I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone, And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the Stars reel and swim, When the Whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,-- The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch, through which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the Powers of the air are chain'd to my chair, Is the million-color'd bow; The Sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist Earth was laughing below. VI. I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,-- And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise, and unbuild it again. XLII. ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. JOHN KEATS.--1795-1821. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. XLIII. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET. KEATS. The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights, for, when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The grasshopper's among some grassy hills. XLIV. THE POWER AND DANGER OF THE CAESARS. THOMAS DE QUINCEY.--1785-1859. _From_ THE CAESARS.