Hymn Of Apollo.

1.     The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,     Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries     From the broad moonlight of the sky,     Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, -     Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,     Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.     2.     Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,     I walk over the mountains and the waves,     Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;     My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves     Are filled with my bright presence, and the air     Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.     3.     The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill     Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;     All men who do or even imagine ill     Fly me, and from the glory of my ray     Good minds and open actions take new might,     Until diminished by the reign of Night.     4.     I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers     With their aethereal colours; the moon's globe     And the pure stars in their eternal bowers     Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;     Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine     Are portions of one power, which is mine.     5.     I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,     Then with unwilling steps I wander down     Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;     For grief that I depart they weep and frown:     What look is more delightful than the smile     With which I soothe them from the western isle?     6.     I am the eye with which the Universe     Beholds itself and knows itself divine;     All harmony of instrument or verse,     All prophecy, all medicine is mine,     All light of art or nature; - to my song     Victory and praise in its own right belong.