The headlong streams and fountains Serve Thee, invisible Spirit, with untired powers; Cheering the wakeful tent on Syrian mountains, They lull perchance ten thousand thousand flowers. 20 _That_ roar, the prowling lion's _Here I am_, How fearful to the desert wide! That bleat, how tender! of the dam Calling a straggler to her side. Shout, cuckoo!--let the vernal soul 25 Go with thee to the frozen zone; Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird, toll! At the still hour to Mercy dear, Mercy from her twilight throne Listening to nun's faint throb of holy fear, 30 To sailor's prayer breathed from a darkening sea, Or widow's cottage-lullaby. III Ye Voices, and ye Shadows And Images of voice--to hound and horn From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows 35 Flung back, and, in the sky's blue caves, reborn-- On with your pastime! till the church-tower bells A greeting give of measured glee; And milder echoes from their cells Repeat the bridal symphony. 40 Then, or far earlier, let us rove Where mists are breaking up or gone, And from aloft look down into a cove Besprinkled with a careless quire, Happy milk-maids, one by one 45 Scattering a ditty each to her desire, A liquid concert matchless by nice Art, A stream as if from one full heart. IV Blest be the song that brightens The blind man's gloom, exalts the veteran's mirth; 50 Unscorned the peasant's whistling breath, that lightens His duteous toil of furrowing the green earth. For the tired slave, Song lifts the languid oar, And bids it aptly fall, with chime That beautifies the fairest shore, 55 And mitigates the harshest clime. Yon pilgrims see--in lagging file They move; but soon the appointed way A choral _Ave Marie_ shall beguile, And to their hope the distant shrine 60 Glisten with a livelier ray: Nor friendless he, the prisoner of the mine, Who from the well-spring of his own clear breast Can draw, and sing his griefs to rest. V