Can moss be azure?

Question

1) What does "the eave" refer to? The old palaces' eave? If so, shouldn't it be "eaves"?
2) Can moss be azure in colour? That is why the author's sense faints in trying to picture them?
3) What does "level power" mean?
4) Does "Cleave themselves into chasms" mean "cut themselves (the level powers' own) into chasms"?
5) Does "despoil themselves" mean "commit suicide"?

Context:

3 ?

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and fowers

Quivering within the eave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves

h, hear!

GPY · Accepted Answer

1. I can't answer all your questions, but I did notice that "eave's" should (according to more reliable versions of the text) be "wave's". Also "fowers" should be "towers". This version may be a better one to use:

http://www.bartleby.com/101/610.html

Why palaces and towers should be "Quivering within the wave's intenser day", however, is a mystery to me.

2. I have never seen azure moss. I guess it could be artistic licence or a looser definition of "moss" than the one I'm used to. I don't think "the sense faints" is referring to astonishment at the unusual colour though. It seems more about the sweetness of the flowers.

3. Don't know.

4. Yes, I think so (referring to the formation of waves?).

5. It is odd to say "commit suicide" of plant life. Only sentient beings can really do that.

CalifJim · Answer

NL8881) What does "the eave" refer to? The old palaces' eave? If so, shouldn't it be "eaves"?

As mentioned above, "wave's". I'm guessing that "the wave's intenser day" means times when the weather on the Mediterranean was stormy.

NL888azure moss

Poetic license allows this description of a kind of moss that was probably green but with a tinge of blue or greenish blue when viewed in certain lights or at certain angles.

NL888So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!

So beautiful that any attempt to imagine how beautiful they are would fail. (It would cause you to lose your senses, become unconscious, faint.) (This is all very exaggerated and fanciful, of course.)

NL888the Atlantic's level powers

I suspect the meaning of "level" has changed somewhat since this was written. I take this to be a reference to the power of water to indicate that a surface is level. Whatever is level is by definition parallel to the surface of still water. Still water is always level.

NL888Cleave themselves into chasms

Split apart to form high walls and low canyons of water (big waves). This is in contrast to the ocean's power to remain level. It yields this power to the wind when it forms these waves.

NL888despoil themselves

Ruin or damage themselves. This is probably a reference to beach debris after a storm. As a result of the action of strong winds the various seaweeds which grow in the water seem to throw themselves onto the land, where they die. (I suppose that's a sort of suicide!)

CJ

Can moss be azure?

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