GANYMEDE.
55
| Before I saw thee, I was like the May, |
| Longing for summer that must mar its bloom, |
| Or like the morning star that calls the day, |
| Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; |
| And as the eager fountain rises higher |
| To throw itself more strongly back to earth, |
| Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire, |
| More fondly it reverted to its birth, |
| For, what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose, |
| The meaning foretold by the boy the man cannot disclose. |
| I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt |
| Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit, |
| Full feeling was the thought of what was felt, |
| Its music was the meaning of the lute; |
| But heaven and earth such life will still deny, |
| For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question Why? |
| Upon the highest mountains my young feet |
| Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew, |
| My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet, |
| Yet win no greeting from the circling blue; |
| Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere, |
| They had no care that there was none for me; |
| Alike to them that I was far or near, |
| Alike to them, time and eternity. |
| But, from the violet of lower air, |
| Sometimes an answer to my wishing came, |
| Those lightning births mv nature seemed to share, |
| They told the secrets of its fiery frame, |
| The sudden messengers of hate and love, |
| The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove, |
| And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred grove. |
