I LIFT thee, thus, thou brown and rugged cone,
Well poised and high,
Between the flowering grasses and the sky;
And, as sea-voices dwell
In the fine chambers of the ocean-shell,
So fancy's ear
Within thy numberless, dim complexities
Hath seemed ofttimes to hear
The imprisoned spirits of all winds that blow;
Winds of late autumn that lamenting moan
Across the wild sea-surges' ebb and flow;
Storm-winds of winter mellowed to a sigh,
Long-drawn and plaintive; or--how lingeringly!--
Soft echoes of the spring-tide's jocund breeze,
Blent with the summer south wind, murmuring low!
What wonder, fairy cone, that thou should'st hold
The semblance of these voices? day and night,
Proudly enthroned upon the wavering height
Of you monarchal pine, thou did'st absorb
The elemental virtues of all airs,
Timid or bold,
Measures of gentle joys and wild despairs,
Breathed from all quarters of our changeful orb;
Whether with mildness freighted or with might,
Into thy form they entered, to remain
Each the strange phantom of a perished tone,
An eerie, marvellous strain
Pent in this tiny Hades made to fold
Ghosts of the heavenly couriers long ago,
Sunk as men dreamed by ocean and by shore,
Into the void of silence evermore!
