A hoary gleam through boughs prevailing   Tells me how near the ocean lies,     Here caged in many a waveless lake     By cypressed ridge and shadowy brake: Far off the nightingale is wailing:   More near the watery grot replies.The forest growths are rocked and dandled   By airs with midnight odours faint,     Soft, separate airs, o’er feathered grass     That pass me often and repass, Like naked feet of nymphs unsandalled   That tread each lawn and alley quaint. * * * * * I see not now those hills whose summits   In August keep their ermined robes;     But feel their freshness, know that round     They gird the steely gulfs profound With feet that mock the seamen’s plummets,   And foreheads crowned with starry globes.But see! vast beams divide the heaven;   The orange-groves their blossoms shew;     Over yon kindling deep the Moon     Will lash her snowy coursers soon: Now, by her brow the east is riven!   And now the west returns the glow!

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A hoary gleam through boughs prevailing   Tells me how near the ocean lies,     Here caged in many a waveless lake     By cypressed ridge and shadowy brake: Far off the nightingale is wailing:   More near the watery grot replies.The forest growths are rocked and dandled   By airs with midnight odours faint,     Soft, separate airs, o’er feathered grass     That pass me often and repass, Like naked feet of nymphs unsandalled   That tread each lawn and alley quaint. * * * * * I see not now those hills whose summits   In August keep their ermined robes;     But feel their freshness, know that round     They gird the steely gulfs profound With feet that mock the seamen’s plummets,   And foreheads crowned with starry globes.But see! vast beams divide the heaven;   The orange-groves their blossoms shew;     Over yon kindling deep the Moon     Will lash her snowy coursers soon: Now, by her brow the east is riven!   And now the west returns the glow!" in the context of "Aubrey Thomas de Vere, from "A Night at Corfu", in The Search after Proserpine, Recollections of Greece, and Other Poems (Oxford, 1843), p. 41" to mean that wisdom is timeless.