessness of night
     Peruse her with the craven nerve: 
     But even as she from grass to corn,
     To eagle high from grubbing mole,
     Prove in strong brain her noblest born,
     The station for the flight of soul.

     The south-wester

     Day of the cloud in fleets!  O day
     Of wedded white and blue, that sail
     Immingled, with a footing ray
     In shadow-sandals down our vale! —
     And swift to ravish golden meads,
     Swift up the run of turf it speeds,
     Thy bright of head and dark of heel,
     To where the hilltop flings on sky,
     As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel,
     The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:-
     Thee the last thunder’s caverned peal
     Delivered from a wailful night: 
     All dusky round thy cradled light,
     Those brine-born issues, now in bloom
     Transfigured, wreathed as raven’s plume
     And briony-leaf to watch thee lie: 
     Dark eyebrows o’er a dreamful eye
     Nigh opening:  till in the braid
     Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed: 
     Till that new babe a Goddess maid
     Appeared and vividly disclosed
     Her beat of life:  then crimson played
     On edges of the plume and leaf: 
     Shape had they and fair feature brief,
     The wings, the smiles:  they flew the breast,
     Earth’s milk.  But what imperial march
     Their standards led for earth, none guessed
     Ere upward of a coloured arch,
     An arrow straining eager head
     Lightened, and high for zenith sped. 
     Fierier followed; followed Fire. 
     Name the young lord of Earth’s desire,
     Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth
     Her music!  Beauteous was she seen
     Beneath her midway West of South;
     And sister was her quivered green
     To sapphire of the Nereid eyes
     On sea when sun is breeze; she winked
     As they, and waved, heaved waterwise
     Her flood of leaves and grasses linked: 
     A myriad lustrous butterflies
     A moment in the fluttering sheen;
     Becapped with the slate air that throws
     The reindeer’s antlers black between
     Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows,
     A minute after; hooded, stoled
     To suit a graveside Season’s dirge. 
     Lo, but the breaking of a surge,
     And she is in her lover’s fold,
     Illumined o’er a boundless range
     Anew:  and through quick morning hours
     The Tropic-Arctic countercharge
     Did seem to pant in beams and showers.