Classic Poem

Apollo through the woods came down
Furred like a merchant fine,
And sate with a Sailor at an Inn
Sharing a jug of wine.

Had sun-rays, spilled out of a storm,
Thither the God conveyed?
Or green and floating cloudlet caught
On the fringes of a glade?

For none had known him by his gait
Descending from the hills,
Though far and wide before him blew
The friendly daffodils;

No shepherd had discovered him
On upland pastures bare
By dew-pond or green Roman camp:
No voice aloft in air

Along lone barrows of great downs
With kine in rolling coombes,
Where bells blow up from all the plain
To headlands spring perfumes,

Proclaimed him to those coombes and folds
Of little lambs unyeaned,
Or sung him to the billowy woods
With spray of buds begreened,
Where spreads in haze the snowy maze
Of orchards deep-ravined—

Telling the dingles of the thrush
To overflow with sound,
Warning the grassy commons all
In vales for miles around:

“Wake, shady forest coverts wide!
Wake, skylit river-sward!
Chases and meres and misty shires
Be ready for your lord!”

But he would not stay nor tarry there
On the blithe edge of the down,
To the sea-coast his errand was
And the smoke-hanging town.

Far off he saw its harbours shine,
And black sea-bastions thronged
With masts of the sea-traffickers
For whom his spirit longed.

Far off he heard the windlass heaved
And creaking of the cranes,
Gay barges hailed and poled along,
And rattling fall of chains,

Till by the windows of that Inn
He sate and took his ease
Where bowsprits of the swarthy ships
Came thrusting to the quays.