LUSS! be for ever sunk beneath Ben's horrors piled around: Sun's livening ray ne'er pierce thy gloom, Thy hideous deep be drained! Fishes be turned t'infernal snakes, Boatswain to Cerberus! Mouth of th' Avernian Gulf be thou, Its mortal damp thy air! All o'er thy plains volcanoes thick Their burning sands disgorge! Birds never trill their swelling chaunt, Nor roam the humming bee! Herds never graze, nor sheep nor goat, Nor play the shepherd's lute! Crags other echo ne'er repeat Than dismal Furies' yell! Swift on a morning-ray then, lo! The airy-sandalled god, Mercury, came, and smiling: 'I Thy pillow's treasure stole. Milton no more be fancy's fount Of borrowed ecstasies. Phoebus ordained: presenting, see, The laurel never sere.' | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH by ROBERT BROWNING LINES WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM AT ELBINGERODE, IN HARTZ FOREST by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE LESSER EPISTLES: TO BERNARD LINTOTT by JOHN GAY THE BLESSED VIRGIN, COMPARED TO THE AIR WE BREATHE by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 12. ON RECOVERING FROM A FIT OF SICKNESS IN COUNTRY by MARK AKENSIDE I WOULD BE THE SUN by JOHANNA AMBROSIUS A HYMN OF IMAGINATION by GORDON BOTTOMLEY |