The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI,

IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.

• • It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
  • Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
  • Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
  • Its horror and its beauty are divine.
  • Upon its lips and eyelids seem to lie
  • Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,
  • Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
  • The agonies of anguish and of death.
• • Yet it is less the horror than the grace
  • Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone;
  • Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
  • Are graven, till the characters be grown
  • Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
  • ’Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
  • Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
  • Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
• • And from its head as from one body grow,
  • As [[         ]] grass out of a watery rock,
  • Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
  • And their long tangles in each other lock,
  • And with unending involutions shew
  • Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
  • The torture and the death within, and saw
  • The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
• • And from a stone beside a poisonous eft
  • Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
  • Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
  • Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
  • Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
  • And he comes hastening like a moth that hies
  • After a taper; and the midnight sky
  • Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
• • ’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
  • For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
  • Kindled by that inextricable error,
  • Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
  • Become a [[         ]] and evershifting mirror
  • Of all the beauty and the terror there—
  • A woman’s countenance, with serpent locks,
  • Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks.

Florence, 1819.

SONG.

• • Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
  • Spirit of Delight!
  • Wherefore hast thou left me now
  • Many a day and night?
  • Many a weary night and day
  • ’Tis since thou art fled away.
• • How shall ever one like me
  • Win thee back again?
  • With the joyous and the free
  • Thou wilt scoff at pain.
  • Spirit false! thou hast forgot
  • All but those who need thee not.
• • As a lizard with the shade
  • Of a trembling leaf,
  • Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
  • Even the sighs of grief
  • Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
  • And reproach thou wilt not hear.
• • Let me set my mournful ditty
  • To a merry measure,
  • Thou wilt never come for pity,
  • Thou wilt come for pleasure,
  • Pity then will cut away
  • Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.
• • I love all that thou lovest,
  • Spirit of Delight!
  • The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
  • And the starry night;
  • Autumn evening, and the morn
  • When the golden mists are born.
• • I love snow, and all the forms
  • Of the radiant frost;
  • I love waves, and winds, and storms,
  • Every thing almost
  • Which is Nature’s, and may be
  • Untainted by man’s misery.
• • I love tranquil solitude,
  • And such society
  • As is quiet, wise and good;
  • Between thee and me
  • What difference? but thou dost possess
  • The things I seek, not love them less.
• • I love Love—though he has wings,
  • And like light can flee,
  • But above all other things,
  • Spirit, I love thee—
  • Thou art love and life! O come,
  • Make once more my heart thy home.

TO CONSTANTIA,

SINGING.

• • Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,
  • Perchance were death indeed!—Constantia, turn!
  • In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
  • Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn
  • Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;
  • Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour it is yet,
  • And from thy touch like fire doth leap.
  • Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet,
  • Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!
• • A breathless awe, like the swift change
  • Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,
  • Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
  • Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.
  • The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
  • By the inchantment of thy strain,
  • And on my shoulders wings are woven,
  • To follow its sublime career,
  • Beyond the mighty moons that wane
  • Upon the verge of nature’s utmost sphere,
  • ’Till the world’s shadowy walls are past and disappear.
• • Her voice is hovering o’er my soul—it lingers
  • O’ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings,
  • The blood and life within those snowy fingers
  • Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
  • My brain is wild, my breath comes quick—
  • The blood is listening in my frame,
  • And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
  • Fall on my overflowing eyes;
  • My heart is quivering like a flame;
  • As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,
  • I am dissolved in these consuming extacies.
• • I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
  • Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
  • Flows on, and fills all things with melody.—
  • Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,
  • On which, like one is trance upborne,
  • Secure o’er rocks and waves I sweep,
  • Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.
  • Now ’tis the breath of summer night,
  • Which when the starry waters sleep,
  • Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright,
  • Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

THE FUGITIVES.

• I.

• • The waters are flashing,
  • The white hail is dashing,
  • The lightnings are glancing,
  • The hoar-spray is dancing—
  • Away!
• • The whirlwind is rolling,
  • The thunder is tolling,
  • The forest is swinging,
  • The minster bells ringing—
  • Come away!
• • The Earth is like Ocean,
  • Wreck-strewn and in motion:
  • Bird, beast, man and worm
  • Have crept out of the storm—
  • Come away!

• II.

• • “Our boat has one sail,
  • And the helmsman is pale;—
  • A bold pilot I trow,
  • Who should follow us now,”—
  • Shouted He—
• • And she cried: “Ply the oar!
  • Put off gaily from shore!”—
  • As she spoke, bolts of death
  • Mixed with hail, specked their path
  • O’er the sea.
• • And from isle, tower and rock,
  • The blue beacon cloud broke,
  • And though dumb in the blast,
  • The red cannon flashed fast
  • From the lee.

• III.

• • “And, fear’st thou, and fear’st thou?
  • And, see’st thou, and hear’st thou?
  • And, drive we not free
  • O’er the terrible sea,
  • I and thou?”
• • One boat-cloak did cover
  • The loved and the lover—
  • Their blood beats one measure,
  • They murmur proud pleasure
  • Soft and low;—
• • While around the lashed Ocean,
  • Like mountains in motion,
  • Is withdrawn and uplifted,
  • Sunk, shattered and shifted
  • To and fro.

• IV.

• • In the court of the fortress
  • Beside the pale portress,
  • Like a blood-hound well beaten,
  • The bridegroom stands, eaten
  • By shame;
• • On the topmost watch-turret,
  • As a death-boding spirit,
  • Stands the grey tyrant father,
  • To his voice the mad weather
  • Seems tame;
• • And with curses as wild
  • As ere clung to child,
  • He devotes to the blast
  • The best, loveliest and last
  • Of his name!

A LAMENT.

• • Swifter far than summer’s flight,
  • Swifter far than youth’s delight,
  • Swifter far than happy night,
  • Art thou come and gone:
  • As the earth when leaves are dead,
  • As the night when sleep is sped,
  • As the heart when joy is fled,
  • I am left lone, alone.
• • The swallow Summer comes again.
  • The owlet Night resumes her reign,
  • But the wild swan Youth is fain
  • To fly with thee, false as thou.
  • My heart each day desires the morrow,
  • Sleep itself is turned to sorrow,
  • Vainly would my winter borrow
  • Sunny leaves from any bough.
• • Lilies for a bridal bed,
  • Roses for a matron’s head,
  • Violets for a maiden dead,
  • Pansies let my flowers be:
  • On the living grave I bear,
  • Scatter them without a tear,
  • Let no friend, however dear,
  • Waste one hope, one fear for me.

THE PINE FOREST

OF THE CASCINE, NEAR PISA.

• • Dearest, best and brightest,
  • Come away,
  • To the woods and to the fields!
  • Dearer than this fairest day,
  • Which like thee to those in sorrow,
  • Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
  • To the rough year just awake
  • In its cradle in the brake.
• • The eldest of the hours of spring,
  • Into the winter wandering,
  • Looks upon the leafless wood;
  • And the banks all bare and rude
  • Found it seems this halcyon morn,
  • In February’s bosom born,
  • Bending from heaven, in azure mirth,
  • Kissed the cold forehead of the earth,
  • And smiled upon the silent sea,
  • And bade the frozen streams be free;
  • And waked to music all the fountains,
  • And breathed upon the rigid mountains,
  • And made the wintry world appear
  • Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
• • Radiant Sister of the Day,
  • Awake! arise! and come away!
  • To the wild woods and the plains,
  • To the pools where winter rains
  • Image all the roof of leaves,
  • Where the Pine its garland weaves,
  • Sapless, grey, and ivy dun
  • Round stones that never kiss the sun,
  • To the sandhills of the sea,
  • Where the earliest violets be.
• • Now the last day of many days,
  • All beautiful and bright as thou,
  • The loveliest and the last, is dead,
  • Rise Memory, and write its praise,
  • And do thy wonted work and trace
  • The epitaph of glory fled:
  • For the Earth hath changed its face,
  • A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
• • We wandered to the Pine Forest
  • That skirts the Ocean’s foam,
  • The lighest wind was in its nest,
  • The tempest in its home.
• • The whispering waves were half asleep,
  • The clouds were gone to play,
  • And on the woods, and on the deep,
  • The smile of Heaven lay.
• • It seemed as if the day were one
  • Sent from beyond the skies,
  • Which shed to earth above the sun
  • A light of Paradise.
• • We paused amid the Pines that stood
  • The giants of the waste,
  • Tortured by storms to shapes as rude,
  • With stems like serpents interlaced.
• • How calm it was—the silence there
  • By such a chain was bound,
  • That even the busy woodpecker
  • Made stiller by her sound
• • The inviolable quietness;
  • The breath of peace we drew,
  • With its soft motion made not less
  • The calm that round us grew.
• • It seemed that from the remotest seat
  • Of the white mountain’s waste,
  • To the bright flower beneath our feet,
  • A magic circle traced;—
• • A spirit interfused around,
  • A thinking silent life,
  • To momentary peace it bound
  • Our mortal Nature’s strife.—
• • For still it seemed the centre of
  • The magic circle there,
  • Was one whose being filled with love
  • The breathless atmosphere.
• • Were not the crocusses that grew
  • Under that ilex tree,
  • As beautiful in scent and hue
  • As ever fed the bee?
• • We stood beside the pools that lie
  • Under the forest bough,
  • And each seemed like a sky
  • Gulphed in a world below;—
• • A purple firmament of light,
  • Which in the dark earth lay,
  • More boundless than the depth of night,
  • And clearer than the day—
• • In which the massy forests grew,
  • As in the upper air,
  • More perfect both in shape and hue
  • Than any waving there.
• • Like one beloved, the scene had lent
  • To the dark water’s breast
  • Its every leaf and lineament
  • With that clear truth expressed.
• • There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,
  • And through the dark green crowd
  • The white sun twinkling like the dawn
  • Under a speckled cloud.
• • Sweet views, which in our world above
  • Can never well be seen,
  • Were imaged by the water’s love
  • Of that fair forest green.
• • And all was interfused beneath
  • Within an Elysium air,
  • An atmosphere without a breath,
  • A silence sleeping there.
• • Until a wandering wind crept by,
  • Like an unwelcome thought,
  • Which from my mind’s too faithful eye
  • Blots thy bright image out.
• • For thou art good and dear and kind,
  • The forest ever green,
  • But less of peace in S—’s mind,
  • Than calm in waters seen.

February 2, 1822.

TO NIGHT.

• • Swiftly walk over the western wave,
  • Spirit of Night!
  • Out of the misty eastern cave,
  • Where, all the long and lone daylight,
  • Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
  • Which make thee terrible and dear,—
  • Swift be thy flight!
• • Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
  • Star-inwrought!
  • Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
  • Kiss her until she be wearied out,
  • Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land,
  • Touching all with thine opiate wand—
  • Come, long sought!
• • When I arose and saw the dawn,
  • I sighed for thee;
  • When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
  • And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
  • And the weary Day turned to his rest,
  • Lingering like an unloved guest,
  • I sighed for thee.
• • Thy brother Death came, and cried,
  • Wouldst thou me?
  • Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
  • Murmured like a noon-tide bee,
  • Shall I nestle near thy side?
  • Wouldst thou me?—And I replied,
  • No, not thee!
• • Death will come when thou art dead,
  • Soon, too soon—
  • Sleep will come when thou art fled,
  • Of neither would I ask the boon
  • I ask of thee, beloved Night—
  • Swift be thine approaching flight,
  • Come soon, soon!

EVENING.

PONTE A MARE, PISA.

• • The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
  • The bats are flitting fast in the grey air;
  • The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
  • And evening’s breath, wandering here and there
  • Over the quivering surface of the stream,
  • Wakes not one ripple from its silent dream.
• • There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
  • Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
  • The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;
  • And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
  • The dust and straws are driven up and down,
  • And whirled about the pavement of the town.
• • Within the surface of the fleeting river
  • The wrinkled image of the city lay,
  • Immoveably unquiet, and for ever
  • It trembles, but it never fades away;
  • Go to the []
  • You, being changed, will find it then as now.
• • The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
  • By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,
  • Like mountain over mountain huddled—but
  • Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
  • And over it a space of watery blue,
  • Which the keen evening star is shining through.

ARETHUSA.

• • Arethusa arose
  • From her couch of snows
  • In the Acroceraunian mountains,—
  • From cloud and from crag,
  • With many a jag,
  • Shepherding her bright fountains.
  • She leapt down the rocks
  • With her rainbow locks
  • Streaming among the streams;—
  • Her steps paved with green
  • The downward ravine
  • Which slopes to the western gleams:
  • And gliding and springing,
  • She went, ever singing,
  • In murmurs as soft as sleep;
  • The Earth seemed to love her,
  • And Heaven smiled above her,
  • As she lingered towards the deep.
• • Then Alpheus bold,
  • On his glacier cold,
  • With his trident the mountains strook;
  • And opened a chasm
  • In the rocks;—with the spasm
  • All Erymanthus shook.
  • And the black south wind
  • It concealed behind
  • The urns of the silent snow,
  • And earthquake and thunder
  • Did rend in sunder
  • The bars of the springs below:
  • The beard and the hair
  • Of the river God were
  • Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
  • As he followed the light
  • Of the fleet nymph’s flight
  • To the brink of the Dorian deep.
• • “Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
  • And bid the deep hide me,
  • For he grasps me now by the hair!”
  • The loud Ocean heard,
  • To its blue depth stirred,
  • And divided at her prayer;
  • And under the water
  • The Earth’s white daughter
  • Fled like a sunny beam,
  • Behind her descended,
  • Her billows unblended
  • With the brackish Dorian stream:—
  • Like a gloomy stain
  • On the emerald main
  • Alpheus rushed behind,—
  • As an eagle pursuing
  • A dove to its ruin
  • Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
  • Under the bowers
  • Where the Ocean Powers
  • Sit on their pearled thrones,
  • Through the coral woods
  • Of the weltering floods,
  • Over heaps of unvalued stones:
  • Through the dim beams
  • Which amid the streams
  • Weave a net-work of coloured light;
  • And under the caves,
  • Where the shadowy waves
  • Are as green as the forest’s night:—
  • Outspeeding the shark,
  • And the sword-fish dark,
  • Under the ocean foam,
  • And up through the rifts
  • Of the mountain clifts
  • They passed to their Dorian home.
• • And now from their fountains
  • In Enna’s mountains,
  • Down one vale where the morning basks,
  • Like friends once parted
  • Grown single-hearted,
  • They ply their watery tasks.
  • At sun-rise they leap
  • From their cradles steep
  • In the cave of the shelving hill;
  • At noon-tide they flow
  • Through the woods below
  • And the meadows of Asphodel;
  • And at night they sleep
  • In the rocking deep
  • Beneath the Ortygian shore;—
  • Like spirits that lie
  • In the azure sky
  • When they love but live no more.

Pisa, 1820.

THE QUESTION.

• • I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
  • Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
  • And gentle odours led my steps astray,
  • Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
  • Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
  • Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
  • Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
  • But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
• • There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
  • Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
  • The constellated flower that never sets;
  • Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
  • The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
  • Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
  • When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
• • And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
  • Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May,
  • And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
  • Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day;
  • And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
  • With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
  • And flowers azure, black and streaked with gold,
  • Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
• • And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
  • There grew broad flag flowers, purple prankt with white,
  • And starry river buds among the sedge,
  • And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
  • Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
  • With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
  • And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
  • As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
• • Methought that of these visionary flowers
  • I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
  • That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
  • Were mingled or opposed, the like array
  • Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
  • Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
  • I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
  • That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?

LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR.

• • I arise from dreams of thee
  • In the first sweet sleep of night,
  • When the winds are breathing low,
  • And the stars are shining bright:
  • I arise from dreams of thee,
  • And a spirit in my feet
  • Has led me—who knows how?
  • To thy chamber window, sweet!
• • The wandering airs they faint
  • On the dark, the silent stream—
  • The champak odours fail
  • Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
  • The nightingale’s complaint,
  • It dies upon her heart,
  • As I must on thine,
  • Beloved as thou art!
• • O lift me from the grass!
  • I die, I faint, I fail!
  • Let thy love in kisses rain
  • On my lips and eyelids pale.
  • My cheek is cold and white, alas!
  • My heart beats loud and fast,
  • Oh! press it close to thine again,
  • Where it will break at last.

STANZAS

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.

• • The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
  • The waves are dancing fast and bright,
  • Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
  • The purple noon’s transparent light
  • Around its unexpanded buds;
  • Like many a voice of one delight,
  • The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
  • The City’s voice itself is soft, like Solitude’s.
• • I see the Deep’s untrampled floor
  • With green and purple seaweeds strown;
  • I see the waves upon the shore,
  • Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
  • I sit upon the sands alone,
  • The lightning of the noon-tide ocean
  • Is flashing round me, and a tone
  • Arises from its measured motion,
  • How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
• • Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
  • Nor peace within nor calm around,
  • Nor that content surpassing wealth
  • The sage in meditation found,
  • And walked with inward glory crowned—
  • Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
  • Others I see whom these surround—
  • Smiling they live and call life pleasure;—
  • To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
• • Yet now despair itself is mild,
  • Even as the winds and waters are;
  • I could lie down like a tired child,
  • And weep away the life of care
  • Which I have borne and yet must bear,
  • Till death like sleep might steal on me,
  • And I might feel in the warm air
  • My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
  • Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
• • Some might lament that I were cold,
  • As I, when this sweet day is gone,
  • Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
  • Insults with this untimely moan;
  • They might lament—for I am one
  • Whom men love not,—and yet regret,
  • Unlike this day, which, when the sun
  • Shall on its stainless glory set,
  • Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

December, 1818.

AUTUMN:

A DIRGE.

• • The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
  • The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
  • And the year
  • On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
  • Is lying.
  • Come, months, come away,
  • From November to May,
  • In your saddest array;
  • Follow the bier
  • Of the dead cold year,
  • And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
• • The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,
  • The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
  • For the year;
  • The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
  • To his dwelling;
  • Come, months, come away;
  • Put on white, black, and grey,
  • Let your light sisters play—
  • Ye, follow the bier
  • Of the dead cold year,
  • And make her grave green with tear on tear.

HYMN OF APOLLO.

• • The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
  • Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries,
  • From the broad moonlight of the sky,
  • Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,—
  • Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn,
  • Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.
• • 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.
• • 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.
• • I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers
  • With their ethereal 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.
• • 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?
• • I am the eye with which the Universe
  • Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
  • All harmony of instrument or verse,
  • All prophesy, all medicine are mine,
  • All light of art or nature;—to my song,
  • Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

• • From the forests and highlands
  • We come, we come;
  • From the river-girt islands,
  • Where loud waves are dumb
  • Listening to my sweet pipings.
  • The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
  • The bees on the bells of thyme,
  • The birds on the myrtle bushes,
  • The cicale above in the lime,
  • And the lizards below in the grass,
  • Were as silent as ever old Tmolus* was,
  • Listening to my sweet pipings.
• • Liquid Peneus was flowing,
  • And all dark Tempe lay
  • In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing
  • The light of the dying day,
  • Speeded by my sweet pipings.
  • The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
  • And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
  • To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
  • And the brink of the dewy caves,
  • And all that did then attend and follow
  • Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
  • With envy of my sweet pipings.
• • I sang of the dancing stars,
  • I sang of the dædal Earth,
  • And of Heaven—and the giant wars,
  • And Love, and Death, and Birth,—
  • And then I changed my pipings,—
  • Singing how down the vale of Menalus
  • I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
  • Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
  • It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
  • All wept, as I think both ye now would,
  • If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
  • At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

THE BOAT

ON THE SERCHIO.

• • Our boat is asleep in Serchio’s stream,
  • Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
  • The helm sways idly, hither and thither;
  • Dominic, the boat-man, has brought the mast,
  • And the oars and the sails; but ’tis sleeping fast,
  • Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.
• • The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
  • And the thin white moon lay withering there,
  • To tower, and cavern, and rift and tree,
  • The owl and the bat fled drowsily.
  • Day had kindled the dewy woods,
  • And the rocks above and the stream below,
  • And the vapours in their multitudes,
  • And the Apennine’s shroud of summer snow,
  • And clothed with light of aery gold
  • The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.
• • Day had awakened all things that be,
  • The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,
  • And the milkmaid’s song and the mower’s scythe,
  • And the matin-bell and the mountain bee:
  • Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy corn,
  • Glow-worms went out on the river’s brim,
  • Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
• • The beetle forgot to wind his horn,
  • The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
  • Like a flock of rooks at a farmer’s gun
  • Night’s dreams and terrors, every one,
  • Fled from the brains which are their prey,
  • From the lamp’s death to the morning ray:
• • All rose to do the task He set to each,
  • Who shaped us to his ends and not our own;
  • The million rose to learn, and one to teach
  • What none yet ever knew or can be known;
• • And many rose
  • Whose woe was such that fear became desire;—
  • Melchior and Lionel were not among those;
  • They from the throng of men had stepped aside,
  • And made their home under the green hill side.
  • It was that hill, whose intervening brow
  • Screens Lucca from the Pisan’s envious eye,
  • Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
  • Like a wide lake of green fertility,
  • With streams and fields and marshes bare,
  • Divides from the far Apennines—which lie
  • Islanded in the immeasurable air.
• • “What think you, as she lies in her green cove,
  • Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?
  • If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
  • That she was dreaming of our idleness,
  • And of the miles of watery way
  • We should have led her by this time of day?”—
• • —“Never mind,” said Lionel,
  • “Give care to the winds, they can bear it well
  • About yon poplar tops; and see
  • The white clouds are driving merrily,
  • And the stars we miss this morn will light
  • More willingly our return to-night.—
  • List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair;
  • How it scatters Dominic’s long black hair,
  • Singing of us, and our lazy motions,
  • If I can guess a boat’s emotions.—”
• • The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
  • The living breath is fresh behind,
  • As with dews and sunrise fed,
  • Comes the laughing morning wind;—
  • The sails are full, the boat makes head
  • Against the Serchio’s torrent fierce,
  • Then flags with intermitting course,
  • And hangs upon the wave, [[         ]]
  • Which fervid from its mountain source
  • Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,—
  • Swift as fire, tempestuously
  • It sweeps into the affrighted sea;
  • In morning’s smile its eddies coil,
  • Its billows sparkle, toss and boil,
  • Torturing all its quiet light
  • Into columns fierce and bright.
• • The Serchio, twisting forth
  • Between the marble barriers which it clove
  • At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm
  • The wave that died the death which lovers love,
  • Living in what it sought; as if this spasm
  • Had not yet past, the toppling mountains cling,
  • But the clear stream in full enthusiasm
  • Pours itself on the plain, until wandering,
  • Down one clear path of effluence chrystalline
  • Sends its clear waves, that they may fling
  • At Arno’s feet tribute of corn and wine,
  • Then, through the pestilential desarts wild
  • Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted fir,
  • It rushes to the Ocean.

July, 1821.

THE ZUCCA.*

• • I.

  • Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
  • And infant Winter laughed upon the land
  • All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring
  • More in this world than any understand,
  • Wept o’er the beauty, which like sea retiring,
  • Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
  • Of my poor heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
  • Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours.

• • II.

  • Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
  • The instability of all but weeping;
  • And on the earth lulled in her winter sleep
  • I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
  • Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
  • The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
  • From unremembered dreams, shalt [[         ]] see
  • No death divide thy immortality.

• • III.

  • I loved—O no, I mean not one of ye,
  • Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
  • As human heart to human heart may be;—
  • I loved, I know not what—but this low sphere
  • And all that it contains, contains not thee,
  • Thou, whom seen no where, I feel everywhere,
  • Dim object of my soul’s idolatry.
  • Veiled art thou like—

• • IV.

  • By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
  • Neither to be contained, delayed, or hidden,
  • Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
  • When for a moment thou art not forbidden
  • To live within the life which thou bestowest;
  • And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
  • Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight,
  • Blank as the sun after the birth of night.

• • V.

  • In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
  • In music and the sweet unconscious tone
  • Of animals, and voices which are human,
  • Meant to express some feelings of their own;
  • In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
  • In flowers and leaves, and in the fresh grass shewn,
  • Or dying in the autumn, I the most
  • Adore thee present or lament thee lost.

• • VI.

  • And thus I went, lamenting when I saw
  • A plant upon the river’s margin lie,
  • Like one who loved beyond his Nature’s law,
  • And in despair had cast him down to die;
  • Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw
  • Had blighted as a heart which hatred’s eye
  • Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
  • Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.

• • VII.

  • The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
  • Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast.
  • * * * * * * *

• • VIII.

  • I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
  • It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
  • The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
  • Fell through the window panes, disrobed of cold,
  • Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted
  • In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled
  • Over the horizon’s wave, with looks of light
  • Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.

• • IX.

  • The mitigated influences of air
  • And light revived the plant, and from it grew
  • Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
  • Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew,
  • O’erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
  • Of vital warmth infolded it anew,
  • And every impulse sent to every part
  • The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.

• • X.

  • Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,
  • Even if the sun and air had smiled not on it;
  • For one wept o’er it all the winter long
  • Tears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it
  • Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
  • Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
  • To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
  • Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.

• • XI.

  • Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers
  • On which he wept, the while the savage storm
  • Waked by the darkest of December’s hours
  • Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;
  • The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,
  • The fish were frozen in the pools, the form
  • Of every summer plant was dead [[         ]]
  • Whilst this * * *

January, 1822.

THE TWO SPIRITS.

AN ALLEGORY.

first spirit.

• Oh thou, who plumed with strong desire
• Would float above the earth, beware!
• A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire—
• Night is coming!
• Bright are the regions of the air,
• And among the winds and beams
• It were delight to wander there—
• Night is coming!

second spirit.

• The deathless stars are bright above;
• If I would cross the shade of night,
• Within my heart is the lamp of love,
• And that is day!
• And the moon will smile with gentle light
• On my golden plumes where’er they move;
• The meteors will linger round my flight
• And make night day.

first spirit.

• But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
• Hail and lightning and stormy rain;
• See the bounds of the air are shaken—
• Night is coming!
• The red swift clouds of the hurricane
• Yon declining sun have overtaken,
• The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain—
• Night is coming!

second spirit.

• • I see the light, and I hear the sound;
  • I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark
  • With the calm within and the light around
  • Which makes night day:
  • And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
  • Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,
  • My moon-like flight thou then may’st mark
  • On high, far away.
• • Some say, there is a precipice
  • Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
  • O’er piles of snow and chasms of ice
  • Mid Alpine mountains;
  • And that the languid storm pursuing
  • That winged shape for ever flies
  • Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
  • Its aery fountains.
• • Some say, when nights are dry and clear,
  • And the death dews sleep on the morass,
  • Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller
  • Which makes night day:
  • And a silver shape like his early love doth pass
  • Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
  • And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
  • He finds night day.

A FRAGMENT.

• They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
• Except that from the catalogue of sins
• Nature had razed their love—which could not be
• But by dissevering their nativity.
• And so they grew together, like two flowers
• Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
• Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
• Which the same hand will gather—the same clime
• Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
• All those who love,—and who ever loved like thee,
• Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
• Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
• The ardours of a vision which obscure
• The very idol of its portraiture;
• He faints, dissolved into a sense of love;
• But thou art as a planet sphered above,
• But thou art Love itself—ruling the motion
• Of his subjected spirit—such emotion
• Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May
• Had not brought forth this morn—your wedding day.

A BRIDAL SONG.

• • The golden gates of sleep unbar
  • Where strength and beauty met together,
  • Kindle their image like a star
  • In a sea of glassy weather.
  • Night, with all thy stars look down,—
  • Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,—
  • Never smiled the inconstant moon
  • On a pair so true.
  • Let eyes not see their own delight;—
  • Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
  • Oft renew.
• • Fairies, sprites, and angels keep her!
  • Holy stars, permit no wrong!
  • And return to wake the sleeper,
  • Dawn,—ere it be long.
  • Oh joy! oh fear! what will be done
  • In the absence of the sun!
  • Come along!

THE SUNSET.

• • There late was One within whose subtle being,
  • As light and wind within some delicate cloud
  • That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,
  • Genius and youth contended. None may know
  • The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
  • Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
  • When, with the Lady of his love, who then
  • First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
  • He walked along the pathway of a field
  • Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er,
  • But to the west was open to the sky.
  • There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
  • Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
  • Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
  • And the old dandelion’s hoary beard,
  • And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
  • On the brown massy woods—and in the east
  • The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
  • Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
  • While the faint stars were gathering overhead.—
  • “Is it not strange, Isabel,” said the youth,
  • “I never saw the sun? We will walk here
  • To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.”
• • That night the youth and lady mingled lay
  • In love and sleep—but when the morning came
  • The lady found her lover dead and cold.
  • Let none believe that God in mercy gave
  • That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
  • But year by year lived on—in truth I think
  • Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
  • And that she did not die, but lived to tend
  • Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
  • If madness ’tis to be unlike the world.
  • For but to see her were to read the tale
  • Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
  • Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;—
  • Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
  • Her lips and cheeks were like things dead—so pale;
  • Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins
  • And weak articulations might be seen
  • Day’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
  • Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
  • Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
• • “Inheritor of more than earth can give,
  • Passionless, calm and silence unreproved,
  • Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
  • And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
  • Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
  • Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!”
  • This was the only moan she ever made.

1816.

SONG,

ON A FADED VIOLET.

• • The odour from the flower is gone,
  • Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
  • The colour from the flower is flown,
  • Which glowed of thee, and only thee!
• • A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,
  • It lies on my abandoned breast,
  • And mocks the heart which yet is warm
  • With cold and silent rest.
• • I weep—my tears revive it not!
  • I sigh—it breathes no more on me;
  • Its mute and uncomplaining lot
  • Is such as mine should be.

LINES TO A CRITIC.

• • Honey from silk-worms who can gather,
  • Or silk from the yellow bee?
  • The grass may grow in winter weather
  • As soon as hate in me.
• • Hate men who cant, and men who pray,
  • And men who rail like thee;
  • An equal passion to repay
  • They are not coy like me.
• • Or seek some slave of power and gold,
  • To be thy dear heart’s mate;
  • Thy love will move that bigot cold,
  • Sooner than me, thy hate.
• • A passion like the one I prove
  • Cannot divided be;
  • I hate thy want of truth and love—
  • How should I then hate thee?

December, 1817.

GOOD NIGHT.

• • Good night? ah! no; the hour is ill
  • Which severs those it should unite;
  • Let us remain together still,
  • Then it will be good night.
• • How can I call the lone night good,
  • Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
  • Be it not said, thought, understood,
  • Then it will be good night.
• • To hearts which near each other move
  • From evening close to morning light,
  • The night is good; because, my love,
  • They never say good night.

TO-MORROW.

• Where art thou, beloved, To-morrow?
• Whom young and old and strong and weak,
• Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
• Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,—
• In thy place—ah! well-a-day!
• We find the thing we fled—To-day.

DEATH.

• • They die—the dead return not—Misery
  • Sits near an open grave and calls them over,
  • A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye—
  • They are the names of kindred, friend, and lover,
  • Which he so feebly called—they all are gone!
  • Fond wretch, all dead, those vacant names alone,
  • This most familiar scene, my pain—
  • These tombs alone remain.
• • Misery, my sweetest friend—oh! weep no more!
  • Thou wilt not be consoled—I wonder not!
  • For I have seen thee from thy dwelling’s door
  • Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot
  • Was even as bright and calm, but transitory,
  • And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary;
  • This most familiar scene, my pain—
  • These tombs alone remain.

A LAMENT.

• • Oh, world! oh, life! oh, time!
  • On whose last steps I climb
  • Trembling at that where I had stood before;
  • When will return the glory of your prime?
  • No more—O, never more!
• • Out of the day and night
  • A joy has taken flight;
  • Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
  • Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
  • No more—O, never more!

LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY.

• • The fountains mingle with the river,
  • And the rivers with the ocean,
  • The winds of heaven mix for ever
  • With a sweet emotion;
  • Nothing in the world is single;
  • All things by a law divine
  • In one another’s being mingle—
  • Why not I with thine?
• • See the mountains kiss high heaven,
  • And the waves clasp one another;
  • No sister flower would be forgiven
  • If it disdained its brother:
  • And the sunlight clasps the earth,
  • And the moonbeams kiss the sea,
  • What are all these kissings worth,
  • If thou kiss not me?

January, 1820.

TO E*** V***

• Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me
• Sweet basil and mignionette?
• Embleming love and health, which never yet
• In the same wreath might be.
• Alas, and they are wet!
• Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?
• For never rain or dew
• Such flagrance drew
• From plant or flower—the very doubt endears
• My sadness ever new,
• The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee.

March, 1821.

TO —

• • I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
  • Thou needest not fear mine;
  • My spirit is too deeply laden
  • Ever to burthen thine.
• • I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
  • Thou needest not fear mine;
  • Innocent is the heart’s devotion
  • With which I worship thine.

LINES.

• • When the lamp is shattered
  • The light in the dust lies dead—
  • When the cloud is scattered
  • The rainbow’s glory is shed.
  • When the lute is broken,
  • Sweet tones are remembered not;
  • When the lips have spoken,
  • Loved accents are soon forgot.
• • As music and splendour
  • Survive not the lamp and the lute,
  • The heart’s echoes render
  • No song when the spirit is mute:—
  • No song but sad dirges,
  • Like the wind through a ruined cell,
  • Or the mournful surges
  • That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
• • When hearts have once mingled
  • Love first leaves the well-built nest,
  • The weak one is singled
  • To endure what it once possest.
  • O, Love! who bewailest
  • The frailty of all things here,
  • Why choose you the frailest
  • For your cradle, your home and your bier?
• • Its passions will rock thee
  • As the storms rock the ravens on high:
  • Bright reason will mock thee,
  • Like the sun from a wintry sky.
  • From thy nest every rafter
  • Will rot, and thine eagle home
  • Leave the naked to laughter,
  • When leaves fall and cold winds come.

TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.

• (With what truth I may say—
• Roma! Roma! Roma!
• Non è più come era prima!)

• • My lost William, thou in whom
  • Some bright spirit lived, and did
  • That decaying robe consume
  • Which its lustre faintly hid,
  • Here its ashes find a tomb,
  • But beneath this pyramid
  • Thou art not—if a thing divine
  • Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
  • Is thy mother’s grief and mine.
• • Where art thou, my gentle child?
  • Let me think thy spirit feeds,
  • Within its life intense and mild,
  • The love of living leaves and weeds,
  • Among these tombs and ruins wild;—
  • Let me think that through low seeds
  • Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass,
  • Into their hues and scents may pass
  • A portion—

June, 1819.

AN ALLEGORY.

• • A portal as of shadowy adamant
  • Stands yawning on the highway of the life
  • Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
  • Around it rages an unceasing strife
  • Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
  • The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
  • Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.
• • And many passed it by with careless tread,
  • Not knowing that a shadowy []
  • Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
  • Wait peacefully for their companion new;
  • But others, by more curious humour led,
  • Pause to examine,—these are very few,
  • And they learn little there, except to know
  • That shadows follow them where’er they go.

MUTABILITY.

• • The flower that smiles to-day
  • To-morrow dies;
  • All that we wish to stay,
  • Tempts and then flies;
  • What is this world’s delight?
  • Lightning that mocks the night,
  • Brief even as bright.
• • Virtue, how frail it is!
  • Friendship too rare!
  • Love, how it sells poor bliss
  • For proud despair!
  • But we, though soon they fall,
  • Survive their joy and all
  • Which ours we call.
• • Whilst skies are blue and bright,
  • Whilst flowers are gay,
  • Whilst eyes that change ere night
  • Make glad the day;
  • Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
  • Dream thou—and from thy sleep
  • Then wake to weep.

FROM THE ARABIC.

AN IMITATION.

• • My faint spirit was sitting in the light
  • Of thy looks, my love;
  • It panted for thee like the hind at noon
  • For the brooks, my love.
  • Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest’s flight
  • Bore thee far from me;
  • My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
  • Did companion thee.
• • Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
  • Or the death they bear,
  • The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
  • With the wings of care;
  • In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,
  • Shall mine cling to thee,
  • Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,
  • It may bring to thee.

TO —

• • One word is too often profaned
  • For me to profane it,
  • One feeling too falsely disdained
  • For thee to disdain it.
  • One hope is too like despair
  • For prudence to smother,
  • And Pity from thee more dear,
  • Than that from another.
• • I can give not what men call love,
  • But wilt thou accept not
  • The worship the heart lifts above
  • And the Heavens reject not,
  • The desire of the moth for the star,
  • Of the night for the morrow,
  • The devotion to something afar
  • From the sphere of our sorrow?

MUSIC.

• • I pant for the music which is divine,
  • My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
  • Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,
  • Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
  • Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,
  • I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.
• • Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,
  • More, O more,—I am thirsting yet,
  • It loosens the serpent which care has bound
  • Upon my heart to stifle it;
  • The dissolving strain, through every vein,
  • Passes into my heart and brain.
• • As the scent of a violet withered up,
  • Which grew by the brink of a silver lake;
  • When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,
  • And mist there was none its thirst to slake—
  • And the violet lay dead while the odour flew
  • On the wings of the wind o’er the waters blue—
• • As one who drinks from a charmed cup
  • Of foaming, and sparkling and murmuring wine
  • Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up,
  • Invites to love with her kiss divine.
  • * * * * *
  • * * * * *

LINES.

• • The cold earth slept below;
  • Above the cold sky shone;
  • And all around,
  • With a chilling sound,
  • From caves of ice and fields of snow,
  • The breath of night like death did flow
  • Beneath the sinking moon.
• • The wintry hedge was black,
  • The green grass was not seen,
  • The birds did rest
  • On the bare thorn’s breast,
  • Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
  • Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
  • Which the frost had made between.
• • Thine eyes glowed in the glare
  • Of the moon’s dying light;
  • As a fen-fire’s beam,
  • On a sluggish stream,
  • Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there,
  • And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair
  • That shook in the wind of night.
• • The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
  • The wind made thy bosom chill;
  • The night did shed
  • On thy dear head
  • Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
  • Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
  • Might visit thee at will.

November, 1815.

DEATH.

• • Death is here and death is there,
  • Death is busy every where,
  • All around, within, beneath,
  • Above is death—and we are death.
• • Death has set his mark and seal
  • On all we are and all we feel,
  • On all we know and all we fear,
  • * * * *
• • First our pleasures die—and then
  • Our hopes, and then our fears—and when
  • These are dead, the debt is due,
  • Dust claims dust—and we die too.
• • All things that we love and cherish,
  • Like ourselves must fade and perish,
  • Such is our rude mortal lot,
  • Love itself would, did they not.

TO —

• • When passion’s trance is overpast,
  • If tenderness and truth could last
  • Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
  • Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
  • I should not weep, I should not weep!
• • It were enough to feel, to see
  • Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
  • And dream the rest—and burn and be
  • The secret food of fires unseen,
  • Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.
• • After the slumber of the year
  • The woodland violets re-appear,
  • All things revive in field or grove,
  • And sky and sea, but two, which move,
  • And for all others, life and love.

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.

• Listen, listen, Mary mine,
• To the whisper of the Apennine,
• It bursts on the roof like the thunder’s roar,
• Or like the sea on a northern shore,
• Heard in its raging ebb and flow
• By the captives pent in the cave below.
• The Apennine in the light of day
• Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,
• Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
• But when night comes, a chaos dread
• On the dim starlight then is spread,
• And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

May 4th, 1818.

TO MARY —

• • Oh! Mary dear, that you were here
  • With your brown eyes bright and clear,
  • And your sweet voice, like a bird
  • Singing love to its lone mate
  • In the ivy bower disconsolate;
  • Voice the sweetest ever heard!
  • And your brow more * * *
  • Than the * * * sky
  • Of this azure Italy.
  • Mary dear, come to me soon,
  • I am not well whilst thou art far;
  • As sunset to the sphered moon,
  • As twilight to the western star,
  • Thou, beloved, art to me.
• • Oh! Mary dear, that you were here;
  • The Castle echo whispers “Here!”

Este, September 1818.

THE PAST.

• • Wilt thou forget the happy hours
  • Which we buried in Love’s sweet bowers,
  • Heaping over their corpses cold
  • Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?
  • Blossoms which were the joys that fell,
  • And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.
• • Forget the dead, the past? O yet
  • There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
  • Memories that make the heart a tomb,
  • Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,
  • And with ghastly whispers tell
  • That joy, once lost, is pain.

SONG OF A SPIRIT.

• Within the silent centre of the earth
• My mansion is; where I lived insphered
• From the beginning, and around my sleep
• Have woven all the wondrous imagery
• Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
• Infinite depths of unknown elements
• Massed into one impenetrable mask;
• Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
• Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.
• And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven
• I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds,
• And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
• In the dark space of interstellar air.

LIBERTY.

• • The fiery mountains answer each other;
  • Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
  • The empestuous oceans awake one another,
  • And the ice-rocks are shaken round winter’s zone
  • When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.
• • From a single cloud the lightning flashes,
  • Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
  • Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
  • An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
  • Is bellowing underground.
• • But keener thy gaze than the lightning’s glare,
  • And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;
  • Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
  • Makes blind the volcanos; the sun’s bright lamp
  • To thine is a fen-fire damp.
• • From billow and mountain and exhalation
  • The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
  • From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
  • From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,—
  • And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night
  • In the van of the morning light.

TO —

• • Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed;
  • Yes, I was firm—thus did not thou;—
  • My baffled looks did fear yet dread
  • To meet thy looks—I could not know
  • How anxiously they sought to shine
  • With soothing pity upon mine.
• • To sit and curb the soul’s mute rage
  • Which preys upon itself alone;
  • To curse the life which is the cage
  • Of fettered grief that dares not groan,
  • Hiding from many a careless eye
  • The scorned load of agony.
• • Whilst thou alone, then not regarded,
  • The [[         ]] thou alone should be,
  • To spend years thus, and be rewarded,
  • As thou, sweet love, requited me
  • When none were near—Oh! I did wake
  • From torture for that moment’s sake.
• • Upon my heart thy accents sweet
  • Of peace and pity, fell like dew
  • On flowers half dead;—thy lips did meet
  • Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw
  • Thy soft persuasion on my brain,
  • Charming away its dream of pain.
• • We are not happy, sweet; our state
  • Is strange and full of doubt and fear;
  • More need of words that ills abate;—
  • Reserve or censure come not near
  • Our sacred friendship, lest there be
  • No solace left for thou and me.
• • Gentle and good and mild thou art,
  • Nor I can live if thou appear
  • Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart
  • Away from me, or stoop to wear
  • The mask of scorn, although it be
  • To hide the love thou feel for me.

THE ISLE.

• There was a little lawny islet
• By anemone and violet,
• Like mosaic, paven:
• And its roof was flowers and leaves
• Which the summer’s breath enweaves,
• Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
• Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
• Each a gem engraven.
• Girt by many an azure wave
• With which the clouds and mountains pave
• A lake’s blue chasm.

TO —

• • Music, when soft voices die,
  • Vibrates in the memory—
  • Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
  • Live within the sense they quicken.
• • Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
  • Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
  • And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
  • Love itself shall slumber on.

TIME.

• Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
• Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
• Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
• Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
• Claspest the limits of mortality!
• And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
• Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore,
• Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
• Who shall put forth on thee,
• Unfathomable Sea?

LINES.

• • That time is dead forever, child,
  • Drowned, frozen, dead forever!
  • We look on the past
  • And stare aghast
  • At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,
  • Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
  • To death on life’s dark river.
• • The stream we gazed on then, rolled by;
  • Its waves are unreturning;
  • But we yet stand
  • In a lone land,
  • Like tombs to mark the memory
  • Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
  • In the light of life’s dim morning.

November 5th, 1817.

A SONG.

• • A widow bird sate mourning for her love
  • Upon a wintry bough;
  • The frozen wind kept on above,
  • The freezing stream below.
• • There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
  • No flower upon the ground,
  • And little motion in the air
  • Except the mill-wheel’s sound.

THE WORLD’S WANDERERS.

• • Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light
  • Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
  • In what cavern of the night
  • Will thy pinions close now?
• • Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey
  • Pilgrim of heaven’s homeless way,
  • In what depth of night or day
  • Seekest thou repose now?
• • Weary wind, who wanderest
  • Like the world’s rejected guest,
  • Hast thou still some secret nest
  • On the tree or billow?

A DIRGE.

• Rough wind, that moanest loud
• Grief too sad for song;
• Wild wind, when sullen cloud
• Knells all the night long;
• Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
• Bare woods, whose branches stain,
• Deep caves and dreary main,
• Wail, for the world’s wrong!

LINES.

• • Far, far away, O ye
  • Halcyons of memory,
  • Seek some far calmer nest
  • Than this abandoned breast;—
  • No news of your false spring
  • To my heart’s winter bring,
  • Once having gone, in vain
  • Ye come again.
• • Vultures, who build your bowers
  • High in the Future’s towers,
  • Withered hopes on hopes are spread,
  • Dying joys choked by the dead,
  • Will serve your beaks for prey
  • Many a day.

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR.

• • Orphan hours, the year is dead,
  • Come and sigh, come and weep!
  • Merry hours, smile instead,
  • For the year is but asleep.
  • See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
  • Mocking your untimely weeping.
• • As an earthquake rocks a corse
  • In its coffin in the clay,
  • So White Winter, that rough nurse,
  • Rocks the death-cold year to-day;
  • Solemn hours! wait aloud
  • For your mother in her shroud.
• • As the wild air stirs and sways
  • The tree-swung cradle of a child,
  • So the breath of these rude days
  • Rocks the year:—be calm and mild,
  • Trembling hours, she will arise
  • With new love within her eyes.
• • January grey is here,
  • Like a sexton by her grave;
  • February bears the bier,
  • March with grief doth howl and rave
  • And April weeps—but, O, ye hours,
  • Follow with May’s fairest flowers.

January 1st, 1821.

SONNET I.

• Ye hasten to the dead! What seek ye there,
• Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
• Of the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear?
• Oh thou quick Heart which pantest to possess
• All that anticipation feigneth fair!
• Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
• Whence thou didst come, and whither thou may’st go,
• And that which never yet was known would know—
• Oh, whither hasten ye that thus ye press
• With such swift feet life’s green and pleasant path,
• Seeking alike from happiness and woe
• A refuge in the cavern of grey death?
• Oh heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you
• Hope to inherit in the grave below?

SONNET II.

POLITICAL GREATNESS.

• Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
• Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
• Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
• Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
• History is but the shadow of their shame,
• Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
• As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
• Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
• Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
• By force or custom? Man who man would be,
• Must rule the empire of himself; in it
• Must be supreme, establishing his throne
• On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
• Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

SONNET III.

• Alas! good friend, what profit can you see
• In hating such an hateless thing as me?
• There is no sport in hate where all the rage
• Is on one side. In vain would you assuage
• Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,
• In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile
• Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.
• O conquer what you cannot satiate!
• For to your passion I am far more coy
• Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy
• In winter noon. Of your antipathy
• If I am the Narcissus, you are free
• To pine into a sound with hating me.

SONNET IV.

• • Lift not the painted veil which those who live
  • Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
  • And it but mimic all we would believe
  • With colours idly spread:—behind, lurk Fear
  • And Hope, twin destinies; who ever weave
  • The shadows, which the world calls substance, there.
• • I knew one who lifted it—he sought,
  • For his lost heart was tender, things to love
  • But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
  • The world contains, the which he could approve.
  • Through the unheeding many he did move,
  • A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
  • Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
  • For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

[* ]This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the prize in music.

[* ]Pumpkin.