AN AEOLIAN 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.
