One finger just touching
     The Orient chamber,
     Unflooded the gushing
     Of light that illumed
     All her lustrous unveiling. 
     On clouds of glow amber,
     Her limbs richly blushing,
     She lay sweetly wailing,
     In odours that gloomed
     On the God as he bloomed
     O’er her loveliness paling.

     Great Pan in his covert
     Beheld the rare glistening,
     The cry of the love-hurt,
     The sigh and the kiss
     Of the latest close mingling;
     But love, thought he, listening,
     Will not do a dove hurt,
     I know,—­and a tingling,
     Latent with bliss,
     Prickt thro’ him, I wis,
     For the Nymph he was singling.

     South-west wind in the woodland

     The silence of preluded song —
     AEolian silence charms the woods;
     Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings
     Are waiting for the master’s touch
     To sweep them into storms of joy,
     Stands mute and whispers not; the birds
     Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,
     Save here and there a chirp or tweet,
     That utters fear or anxious love,
     Or when the ouzel sends a swift
     Half warble, shrinking back again
     His golden bill, or when aloud
     The storm-cock warns the dusking hills
     And villages and valleys round: 
     For lo, beneath those ragged clouds
     That skirt the opening west, a stream
     Of yellow light and windy flame
     Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky
     Begins to gloom, and o’er the ground
     A moan of coming blasts creeps low
     And rustles in the crisping grass;
     Till suddenly with mighty arms
     Outspread, that reach the horizon round,
     The great South-West drives o’er the earth,
     And loosens all his roaring robes
     Behind him, over heath and moor. 
     He comes upon the neck of night,
     Like one that leaps a fiery steed
     Whose keen black haunches quivering shine
     With eagerness and haste, that needs
     No spur to make the dark leagues fly! 
     Whose eyes are meteors of speed;
     Whose mane is as a flashing foam;
     Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks; —
     He comes, and while his growing gusts,
     Wild couriers of his reckless course,
     Are whistling from the daggered gorse,
     And hurrying over fern and broom,
     Midway, far off, he feigns to halt
     And gather in his streaming train.

     Now, whirring like an eagle’s wing
     Preparing for a wide blue flight;
     Now, flapping like a sail that tacks
     And chides the wet bewildered mast;
     Now, screaming like an anguish’d thing
     Chased close by some down-breathing beak;
     Now, wailing like a breaking heart,
     That will not wholly break, but hopes