English

What art thou, frost? and whence are thy keen stores
Derived, thou secret all-invading power,
Whom even the illusive fluid cannot fly?
Is not thy potent energy, unseen,
Myriads of little salts, or hooked, or shaped
Like double wedges, and diffused, immense,
Through water, earth, and ether? Hence at eve,
Steamed eager from the red horizon round,
With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffused,
An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career
Arrests the bickering stream. The loosened ice,

When from the pallid sky the sun descends,
With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb
Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks
Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds
Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet
Which master to obey; while rising slow,
Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon
Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.
Seen through the turbid, fluctuating air,
The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;
Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom,
And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.

Now, when the cheerless empire of the sky
To Capricorn the Centaur-Archer yields,
And fierce Aquarius stains the inverted year;
Hung o'er the farthest verge of heaven, the sun
Scarce spreads o'er ether the dejected day.
Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot
His struggling rays in horizontal lines
Through the thick air; as, clothed in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And, soon-descending, to the long dark night,
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.

Along the blushing Borders, bright with Dew,
And in yon mingled Wilderness of Flowers,
Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every Grace:
Throws out the Snow-drop, and the Crocus first;
The Daisy, Primrose, Violet darkly blue,
And Polyanthus of unnumber'd Dyes;
The yellow Wall-Flower, stain'd with iron Brown;
And lavish Stock that scents the Garden round:
From the soft Wing of vernal Breezes shed,
Anemonies; Auriculas, enrich'd
With shining Meal o'er all their velvet Leaves;
And full Renunculas, of glowing Red.

Raised are the dripping oars,
Silent the boat! the lake,
Lovely and soft as a dream,
Swims in the sheen of the moon.
The mountains stand at its head
Clear in the pure June-night,
But the valleys are flooded with haze.
Rydal and Fairfield are there;
In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.
So it is, so it will be for aye.
Nature is fresh as of old,
Is lovely; a mortal is dead.

The spots which recall him survive,
For he lent a new life to these hills.
The Pillar still broods o'er the fields

VERSE 1

At words poetic, I'm so pathetic
That I always have found it best,
Instead of getting 'em off my chest,
To let 'em rest
Unexpressed.
I hate parading
My serenading,
As I'll probably miss a bar,
But if this ditty
Is not so pretty,
At least it'll tell you
How great you are.

REFRAIN 1

You're the top!
You're the Colosseum.
You're the top!
You're the Louvre Museum.
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss,

Hark ! Young Democracy from sleep
Our careless sentries raps:
A backwash from the Future's deep
Our Evil's foreland laps.

Unknown, these Titans of our Night
Their New Creation make:
Unseen, they toil and love and fight
That glamoured Man may wake.

Knights-errant of the human race,
The Quixotes of to-day,
For man as man they claim a place,
Prepare the tedious way.

They seek no dim-eyed mob's applause,
Deem base the titled name,
And spurn, for glory of their Cause,

Fall, snow, and cease not! Flake by flake
The decent winding sheet compose;
Thy task is just and pious; make
An end of blasphemies and woes.

Fall, flake by flake! by thee alone
Last friend the sleeping draught is given;
Kind nurse by thee the couch is strewn,
The couch whose covering is from Heaven.

Descend, and clasp the mountain's crest;
Inherit plain and valley deep;
This night on thy maternal breast
A vanquished nation dies in sleep.

Lo! from the starry Temple Gates

For them, O God, who only worship Thee
In fanes whose fretted roofs shut out the heavens,
Let organs breathe, and chorded psalteries sound:
But let my voice rise with the mingled noise
Of winds and waters; — winds that in the sedge,
And grass, and ripening grain, while nature sleeps,
Practise, in whispered music, soft and low,
Their sweet inventions, and then sing them loud
In caves, and on the hills, and in the woods,
— A moving anthem, that along the air
Dying, then swelling forth in fitful gusts,

When first Both Gods and Men had one Times Birth;
The Gods, of diverse languag'd Men, on Earth,
A golden world produc't; That did sustaine
Old Saturnes Rule, when He in heaven did raigne;
And then liv'd Men, like Gods, in pleasure here;
Indu'd with Mindes secure; from Toyles, Griefs, cleer;
Nor noysom Age made any crooked There.
Their feet went ever naked as their hands;
Their Cates were blessed, serving their Commands,
With ceaselesse Plenties; All Daies, sacred made
To Feasts, that surfets never could invade.