TO E.L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE

         
        Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
            Of water, sheets of summer glass,
            The long divine Peneïan pass,
        The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

        Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
            With such a pencil, such a pen,
            You shadow forth to distant men,
        I read and felt that I was there:

        And trust me while I turn’d the page,
            And track’d you still on classic ground,
            I grew in gladness till I found
        My spirits in the golden age.

        For me the torrent ever pour’d
            And glisten’d–here and there alone
            The broad-limb’d Gods at random thrown
        By fountain-urns;–and Naiads oar’d

        A glimmering shoulder under gloom
            Of cavern pillars; on the swell
            The silver lily heaved and fell;
        And many a slope was rich in bloom

        From him that on the mountain lea
            By dancing rivulets fed his flocks
            To him who sat upon the rocks,
        And fluted to the morning sea.