ASIA:
Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint
And distant.
PANTHEA:
List! the strain floats nearer now.
ECHOES:
In the world unknown
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Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
Child of Ocean!
ASIA:
How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!
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ECHOES:
Oh, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noontide dew;
By the forests, lakes, and fountains,
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Through the many-folded mountains;
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and thou
Parted, to commingle now;
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Child of Ocean!
ASIA:
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
And follow, ere the voices fade away.
SCENE 2.2:
A FOREST, INTERMINGLED WITH ROCKS AND CAVERNS.
ASIA AND PANTHEA PASS INTO IT.
TWO YOUNG FAUNS ARE SITTING ON A ROCK LISTENING.
SEMICHORUS 1 OF SPIRITS:
The path through which that lovely twain
Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven’s wide blue;
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
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Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
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Of the green laurel, blown anew,
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,
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Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
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Like lines of rain that ne’er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around,
And underneath is the mossy ground.
SEMICHORUS 2:
There the voluptuous nightingales,
Are awake through all the broad noonday.
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When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And through the windless ivy-boughs,
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate’s music-panting bosom;
Another from the swinging blossom,
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Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
Till some new strain of feeling bear
The song, and all the woods are mute;
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When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener’s brain
So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
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